284 siege battery

[julie pearce]

Have recently made it down to National Archives to look at the war diary of the 83 HAG, in particular the 284 siege battery that my granddad was a member of. An entry for 20/1/18, when the 284 was based at Ecurie, states that 'Bad shoot by 284 (D) - line very bad O.C. reports it as due to faulty manipulation of the parallelascope. The entry is hand written, and I'm sure i have read the word parallelascope wrong. Any body got an idea what it could be?

Julie

[Rockdoc]

I'd guess that it's the sighting telescope and that it's called a paralleloscope because it isn't fitted directly to the gun but via gearing or some other mechanism. Siege batteries used howitzers so their angle of elevation would be higher than other types of gun. If guns are to be operated over a wide range of elevation then there's a need to correct for the varying effects of gravity on the flight of a shell over that range. On AA guns for example, which could be elevated from 0 to 80 degrees, the telescope was moved by gears to give the required compensation.

Keith

[julie pearce]

Thanks Keith. We thought with scope it must be some sort of sighting.

[ianjonesncl]

A paralleloscope acts as a point of lay that can be used as an alternative to aiming posts. It consists of a mirror that allows the gun layer to observe the image of his dial sight and to use that as his point of lay.

Edit: The paralleloscope is placed alonside (or behind the gun)

If the paralleloscope moves, or is not level, then when the layer lays back on his image it will introduce an inaccuracy into the direction that the gun is firing.