Cased K12m sight

[rkmilitaria]

I have not found anything out about it. It is made by beh, It comes in a wooden transit case which is also beh stamped. I picked it up recently in Jersey, the Channel Islands. Does anyone know where or what it has been used for?

Allways prepared to exchange items

[rkmilitaria]

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[rkmilitaria]

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[rkmilitaria]

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[rkmilitaria]

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[mlespaul]

Hey there.
Thats an excellent looking K12m. Its a "Kollimator"/Collimator for artillery. I have posted this elsewhere on this board (search collimator) and basically the K12 is set up a distance away from the artillery battery and the Rblf/panoramic sight attached to each gun is swiveled around to focus and aimed into the large output opening of the K12. When turned on, the K12 emits a pattern that the RblF, located some distance away, is aligned to. The RblF 36 and later models had a line of data along the center of the reticle. When the correct elevation of the gun was reached as set by the K12, the gunner could see both the data line in his sight and the data line in the K12 aligned perfectly and could see the letters and numbers that coincided with the correct angle of elevation perfectly magnified.

Hard to describe I know, but thats how it worked. If you were able to connect a light source (or maybe a flashlight) - some K12s were combination survey units and collimators some had light connections, some didn't - you should see a large pattern of a mass of letters and numbers that projects from the large output lens on the bottom. The top telescope, I believe, is used to direct it towards and locate distant guns with the RbLFs mounted on them to enable a reasonable alignment for the RblF to sight in with the K12.

Let me know what you can see through the lenses of this unit and post any pics if you can! I love these unique fire control system items!

[R.J.Klein]

beh is the wartime manufacturers code for optical items produced by Ernst Leitz,maker of the Leica camera.