I would have made a good artillery man since I could not fly like DAD due to glasses. Thanks all who responded.
I know this is a late reply, but we used to calculate corrections to the basic ballistic data, azimuth and distance to the target and differential in gun/target altitude, for propellant temperature, air temperature and density and of course wind speed and direction through the several layers of atmosphere through which the projectile traveled through its arc on the way to the target, plus the rotation of the earth while under the projectile during its time of flight and for the different weights of the various types of projectiles like high explosives, smoke, white phosphorus etc. We also applied corrections for wear and tear on the tubes of the individual cannons based on registration data from actual firing tests.
During the time I was in the Field Artillery, 1966 through 1980, we did it with slide rules and paper and pencils. We had tabular firing tables, and graphical firing tables which were specialized slide rules. We did have a primitive comnputer called a FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer) that rarely worked and when it did was slower getting the data than a good Spec4 with a slide rule.
We received meteorological data periodically to update our met corrections and calculations had to be done to properly apply the met data which we used for a brief period of time. the met calculations took about ten or fifteen meinutes to complete and we would use the met data for a couple of hours until we got a new set of data.
IIRC it took us about three minutes from receiving a call for fire to getting initial data worked up and transmitted to the guns. Subsequent data for adjusting rounds and fire for effect took under a minute.
We did a lot of math without calculators or computers and took a great deal of pride in our speed and accuracy.