Me and a friend from the UK had a disagreement on who had the best fire-control systems in WWII (Radar and visual ranging, fire control computers, reliability). We managed to agree that it was either the Royal Navy or the United States Navy due to their technological superiority in the field of computing and radars. He says it was the Royal Navy (Due to the RN having a strong naval tradition and good knowledge of warships in general, he's also a big RN fan) while i'm fairly certain it was the US Navy (due to their access to a bigger RnD base and them at the time fielding technology no one else had). There are few web-sources on the subject which is why i now come to you historians
Please help us solve this once and for all.
There's no easy baseline comparison - neither navy really did comparable tests of their gunnery systems. However, the general consensus is that the RN and USN's computational systems were equivalent. Both used very similar methods for calculating the range and bearing, which produced essentially identical results in the same amount of time. Both navies were sharing radar technology - while their designs might have differed in minor technicalities, they were equally capable. Of the two, the British were the first to deploy gunnery radar, but the Americans were quick to catch up. However, the Americans did have one major advantage, in their use of remote power control. British designs required the turret crew to aim the turret, while the American designs could be aimed from the director station. This allowed the American ships to make radical maneuvers while maintaining a fire solution.