Whew! Alla us posting in one day. Must be a national holiday or something...
Since we're all here jointly - I thought I'd post a little something about the utility of Jointness....
From Al Nofi's CIC over at Strategy Page:
"'Down 200!' No, Wait, I Mean 'Over 200!'"Among the more amusing differences between the Army and the Navy in the years prior to World War II was the way in which observers monitoring the fall of artillery rounds were wont to call in corrections.
Navy and Marine procedures called for reporting the correction to be made, while Army procedures called for reporting the error that had been made. That is, if a Navy or Marine observer said "Down 200" he was saying the a round had fallen 200 yards beyond the target, whereas if an Army observer had said this he would have meant that the round had fallen 200 yards short of the target.
Needless to say, this difference could easily have had some tragic consequences. Fortunately the discrepancy was discovered during joint amphibious training early in 1942. Just why this discovery occurred in 1942 is difficult to determine, since by then the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps had been practicing amphibious operations together for about two years.
The Navy won that TTP* fight - an Army observer reports the correction, not the error.
*Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures.
1 Comments