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NewGolconda wrote:

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I don't know that accuracy in this case requires extra dialog - what I am saying is there should be less improbable dialog.

Short example

""Sir, lookouts report destroyers - five or more - bearing 090, range 15,000 yards."

Snapping out of his mini-reverie, Phonone looked east.

"Sir, they're ours."

Signal lights blinked on two of the leaders. The destroyers were coming on at speed mostly into the wind, so any flags they might send up would be tough to read until they got much closer. Phonone had just enough time to focus his binoculars on the lamps and wonder what messages they were sending when it became obvious.

"Sir! Plume, bearing 095. Multiple sources.""

***

"Sir, bearing 090, masthead reports ships in sight"

Snapping out of his mini-reverie, Phonone looked east, along the bearing. There they were, on the horizon, small grey shapes, thin masts, destroyers, possibly five of them. At long gun shot, or a little longer than that.

"I believe they are ours, Sir" said the Pilot.

Signal lights blinked on two of the leaders. The destroyers were coming on at speed mostly into the wind, so any flags they might send up would be tough to read until they got much closer. Phonone had just enough time to focus his binoculars on the lamps and wonder what messages they were sending when it became obvious.

Phonone caught something else in his peripheral vision, he changed his line of sight slightly, and there it was, a smoke plume, bearing 095, more than one ship too.

Sure this tells the reader slightly less, but that in itself is important.

NTDS was revolutionary because it shared track data, instantly with every ship in the formation fitted with the system - great. The first AIO or CIC dated to the middle of WWII, and even these systems, largely plotting own ships data were revolutionary.

Here we are 50 years prior to NTDS. We see indistinct shapes, masts, funnels, smoke and haze. Sometimes we measure ranges on it, but not on the bridge. Sometimes our measured ranges are wrong.

We see a sub thread here where people suggest a 1-3kt difference in speed is important. The reality is it takes us minutes to sight information that is mostly partial and vague, digest it, turn it into an order and pass it to other ships. The net result could be ranges opening or closing (but probably closing) by 0-50 knots for minutes at a time while information is digested.

"DeRobeck stared into the plot, considering various courses of action."

There certainly would have been a plot, on defined targets, and in the transmitting station. De Robeck would never see it till they reached harbour. There would have been a chart in shack off the bridge, presumably with scribbled notes that would vary greatly in their content from ship to ship. Certainly no formal rangefinder plot. Much of the tactical decision making would be based on mental gymnastics.

We see this in the run to the south, the consequence of helm orders could see the range close to as little as 12,000 yards or to run the ships out of range before a corrective course change was ordered - and this happened on both sides.

These sort of C3I constraints have a range of impacts, not just on the literary side, but also on the gaming. That doesn't mean the reader needs to be completely shrouded in the fog of war, but IMHO he certainly needs to see its whispy sheen.

This is an interesting discussion, though unfortunately not completely on the same wavelength, more like an odd harmonic. Let me approach it from this angle. Writers often find that conveying data via straightfoward exposition is rather soporific. So they stumble on the trick on feeding it to the reader via dialog. So author wants to convey to reader that there is a light cruiser 15,300 yards making 25.5 knots at 73 degrees to Heroship he could write that straightfoward as omniscient narrator or he could have CPO Eagleye report, "Captain, there is a light cruisers bearing 73 degrees making 25 knots maybe a little bit more."

"And what is its range?" asks Captain Readersurrogate.

"I make it out to be 15,000 yards, captain. Maybe a little bit more." (Conversely in SciFi there is the semihumorous cliche of the pedantic character who relays info to way too many signicant figures but I digress).

OK but the pitfalls to this is that avoiding omniscient narrator you create a temporaily clairvoyant character. Let me give a satire of what can wrong in this technique. Let's have a story set in the Punic Wars. Two Roman centurions are talking and one of them says, "The higher molybdenum content of my steel gives my short sword a 15% great torsional elasticity than the swords that the Charthaginians use." Something sounds inauthentic about this.

Even more problematic than tactical ops with fiction set in earler periods is any sort of high level conference. The temptation there is often to have the President/Emperor/Chancellor/Sultan etc. have all real time facts at their fingertips so readers are given a news McNugget about what is happening where. But in earlier ages information often took time to work its way up.