Firing hundreds of KM in some cases, accurate within a few hundred feet? How is that possible? And how do they “dial in” new coordinates exactly? It all seems like magic to me
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Lots of work ahead of time
Someone at the test range has to nail down the parameters of the gun so they know how fast the shell comes out and how it slows with distance
Then someone has to do the hard math to figure out where each possible combination of angles and powders will land. This is just a projectile motion calculation from a physics class but with the added joy of air resistance.
The first programmable electronic general purpose digital computer was ENIAC and its very first task was calculating artillery firing tables. This takes data about angle of the gun, weight of the projectile, temperature of the air, amount of powder, temperature of powder, and does all the calculations in advance to say where a shell will land with given conditions. The end result is basically a book of tables
Once all the hard math is done, the artillery man just needs to know where he is relative to the target (distance, angle, and height), what the temperatures are, and what the wind is and the book says “set to 37.3 degrees elevation with 4 charges”
Some newer artillery pieces have computers on them which can do the calculations on the fly based off a target location that’s selected and the known position of the artillery. They’re still doing the same calculations as ENIAC but they can do it in milliseconds instead of hours
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