Light measurement squad

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Lichtmess- and Schallmessstrupps were reconnaissance troops of the artillery .

During the First World War , sound measuring squads and light measuring squads were formed in the artillery ( batteries ) for the purpose of clearing up invisible enemy targets (especially the gun emplacements). A battery with three guns consisted of two troops, whose mode of operation consisted of locating the firing crack of enemy guns through special ear tubes or of observing the muzzle flash . The teams entered the locations on their maps ( measuring table sheets ).

By triangulation (triangular calculation) and comparison of the determined directions, the location of enemy artillery and thus their distance could be determined relatively precisely. Good mathematical knowledge was required for the trigonometric calculations, which is why “ one-year-olds ”, graduates from secondary schools or grammar schools, were preferred.

Light measurements were often made from church towers, chimneys, colliery towers or other tall structures or places. During trench warfare in World War I, such towers were shot at to make them unusable for enemy observers and light meters.

Before the invention of the almost smokeless gunpowder ( Max Duttenhofer 1884; Hiram Maxim received a patent in Great Britain for Maximite , a smokeless gunpowder made from trinitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, in 1889) one did not need to look for the muzzle flash, which was only visible briefly before the bang was heard hold, but could see a plume of smoke from every gun after a projectile was fired.

Alfred Nobel had ballistite , a "smoke-free gunpowder", produced in the Krümmel dynamite factory from 1888 .

Light measurement technology lost its importance due to the rapid spread of reconnaissance aircraft and cameras during the First World War .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Reinhard Scholzen : Reconnaissance Artillery. In: Truppendienst 2, 2014, pp. 146–150.
  2. See e.g. B. page 541
  3. because sound travels much more slowly than light; see speed of sound