The increase in engagement range was due in part to the longer range of torpedoes, and in part to improved gunnery and fire control.
Unlike US Naval forces, the Japanese navy drilled and practiced night fighting extensively as well as conducting frequent night gunnery live fire drills and exercises and that experience would be telling in not only the coming encounter, but several other surface fleet actions off Guadalcanal in the months to come.
Princess Royal received a fire-control director between mid-1915 and May 1916 that centralised fire-control under the gunnery officer who now fired the guns.
After the Battle of Tsushima the Imperial Navy concentrated on improving their gunnery skills and fire-control practices.
In 1908 Alexei Krylov and Yevgeny Berkalov led Rostislav on an unprecedented long-range gunnery shoot: Rostislav fired 330 ten-inch shells at a distance of 8-10 mine in a few days.
The moon had set, and the night was extremely dark, a factor that contributed considerably to the ineffectiveness of the Spanish gunnery, Real Carlos fired randomly at the British ship but failed to strike it once during the brief engagement.
On 5 August 1911, the ship suffered an explosion in one of her 12-inch guns when it failed to fire during gunnery practice.
On 20 January 1989, during an improperly authorized gunnery experiment off Vieques Island, Iowa fired a 16 inches shell 23.4 nautical miles, setting a record for the longest-ranged 16 inches shell ever fired.
Broke drilled his crew to an extremely high standard of naval gunnery; he regularly had them fire at targets, such as floating barrels.
Leviathan, under Lord Hugh Seymour, had been more successful than Bellerophon, her gunnery dismasting America despite receiving fire from Eole and Trajan in passing.
While serving under the commander of the U.S. Asiatic fleet (1901 02), he learned from a British officer, Captain Percy Scott, of the new gunnery technique of continuous-aim firing.
