Dotters

[Gareth Davies]

The Tank Corps Gunnery School at Merlimont used Dotters* on all its courses.  I have had a quick rummage around the extensive library and can find a few references to dotters but I can't find out when they entered British service, nor can I find out how widespread their use was.  Are there any Dotter experts out there?

 

* Dotter:  A training round that allowed a standard weapon to be used without live ammunition, consisting of a spring loaded cartridge, a rod that slid in the barrel and a paper target set about 15 cms in front of the muzzle.  When the gun was fired the sliding rod would make a hole in the paper.

[petwes]

I was fascinated by this and your other thread which opened up a topic I had never considered before. 

Unfortunately I am not an expert and really cannot contribute but I assume your extensive library is similar to mine and you have found this:

http://www.tommy1418.com/uploads/1/2/7/3/12733599/36029449-instructions-for-the-training-of-the-tank-corps-in-.pdf

 

Published in Dec 1917 it implies Dotters were by then a standardised part of the training for tank crews.

 

Peter

[Gareth Davies]

Yes, it's a well known document Peter.  I know that Dotters were in use long before it was published.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Gareth Davies said:

The Tank Corps Gunnery School at Merlimont used Dotters* on all its courses.  I have had a quick rummage around the extensive library and can find a few references to dotters but I can't find out when they entered British service, nor can I find out how widespread their use was.  Are there any Dotter experts out there?

 

* Dotter:  A training round that allowed a standard weapon to be used without live ammunition, consisting of a spring loaded cartridge, a rod that slid in the barrel and a paper target set about 15 cms in front of the muzzle.  When the gun was fired the sliding rod would make a hole in the paper.

 

 The RN was using dotters for gunnery training as early as 1898. 

 

On the 2nd September, 1898, I wrote to Sir John Hopkins, thanking him for the great assistance he had given me in my endeavours to improve the gunnery of H.M.S. Scylla, and I pointed out that in our recent practices our shooting, owing to the "Dotter," had so improved that at the next prize firing I anticipated making seventy or eighty per cent, of hits. .... On my return to England in June, 1899, I explained and submitted drawings to the Admiralty of the "Dotter," and it went through the ordinary Admiralty procedure. As in the case of my flashing lamp, they tried to improve on it. On the 15th January, 1901, their Lordships wrote to the Commander-in-Chief China Station: "Trials are being carried out with an improved pattern of Captain Scott's apparatus with a view of its introduction and supply to the Service." In December, 1902, I saw the official pattern. All the "improved" dotters had to be altered at great expense, and we had lost three years of instruction with the apparatus. Fifteen years after this the Admiralty did the same thing in war-time with the depth charge. An efficient pattern was submitted to them, but a year was lost of its use because they wanted to improve on it.

 

Admiral Sir Percy Scott. http://www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-Adm_Scott-50Yearsin RN.htm

 

Edited 28 January , 2018 by Guest

[Gareth Davies]

Are we to deduce that the Dotter came from the (large calibre) Naval world and was then adapted/downsized to work on .303 calibre weapons?  

 

Connected to this is the sub-calibre device (tube battery) I mention in the thread below which also seems to have come from the Navy.

 

 

 

[Guest]

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19160114.2.40

 

 

[Gareth Davies]

Dhanyabad.