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To fire correctly we must first know its altitude. So we discover that with this." He placed his hand on the telemeter. "There are, you observe, two apertures, one for each eye. In one the aëroplane is seen right side up. In the other the image is inverted, upside down. Now! By this screw the images are made to approach, until one is superimposed exactly over the other.
The eye-piece of the observation glass is so made that it can be turned through a vertical plane in proportion as the angle of fire increases in relation to the horizontal. The determination of the distance from the objective and from the corresponding back-sight as well as the observation of the altitude is carried out with the aid of the telemeter.
To assist the range-finder in his task of sighting it is necessary that he should be provided with firing tables set out in a convenient form, which, in conjunction with the telemeter, serve to facilitate training for each successive round.
There was Captain Mignot, and the two imposing officers from General Foch's staff; there were smiling young French gunners; there was the telemeter, which cost, they told me, ten thousand francs, and surely deserved to have its picture taken, and there was one, not too steady, of a patch of sunny sky and a balloon-shaped white cloud, where another German shrapnel had burst overhead.
There were five guns in pits round this focal point and forming a circle. And on the platform in the centre was a curious instrument on a tripod. "The telemeter," explained Captain Mignot; "for obtaining the altitude of the enemy's aëroplane." Once again we all scanned the sky anxiously, but uselessly.
While arrangements were being made to visit the batteries, Lieutenant Puaux explained to me a method they had established at that point for measuring the altitude of hostile aëroplanes for the guns. "At some anti-aircfaft batteries," he explained, "they have the telemeter for that purpose. But here there is none. So they use the system of visée laterale, or side sight, literally."
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