Reddit mentions of Blood, Tears, and Folly: An Objective Look At World War Ll

> Hitting a moving target, like a ship or train, requires even more calculations and a spotter for target acquisition. Since you're basically aiming at where the target's going to be 60 seconds or more in the future, you need a radar signature (I don't know if they used radar targetting in WWII), or better yet a trained artillery spotter team for target acquisition, and to send back speed & direction information.

Gun laying radars were put into good use by both the Royal Navy and British coastal artillery, as were they by the US Navy and the Kriegsmarine. Of the major powers, only the Soviets and Japan never made effective use of gun laying radars. On the other hand, naval ships were equipped with huge Coincidence Rangefinders, which while vulnerable to poor visibility and countermeasures like dazzle or smoke, could give reasonable estimates of range. Once range and relative heading are figured out, speed is just an observation away.

Naturally, this is only relevant while shooting at objects nearer than the horizon, but gun laying radars would of course be useless when firing on land targets anyway.

Edit: Happened to be reading a bit in this book last night and stumbled upon a mention of German gun laying radars for targeting shipping in the channel in 1940, so there's that.

For every eight days the Nazis spent in battle, seven of them were against the Soviets.

Papa Joe Stalin, making the world safe for democracy.

I got the stat from here:

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Tears-Folly-Objective-World/dp/0060925574

and the author (Len Deighton, so you know it's a good read), gives his source - but I've forgotten that.