Anti-aircraft ArtiUery.--Development of a new and far more effective fire-control system for automatically aiming anti-aircraft artillery was announced recently by Bell Telephone Laboratories, with the approval of the Army Ordnance Corps for whom the project was undertaken.
The new fire-control system--a virtual maze of wires, resistances, switches and vacuum tubes--is already in production by the Western Electric Company, manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System, also operating under an Army Ordnance contract.
The new system is an outgrowth--with many radical improvements--of the famous Bell Laboratories electrical gun director and its associated radar systems, which proved so remarkably effective against Nazi planes and "buzz bombs" in World War II. This earlier fire-control system, a major "secret weapon" of the war, worked almost entirely automatically. Radar found and "tracked" a hostile plane, and fed continuous information concerning its location into a computer, or "electrical thinking machine," which was the heart of the system. At the same time, data relating to wind velocity, muzzle velocity of the shells, temperature and similar factors, were given to the computer. This machine then automatically calculated where a shell should explode to bring the plane down, and automatically aimed the guns to do just that.
The new fire-control system, adaptable to firing either 90 mm. or 120 mm. anti-aircraft batteries, operates on the same general principle as its predecessor, but many improvements and refinements have been incorporated. As a result, it is far more effective and flexible than the World War II version.
Details of the new system are classified for security reasons but it can be said that much more information concerning hostile craft can be assembled and processed, and the entire system works more accurately, more quickly and more easily. This is due to a number of new circuits and circuit elements which have been introduced into the system. Naturally the system is geared to handle high-altitude, high-speed targets, and to take into account advances in plane and projectile performance which have been made since the war.
The new fire-control system is extremely compact and portable, and can easily and quickly be moved cross-country anywhere the gun battery can go. In addition, the equipment is unusually light in weight and can readily be transported by plane. It is also floatable so that it can be towed across rivers or lakes.
The housing for the complex electronic equipment was designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., and the housing units are being manufactured by The Glenn L. Martin Company, both as subcontractors.
The Army Ordnance Corps asked the Bell Laboratories-Western Electric team to undertake research, development work and manufacture of the fire-control system not only because of their wide experience with the highly successful gun director and radar of World War II, but also because of their unique qualifications in the field of electronics. Many of the basic principles 675