Lesson plan
Directing point
The directing point (DP) was a term used in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps to identify a precisely surveyed point that was used as the point of reference for preparing the firing data used to aim the guns of a given Coast Artillery battery. Often the DP was taken as the pintle center of the right-most gun in a battery, as an observer looked over the battery towards the sea. In this case, the referenced gun was called the directing gun. In a two-gun battery, the DP was often located at a point midway between the two guns (as in the battery illustrated at right). In a four-gun battery, the DP was often located midway between the two central guns. When the guns of a battery were more widely separated, the DP was often taken as a point on the ground perhaps 50 to 100 feet in front of the guns and more or less at the midpoint of the horizontal extent of the battery, visible from all of its guns. An example of such a directing point can be found at Fort Strong, a Coast Artillery fort on Long Island in Boston Harbor ( ). Sometimes the DP was marked by a survey disk or a copper bolt, set by the U.S. Army Engineers (USE) or by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS), often in the concrete blast slope or apron or in the ground in front of the parapet of the battery.…
Article summary
The directing point (DP) was a term used in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps to identify a precisely surveyed point that was used as the point of reference for preparing the firing data used to aim the guns of a given Coast Artillery battery. Often the DP was taken as the pintle center of the right-most gun in a battery, as an observer looked over the battery towards the sea. In this case, the referenced gun was called the directing gun. In a two-gun battery, the DP was often located at a point midway between the two guns (as in the battery illustrated at right). In a four-gun battery, the DP was often located midway between the two central guns. When the guns of a battery were more widely separated, the DP was often taken as a point on the ground perhaps 50 to 100 feet in front of the guns and more or less at the midpoint of the horizontal extent of the battery, visible from all of its guns. An example of such a directing point can be found at Fort Strong, a Coast Artillery fort on Long Island in Boston Harbor ( ). Sometimes the DP was marked by a survey disk or a copper bolt, set by the U.S. Army Engineers (USE) or by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS), often in the concrete blast slope or apron or in the ground in front of the parapet of the battery.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.