Ordnance Pamphlet 1700 establishes a set of standard fire control symbols applicable to describing the fire control problem as solved by Naval fire control systems. This publication serves two main purposes: as a reference dictionary in which fire control symbols are listed alphabetically, defined, and illustrated; and as a reference handbook in which related terms are grouped and distinctions among them clearly defined and illustrated.
Thanks for these documents go to Bill Berry, Test Engineer, who continues to use them in his current job for teaching. According to Bill:
“It turns out that math is math, whether you’re talking about ships, aircraft, submarines, tanks, whatever. And OP 1700 has been used by me to plot out aircraft navigation and geometry. An aircraft merely adds altitude, either above Mean Sea Level or above the WGS-84 ellipsoid, and also adds its derivatives. I like OP 1700 because my keyboard doesn’t need any of those fancy Greek letters that mathematicians in universities can’t seem to live without.”
Previous to OP 1700, all fire control symbols were Greek, requiring a typewriter with those characters on the keyboard. The USN changed around 1960–1962 when the Mark 68 fire control system came out and Greek notation was no longer used.
Volume 1 (240 viewer pages) covers antiaircraft related quantities: the symbol system, present target position, motion, wind, linear and angular offsets, gun orders, and a dictionary of symbols spanning pages 93–236. Volume 2 (40 viewer pages) establishes fire control symbols applicable to the underwater fire control problem. Volume 3 (99 viewer pages) establishes fire control symbols applicable to the missile fire control problem.