Talk:Frederic Charles Dreyer

Fire Control

Having just reread Andrew Gordon's "The Rules of the Game", Gordon asserts that Pollen's system was definitely better (refs page 11, also bibliography refers to Prof Sumida's "The Best Laid Plans", which I have not read, but Gordon claims corroborates this). Gordon's work is strong in many areas, and so I am suprised that the final paragraph in the Fire Control section currently says "Subsequent research seems to indicate that Dreyer was unfairly treated and his system was not only largely original but clearly superior to Pollen's.", which clearly contradicts Gordon. Can anyone cite this assertion?

Regards, Tim 10:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC).

The comment appears to have slipped in around April this year. GraemeLeggett 12:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The comment is exceptionally valid. Gordon based his comments on one book - In Defence of Naval Supremacy (now listed in the references) by American author Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Essentially Sumida spent the decade 1979-1989 leading up to this work which is essentially a study of how Arthur Pollen got stiffed by the admiralty - an article in the Journal of Modern History in 1979 (British Capital Ship Design & Fire Control In the Dreadnought Era), his editing of The Pollen Papers for the Naval Records Society in 1986 and this culminated in the publication of In Defence of Naval Supremacy in 1989. Until then no one had studied fire-control in any depth, consequently authors like Gordon were forced to rely on Professor's Sumida's conclusions. Sumida's book reinforced the re-emerging view that the Royal Navy was a body resistent to change - hence its rejection of Pollen's fire-control device in favour of one created by a naval officer.

In 2005 John Brooks published a book which was a development of a PhD thesis from King's College London, overseen by noted naval historian Andrew Lambert. This book, Dreadnought Gunnery at the Battle of Jutland utilised much of the materiel Sumida had, yet Dr Brooks, being a retired computer engineer was able to clarify many technical points which apparently Professor Sumida had overlooked. Dreyer's system has been accused of being a copy of Pollen's Argo system but inferior. Brooks admits that certain features were identical to Pollen's, but makes the convincing technical case that the Dreyer Table could perform all the tasks required of it, including in later marks the "helm-free" capability - to continue calculating the range while turning away/from the enemy. Sumida has always asserted that the Dreyer system couldn't do this, when it could - and that the Pollen system could, when it couldn't.

Brooks highlights the outrageous terms Pollen was extracting from the Admiralty to test his equipment - secret contract, opt-out clauses galore, multiple advances of money - and when Pollen failed to deliver the goods and the Navy became impatient he threatened to take his business to other navies - this during the Naval-Arms race, no less. Whatever advantages the Pollen system had to Dreyer's were made null and void by Pollen's inability to produce results. Dreyer's system was relatively simple and could be improved/modified (as it was from its inception in 1911 until the final mark installed in Hood in 1919 - when battle ranges and speeds had jumped from 10,000 yards and 21 knots maximum respectively to 29,000 yards and 30 knots.

My advice is - read Sumida's book (it does have some great detail on the economics of the time). Then read Brooks' book. Hopefully Gordon has also done the latter by now. --Harlsbottom 01:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

What is your evidence for saying that that "Brooks was able to clarify many technical points which apparently Professor Sumida had overlooked" when, according to the reviews of the book, Brooks did not exhaust the archival evidence about those technical points? How do we really know which one is right? There seems to be a great controversy here, but I don't understand why we don't just look at the archival evidence to solve this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.33.151.193 (talk • contribs)

Which reviews are you referring to - one would hope not Sumida's own somewhat vicious review in the Journal of Military History? Brooks definitely made use of most if not all of the sources Sumida made use of, as well as more specific technical information regarding the Pollen and Dreyer systems. To be utterly blunt Sumida seems to have made some glaring omissions, for example the one concerning the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors. In In Defense of Naval Supremacy Sumida had that set up to make us believe that the establishment recognised that Pollen had been wronged completely. Whereby Brooks pointed out the accessible fact that Dreyer had already been given a large award and was a serving Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Quite simply, Brooks uses the same sources as Sumida - often quotes from Sumida - and by dint of his professional knowledge in computing (a fact Sumida himself made light of in his review) is somewhat better placed to judge the materiel. My opinion is that Sumida, having edited the Pollen Papers for the Naval Records Society in the 1980s and specialising entirely in the Argo system which formed part of In Defense of Naval Supremacy, has clearly been grinding an axe for 20 years. And to date only HE and John Brooks are the only people to study it in depth. I can only recommend if you haven't read both books please do. By the by, please either sign up or at least leave a name --Harlsbottom 19:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Omitted from this discussion is any reference to the book by Arthur Pollen's son Antony. I have tried to summarise this in the article on Arthur Pollen. The key question is where the idea of using a mechanical analogue computer come from? According to Antony Pollen Lord Kelvin was a director on Pollen's company and he, Kelvin, suggested it. Lord Kelvin in turn knew of such machines because they had been invented by his brother James Thomson. How did Dreyer happen upon such a concept at that time? According to the 1926 Royal Commission, which awarded Pollen £30,000, "details of the Argo Clock were communicated to the Admiralty and to those who were at work on the Dreyer Tables and directly contributed to the evolution of the clock mechanism of Dreyer Tables Marks IV and V." I have not read Brooks and so until then I shall not amend what look like serious errors in the Dreyer entry. For example that Pollen failed to sell Argo clocks elswhere appears to be wrong, they were fitted to ships of the Imperial Russian Navy. Mathew Rammer (talk) 17:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Sumida made great use of A.H. Pollen's papers for both The Pollen Papers, published by the Navy Records Society and for his In Defense of Naval Supremacy - with Antony Pollen's blessing and support. Sumida carried on and elaborated from where Antony Pollen left off in The Great Gunnery Scandal. No one is claiming that Dreyer came up with the concept - what is disputed is who produced a superior system. "The Royal Navy sponsored research into these techniques, and two groups emerged…" is the key sentence in the entry on this article. Granted, it should be highlighted that Pollen is rightly regarded as the "father of fire-control", however, considering the terms under which fire-control was being tested it was natural that there should so some overlap between Pollen and Dreyer. As this article points out, Pollen was rewarded financially after the fact, and Dreyer had already been recognised for his part. Harlsbottom (talk) 19:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

