From an email
The intent of this post is to point out the value of educating our
children.
Here is the
email to a relative:
Isn’t it amazing how simple
things, like basic math and trig, often can be used in so many ways.
Even simple targeting and simple statistics come to mind.
Suppose you have 100 soldiers with 100 anti-tank weapons facing
100 tanks? Will they all fire at one tank, or up to 100 tanks.
Usually it is somewhere in between, but that is what Officers are
supposed to figure out as best they can, both before and during.
Last, when using captured enemy equipment be careful.
By definition, there are 6,280 mils in circle (2 pi times 1). Well
we in the USA use 6,400 mils in a circle, the Russians 6,000 mils, and the
Swedes even use 6,300 mils in a circle. It is mostly a matter of convenience
and education. I even bought a metric compass with 400 degrees in a circle in
Stockholm, Sweden. And I have a captured Japanese set of binos at the Hemlocks
I use for astronomy purposes, but even back then they had another standard
which often confuses me. I always said to myself it was manufacturing error,
but I really don’t know for sure.
The binos weigh around 150 pounds, including the tripod mount, and
look like an infantry adaptation of the navy ship binos. All I appreciate is
that the moon, and the basic planets and their moons look pretty neat through
the only one lens that works well.
One more advertisement kind of thing. The Russians use an azimuth
method, while the USA uses a deflection method of determining which way to
point the gun. After that it is a ballistics solution (again basic statistics),
to include the weather factors.
And don’t discount the Russians too much. I have even used a
Russian method (captured in Vietnam) to shoot artillery, and it worked pretty
accurately, too (like to the 1/6 of a degree level). It involved turning an
angle with a theodolite (aiming circle in USA military terms) from the star
Kochab (in the Little Dipper) to the north star Polaris.
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