18. Artillerie-Division

[stg 44]

Thank you I will fire up Fold 3

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the FLAK 'Großbatterien' which had a fire direction compute that linked up to 36 FLAK guns to a single radar and fire direction center, but it does sound quite similar to that system:
https://books.google.com/books?id=kqK6C ... ie&f=false

[Carl Schwamberger]

Well, at some point Freddy FADAC development got underway. In 1956 the Army was having tech manuals for FADAC printed.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/092046.pdf

The Army Coast Artillery had, as did the USN, analog computers reaching back to when Christ was a Corporal. On my shelf is a 1920s edition of the Coast Artillery training reference, within its 500+ pages are several dozen with photos, diagrams, and text about the assorted CA analog computers of the modern 1920s.

I've been told FADAC was developed alongside the aircraft borne fire control computers circa 1945-1954. Not sure what that might mean in reality but I don't think the machine was born abruptly in 1956. In 1985 we still had two in the 3d Battalions12th Marines Okinawa. The battalion commander loved them, hypnotized by the nixie bulbs perhaps? They were used as number crunchers, calculating firing data and METT corrections for large fire plans. The batteries handled the routine called missions with the usual TFT & RDP. There were also Texas Instrument TI 251. Magnetic program strips turned into a firing data computer, if it had not been dropped to many times; or its buttons not clogged with dust; or not overheated on a sweltering Asian summer day or the hellfire of the Mojave Desert.

[stg 44]

Well, at some point Freddy FADAC development got underway. In 1956 the Army was having tech manuals for FADAC printed.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/092046.pdf

The Army Coast Artillery had, as did the USN, analog computers reaching back to when Christ was a Corporal. On my shelf is a 1920s edition of the Coast Artillery training reference, within its 500+ pages are several dozen with photos, diagrams, and text about the assorted CA analog computers of the modern 1920s.

I've been told FADAC was developed alongside the aircraft borne fire control computers circa 1945-1954. Not sure what that might mean in reality but I don't think the machine was born abruptly in 1956. In 1985 we still had two in the 3d Battalions12th Marines Okinawa. The battalion commander loved them, hypnotized by the nixie bulbs perhaps? They were used as number crunchers, calculating firing data and METT corrections for large fire plans. The batteries handled the routine called missions with the usual TFT & RDP. There were also Texas Instrument TI 251. Magnetic program strips turned into a firing data computer, if it had not been dropped to many times; or its buttons not clogged with dust; or not overheated on a sweltering Asian summer day or the hellfire of the Mojave Desert.

This device?
https://www.facebook.com/44931925212034 ... 7299606874

Apparently it wasn't fielded until 1960 and has problems for some time:
http://themightyninth.org/War%20Stories/FADAC/FADAC.htm
http://robert-carolann.blogspot.com/201 ... ravel.html

In the FMS document it does say the US had developed some systems in WW2, but none were satisfactory; apparently they did not function as well as the German computer. Also the computers from the 1920s for coastal artillery were undoubtedly something different, in that they likely calculated like AAA computers: simple firing solutions for individual batteries, rather than this device which calculated for multiple batteries over a wide area to mass on a single target. FADAC though sounds like it was simply a transistor version of a single battery computer and not a very good one.

Edit:
From the February 1958 Field Artillery Journal the T29E1 gun data computer was in service then and development started in 1949.