And quite frankly, your article on Arthur Pollen is a travesty. It reads like a blog, and not an encycloædia article. Just because Antony Pollen wrote that Bacon was a torpedo man and did not believe in long range gunnery does not make it so. Dreyer was only an assistant to DNO, which means his decisions were subordinate to Bacon and then his successors Jellicoe and Moore, and not least the entire Board of Admiralty, all of whom lost faith in Pollen. You miss the fact that the Argo system in 1912 promised far more than it actually offered, i.e. that it claimed to be "helm-free" when it was not, while the Dreyer system was capable of this. It has been argued, yes, that fire-control was deficient at the Battle of Jutland but it certainly hasn't been proved and Brooks to my mind certainly repudiates it in his book. Also a fire-control computer would have been utterly useless in the Dardanelles - a director on Queen Elizabeth and the battle cruisers which served there would have been useful, but otherwise against the static targets aimed for it would have been pointless. It should be noted that Invincible and Inflexible, so God knows where your point 8 comes from on the Pollen article. Kenneth Dewar, a gunnery officer who served as Commander in Prince of Wales had created a suitable spotting plan which would have worked but was rejected, see The Naval Review (1957) Issues 2,3,4. It should be borne in mind that no navy in the First World War believed in equipping front-line pre-dreadnoughts with fire-control computer suites, and since the pre-dreadnought was for the most part the workhorse of the Dardanelles Campaign I fail to see how the Dreyer system supposedly failed there.

As to the equipment fitted in the Imperial Russian Navy, these were fitted only with ARGO Mk V clocks, and presumably the stabilised rangefinders which Pollen produced. However, only the Sevastopol class and the gunnery ship Petr Velikii were fitted with them, and also since they had little else in the way of plotting equipment or bearing clocks they were next to useless. I do have a detailed description of the gunnery control of the Russian Baltic Fleet dreadnoughts which I haven't read in more than two years, which I will have a browse through. Seriously however, if working from Pollen's book has led to what appears in the Wikipedia article, then I sincerely suggest you purchase a copy of Dreadnought Gunnery at the Battle of Jutland from the publishers, it's only £20 in paperback. Apologies if I sound harsh or arrogant, however this is a subject with which I am both familiar and passianate about. Regards, Harlsbottom (talk) 19:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Rammer--Thank you for creating a page on Pollen, when there does not seem to have been one before you created it. Thank you also for noting the connection of Pollen to Kelvin and analog computing, which seems to me to be far more significant over the long term than this spat over Pollen v. Dreyer among historians. Harlsbottom's comments were out of line, but he is due credit for contributing to the Pollen entry subsequently. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raistlan55 (talk • contribs) 02:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Who is the subject of this Article?

i haveno idea who this person is

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.42.94.15 (talk • contribs)

Well good for you.Chris Buckey 21:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Further to the discussion about the firecontrol clock and Pollen's and Dreyer's separate contributions, I recently discovered the book At War at Sea by Professor Ronald H. Spector published in 2001 by Viking (part of the Penguin group) On page 43, he says of Pollen's system the following: This system produced remarkable results and remained the basis for the fire control systems in the U.S. Iowa-class battleships that participated in the Gulf War more than eighty years later." (johnshyama) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnshyama (talk • contribs) 01:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It is a fact that Pollen laid the foundations of modern fire-control, therefore most mechanical aspects of it by default relate to his efforts. However, the Aim Correction system and the Argo Clocks did not "produce remarkable results". One would hope that since 2001 the former Director of Naval History for the United States Navy had reacquainted himself with the actual facts associated with the fire-control debate which are now on hand. At any rate, a discussion of Pollen's equipment should be made over at the new Arthur Pollen page rather than here. Harlsbottom (talk) 07:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

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