Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 114, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1918 — GUNFIRE IS MADE SURE BY PHOTOS [ARTICLE]

GUNFIRE IS MADE SURE BY PHOTOS

Transferred to Maps They Bring French Artillery to High Efficiency. PROCESS IS NEW INVENTION Every Enemy Object Accurately Recorded After Airmen’s Scouting of Flights—Maps Brought to Date Daily. French Front. —Accuracy and efficiency have been made possible for the French Artillery by the invention of an instrument that enables French mapmakers to locate almost exactly an object within the enemy lines which has been photographed from an airplane. In transferring to a map the photographed object, such as an enemy battery or munition dump, the margin of error is limited to less than five yards. This permits the Fren/h artillery to pour its shells with almost/ certain aim onto German gun emplacements, trench positions, cross-roads, cantonments, railroad lines, aviation camps and other enemy organizations. It is unnecessary for the gunner to have even a distant view of the object he is firing at Invention Makee Transfer Easy. To take a photograph of the enemy lines from a French airplane is an easy matter, but to transfer the objects photographed to their exact location on a map was for a time extremely difficult. This was due to the varying heights and angles from which the airplane observers made their photographs. By the invention of one of ‘the officers attached to the geographical section, this difficulty has been almost eliminated. Not only the aerial observation service but other methods of spotting German positions —more especially cannon and machine-gun emplacements—are utilized as aids to the work of the military map-maker. TJie flashes of guns as they are fired from the German side form one valuable adjunct to his work, but the most important qf all is the calculation of the speed of the sound of the firing charge of the German shells. This has been brought to a basis of such perfection that the guns can now be located with almost absolute accuracy. In fact, in recent operations it has proved that the system of observation by sound has given successful results in over 80 per cent of instances. In every army there is a branch of the geographical section and each is

furnished with a complete lithographic and zihographic printing plant and skilled workers, photographers and mathematicians. In a very few hours after the receipt of the day’s operations from all the various sources, dozens of copies of the corrected maps are ready for issue to all the staffs of corps, divisions and brigades comprised within the army concerned. Nothing is omitted from the maps—every church, house, chimney, mill, bridge, road, railroad, group of trees is marked, as well as every turn and twist of an enemy trench or system of barbed wire entanglements; every stream, ditch, bridge, ford, every path used by supply parties, every point of resistance, organized shell crater, lookout post is shown on the maps. Maps c-n a very large scale are given when an attack is about to be carried out, so that each officer and man participating may know exactly what 19 in front of him and what he may expect to encounter during his advance.