"optics" Topic

I was playing a game of BKC last night: late war Russians against Germans.

The 2 FAO stands had radically different Command Values: an '8' for the German & a '6' for the Russian.

If you accept BKC are a good rules set, why the difference?

The only reason I could think of was the German spotter may have a good set of Zeiss binoculars & his counterpart some shoddy bit of kit from some half-assembled factory in Siberia.

What reasons can you think of?

German better radios, optics, and math. I've come away from my reading impressed with German counter battery fire as well…..which I also think can be reflected by these different command values.

although all of the nations were using the scissor binoculars, the German Ziess scherenfernrohre was superior for range finding and distance as it had, two systems one with individual focusing, (a prerequisite in Germany for the use in the military),and also with center focus with a range finder, this was a Ziess patent in 1908. (however it had a nasty side effect of making the user sometimes sick!)

link

a great read on German artillery equipment
link

also by 33 the Germans had issued the Busch Binocular 10 x 50 with photometer batteries, so long distance haze and low light could be nullified, issued thus

Battery leader: =1
3 platoon leaders =3
2 deputy platoon leaders =2
5 measuring stations =5

For most handheld use, field glasses with a magnification over 8 power, or at the most 12 power, are not practical. But there were military field glasses with magnifications of 15, 16 and 18 power, without tripod sockets. An unnamed Voigtlaender 15 x 42, and a Zeiss 16 x 40 were issued to some battery commanders.

my two cents

How does that game rate FAO for other nationalities, like late war US and Brits?

both US & Brit FAO have command values of 8

For FAO in BKC the score is also taking into account the responsiveness of the different artillery doctrines.

Russian doctrine was more about mass guns and fixed fire plans, rather than responding to on call requests.

Better optics. Better radios. Maybe most important, a command philosophy centered more on accomplishing the mission than following the plan.

Speaking of optics, I was reading this just the other day:
"GEORGE A. BARDEN
SERGEANT, SCOUT SECTION SERGEANT FOR TWO YEARS
I took from a German officer a pair of field glasses 10 × 50, the best glasses that I've ever seen. On two occasions, I was able to pick up an anti-tank position and a mortar position at a range of about one mile, when these same two targets could not be seen using a pair of GI glasses, 7 × 50."

From United States vs.German Equipment prepared by Major General Isaac D. White, Commanding General, 2nd Armored Division, 1945.

Yeah, but a 10x magnification is really higher than you can hold in your hands.

7x is about the limit, anything above that you need to rest on something.

How far can an artillery spotter see, on average?

How long is a piece of string?

On a hill in North africa or in a swamp on Guadalcanal?

With a naked eye in the desert I have seen moving vehicles at better than 6 miles. But I would not want to try to adjust fire onto them. For one thing I could not tell what they where other than moving vehicles. And you have to call the fire so it and the vehicles both arive at the same point at the same time. Very tricky to do, and the farther away it is, the harder it gets.

And, the higher magnifications have smaller and smaller fields of veiw. The artillery keeps a number of very powerful insturments for assorted purposes. I was helping one of my buddys one day with one of the higher powered ones. We knew where the guy we where looking for was, but the very narrow field made it almost impossible to find him. And he was staning in the open with a big red flag on a pole? Turns out we where looking way to far. An insturment with half the magnification would have served us much better.

And it was tripod mounted, had it been hand held we could have sen nothing, Lion certainly has that part right.

owen

Yeah, but a 10x magnification is really higher than you can hold in your hands.

7x is about the limit, anything above that you need to rest on something.

These German 10 x 50 sets just look like regular hand-held binoculars to me (shrug).

rjmilitaria.com/a351.htm

link

It's not the bulk of the binoculars that's the problem, Steve. Above 7x magnification, your hands move too much and you can't make out what you're seeing through the smaller field of view.

Oh, okay, so you'd have to be lying down with your elbows propped on the ground or something to stabilize them to reduce image shake? I think I get it. I guess that would probably be how that sergeant used the German binoculars to spot those hidden positions he couldn't see with the lower-powered US binoculars? I've had bad shake from the wind and such just taking pictures without a support, so I can see that being a problem.

More like resting the binoculars against a tree or on a rock, but you've got the right idea now.

Hi all,

I found this article a good read when I read it in our local paper at the end of June. And I think it's quite relevant to this topic. Paul Smith, the author, makes some comments on magnification power:

From The Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland): Seeing is Believing
--
Tim

The Soviets made a very effective sniper optic that worked better than its fancy all singing all dancing German opponent.
There is a lot of talk about Soviet optics being 'bad' but I have never seen any evidence to back it up. It just seems (as here) to be taken for granted.
It might do to remember the Soviets had licensed Zeiss factories making their stuff up to June 1941.

I have an IOR scope for one of my rifles that's very nice. Not as nice as the Vortex, but the Vortex is … overkill, really.

The IOR scope is a copy of the Soviet PSO-1. I think the IOR glass is better, but I wouldn't think twice about putting a PSO or POSP riflescope on a hunting rifle. They are good quality, inexpensive riflescopes.