Aim Straight; A biography of Admiral Sir Percy Scott

London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, 1966. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. 317, [1] pages. Illustrations. Figures. Footnotes. Index. DJ has some wear, tears, and soiling. Peter L. N. Padfield (3 April 1932 - 14 March 2022) was a British author, biographer, historian, and journalist who specialized in naval history and in the Second World War period. Padfield trained for a naval career as a Royal Naval Reserve cadet on HMS Worcester. He then became a navigating officer with the P&O shipping company. In 1957 he was accepted as one of the crew of Mayflower II, a replica of the original Mayflower, and sailed in her on her maiden voyage from Plymouth, Devon, to New York City. After New York, he returned to sea in the Pacific, then wrote The Sea is a Magic Carpet, an account of his adventures. In his second book, The Titanic and the Californian, he defended the reputation of Captain Lord, the master of the Californian who since 1912 had been widely blamed for the death of hundreds of passengers on the Titanic. He concluded that in the Board of Trade Inquiry there had been "crazy deductions, distortions, prejudice, and occasional bone-headed obstinacy of witnesses and the court", and the huge success of this enabled him to begin writing books full-time. Next came several works on naval history, including The Great Naval Race, which led to biographies of three leading Nazis, Karl Dönitz, Heinrich Himmler, and Rudolf Hess. In 2003 he won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize for his Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom. Admiral Sir Percy Moreton Scott, 1st Baronet, KCB, KCVO (10 July 1853 - 18 October 1924) was a British Royal Navy officer and a pioneer in modern naval gunnery. During his career he proved to be an engineer and problem solver of some considerable foresight, ingenuity and tenacity. He did not, however, endear himself to the Navy establishment for his regular outspoken criticism of the Navy's conservatism and resistance to change and this undoubtedly slowed the acceptance of his most important ideas, notably the introduction of directed firing. In spite of this, his vision proved correct most of the time and he rose to the rank of admiral and amongst other honors was made baronet, a hereditary title. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the accepted range at which warships would open fire on an enemy was 2,000 yards. The development of the torpedo as a practical weapon forced a change in this policy, and it became necessary to engage an enemy at ranges outside torpedo range. This in turn meant that the old system whereby a gunlayer in each turret pointed and fired the turret guns independently could no longer be expected to achieve a significant hit rate on an opposing ship. Scott was instrumental in encouraging the development and installation, initially in dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers, of director firing, a system whereby the guns were all pointed, elevated and fired from a single point, usually at the top of the foremast. By firing all the guns simultaneously it was possible to observe the simultaneous splashes produced and correct the aim visually. This system was only practical in ships having a uniform calibre main armament, which dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers had, but conferred a significant advantage in accuracy particularly in bad weather and heavy seas when visibility was poor. Before the First World War, Captain Frederic Dreyer developed a system which enabled a target ship's range and bearing to be plotted continuously so that the proper range and deflection to hit it could then be calculated. These data were then relayed to the director, allowing a further improvement to accuracy. In 1903 Dreyer had described a device, later developed by Vickers and Scott as the Vickers range clock, that automatically kept track of the changing range to an enemy ship. During a visit in 1905 to Kiel, the German fleet's home port, Scott noted the advances that had been made by the Germans in gunnery direction. He devised and presented to the Admiralty an advanced form of director firing which they patented for the nation and then proceeded to boycott. Scott was promoted to rear-admiral in 1905 and was appointed inspector of target practice, a role created for him by his mentor Jackie Fisher.