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arethusa -> RE: Crouching Buzzard - Hidden Pixel vs A couple of Canadians (3/14/2004 5:48:35 AM)
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ABP is Artillery Board Plotter. In WWII times, the ABP was the guy who directed the guns where to aim. He rode in a seperate truck which was parked about 50 metres from the guns with all the officers and radios.
The AB was a whiteboard, a bit less than a metre square, with grid lines drawn on it. The ABP put the guns in one corner of the board and the direction they were facing in the opposite corner. When known, he put down the positions of the FO's and any targets or registers. (Registers are what you guys call 'gold spots' in the deployment part of the game. The number of grids to the far corner of the AB represented the range of the guns. There were only so many registers for the guns because it got too complicated and used up too much ammo to set up very many of them.
When a fire mission came in, the ABP had about 2 minutes to come up with a firing solution for the guns. He gave the gun layers and trainers the degrees and mils to direct the guns but only one gun actually fired, even though all the guns made the changes. The FO would call back the fall of shot and tell the ABP wether to go 'up 100' or 'left 75' metres, whatever was needed. Once the #1 gun was hitting the target, usually about the 3rd shot, then all guns would get the order 'fire for effect' plus the number of rounds to fire. "Ten rounds, fire for effect" means that each gun will fire 10 shots as fast as they can, or 40 shells on target altogether.
All this happening is part of the reason for the delay of artillery in the game and the reason why some counttries can respond faster is partially how much practice the gunners had and how good the artillery tables were.
The tables were the books of calculations that the ABP used to work out how to target the guns. Nowadays, I'm sure this is all done by computer but back then, we had to do it all by hand. The things to take into consideration were:
the type of shell being fired (each type has a different weight, HE, AP, smoke, starshell, phosphorus, schrapnel, etc.) heavier shells went further, faster than light shells
the wind direcetion for every 500 feet of altitude in the trajectory (it rotates)
the wind speed for every 500 feet of altitude.
the altitude of the guns
the altitude of the target
the altitude of anything between the guns and the target
the number of rounds fired in the past 15 minutes (hot barrels expand and change the muzzle velocity)
the number of rounds fired for the life of the gun (worn barrels decrease the muzzle velocity)
the TOT or Time On Target (to calculate the effects of all the above)
the number of rotations of the shell in flight (like a golf ball it veers slightly to the right)
TOT gives you a time to set on the fuse for starshell and schrapnel (you want them both to explode at a specific altitude for maximum effect)
The artillery board itself was a blank grid for a few reasons. First of all, if captured, it gives the enemy almost no information but more importantly, it could be used anywhere unlike a map where once you move to a different location, the map's no good any more. As long as you knew the distance and direction to your FO, everything else could be figured out from there. It was also a lot easier to keep a white board working in the rain or under fire than using a map.
I'm sure there were other calculations we made but those are all the ones I remember at the moment. It gives you an idea anyway. There's a lot more to it than point and shoot. And without an ABP, the guns are just expensive paperweights.[:D]
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