Trainer
A Trainer is the person who, in all but the very smallest guns, controls a gun mounting to the proper bearing for firing, a process called training. Typically, he does this by rotating a hand-wheel or working a hydraulic lever in the case of a large turret. How he establishes the proper training differs when the gun is being locally laid or laid by director.
In British capital ships using director fire, the trainer would actually surrender his task to a man called the Turret Director Trainer and would instead occupy himself with assuring that the gun did not fire on an unsafe bearing or when the line of fire was endangered by a friendly vessel.
Station and Equipment
On pedestal mounted guns, the trainer generally was on the right side of the mounting. In a large turret with 2 guns, the trainer would generally sit in a central position. In a pedestal mounting, he would have a geared hand-wheel which would drive the mounting through its training arc. In a large turret, he would use a hydraulic lever or hand-wheel to cause the entire turret to traverse. He would have a sighting telescope or periscope and possibly some data receivers.
Local Laying
When a gun is not being pointed by a director, the trainer looks through a sighting telescope or periscope of some kind and works his training controls to place his cross hairs onto an agreed point of aim on the target. When this is done, he has trained the mount correctly. In small geared mountings, he may endeavour to work his controls to continuously negate the yawing of his ship to keep the cross hairs "on", in a process called continuous aim. Otherwise, he might simply place his cross hairs so the motion of his own ship causes them to sweep through the target periodically and rely on the fact the layer would only press the firing trigger when the training and elevation were simultaneously "on", a process called firing on the roll. In some instances, these strategies would be melded and he might hunt the rol.
Director Laying
When a director was being used, things started to get pretty varied by weapon and service.
[TO BE CONTINUED - TONE] the trainer would not look through a sighting scope but instead work his elevating controls as he watched a data terminal called an elevation receiver or (in late-war British destroyers) a similar mechanism mounted nearby. In such a case, he would endeavour to keep two pointers in agreement, and this would indicate the proper elevation was on the gun. In such cases, the firing impulse would almost certainly arrive from the director and the layer would simply monitor his pointers except perhaps to sneak a peek once in a while to verify things appeared to be working properly, as the cross hairs should still be on the target if all was being set correctly.
See Also
Footnotes
Bibliography
- Template:BibUKGunneryDrillBookBookI1913
- Template:BibUKDirectorFiringHandbook1917
- Template:BibUKDirectorFiringForDestroyers1918
