HMS Rodney did close on Bismarck to near point blank range...her first salvos really crippled Bismarck..Rodneys guns took out 75% of Bismarks gun turrets.
A story involving the U.S. Navy...a Guy named Authur Pollen and Winston Churchill.
During the Battle of Jutland..the British Admiralty was working thru things in regards to gunnery targeting.
Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Aldmiralty for part of WW-1.
Things would turn disasterous for the British naval wise in the Dardenells..with other interpersonal/ship captain/gov inquiries issuing after the Battle of Jutland.
The current British Naval targeting system was found to be seriously flawed....changing to another system met with contraversy,intrigue and scandal.
"The Great Gunnery Scandal" by Anthony Pollen covers the events of this period.
The Admiralty eventually transitioned to the Mechanical analog fire control computer of Arthur Pollen.
During this time period..the U.S. Navy was recieving its new fire control system from Inventor Hannibal C.Ford.
Whose Range keeper Mark 1 was installed in USS Texas in 1917.
Arthur Pollen the British inventor had devised a mechanism of the differential analyzer type,called the Argo Clock,to solve on a continuous real time basiS the relative motion equations of own ship and target ship.
The U.S. Navy obtained the patent for the Pollen fire control computuer(Argo Clock) which was incorporated into the Ford Range Keeper Mark 1.
Fords targeting Computer would eventually evolve with the U.S. Navy.
HMS RODNEY...her targeting computer was the evolution forward of Pollens system.
The enginner who made Arthur Pollens design become reality was...Harold Isherwood : )