COAST ARTILLERY, JOURNAL - Air Defense Artillery

"77 ROUNDS FIRED, SIR" 529
Reserve regiments had to be carried on simultaneously during the
firstfour weeks of camp, the battery commander was able to dovetail
these two classes of training very nicely.
Two DeHaviland planes with the necessary Air Corps personnel,
attached to the regiment, furnished splendid cooperation throughout.
The preliminary training of the battery was progressive and consisted
of calibration firings, wind, burst, and trial shot problems, and
preliminary firings at towed target with one, two, and then four guns.
Experience had indicated that changing atmospheric temperatures
affected burning of fuzes considerably. Therefore in order to obtain
accurate calibration data the battery commander fired trial shots concurrently
from the four guns. All gunners quadrants were tested and
accurately adjusted for any errors before firing. Guns were fired in
order from right to left,each piece firing as soon as the data from the
ALTITUDE (YAROS)
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TiME OF ASCENSION O-lINUTES)
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ANGULAR HEIGHT (MilS)
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VELOCITY OF WINO (MILES PER HOUR)
EMERGENCY VECTOR WINO CHART
FOR 6-INCH BALLOON ONLY
FIG. 2
preceding shot had been recorded. In this manner four trial shots
were fired from all four guns in less than ten minutes elapsed time.
Accuracy rather than speed was striyen for however. Four sets of
calibration firings were conducted during the preliminary training
period so that the battery commander had ample data on which to base
a standing correction on certain guns before going into record practice.
All guns were carefully boresighted just prior to any firing. During
the training of gun pointers frequent competitions were held between
gun sections firing against time to speed up rate of fire.
::\0 meteorological station being ayaiIable in the field, wind data
was obtained from an Emergency Vector "\\ind Chart which was designed
by one of the officers of the regiment. Based on knowledge
gained from his pre,ious experiments in the ascensional rate of balloons
he constructed a scale of altitudes in yards against time of
ascension in minutes for the six-inch balloon inflated to twenty-four