Gun Laying - Tank Gun Laying

Tank Gun Laying

Tanks (and anti-tank artillery) use direct-fire laying to engage moving targets. Telescopic sights were adopted before World War II, and these sights usually had a means of aiming off for target movement and graticules marked for different ranges. Tank sights were of two general types. Either the sight was in fixed alignment with the axis of the bore with ranges marked in the sight, and the gunner laid the range mark on the target. Or during laying the gunner physically set the range to offset the axis of the bore from the axis of the sight by the correct amount and laid using the centre mark in the sight.

Some sights had a means of estimating the range, for example using a stadiametric method. Other tanks used an optical coincident range-finder or after World War II, a ranging machine gun. From the 1970s these were replaced by laser range finders.

However, tank guns could not be fired accurately while moving until gun stabilisation was introduced. This appeared at the end of World War II. Some were hydraulic, while others used electrical servos.

During the 1970s tanks started being fitted with digital computers. These took the range and corrected it for conditions, basically the same calculations field artillery had been doing since World War I. In tanks this data was injected into the sight as an electronic aiming mark. The sight could also display other dynamic information, such as the range to the target. Sights were also provided with both day- and night-viewing capabilities.