Luftwaffe Flak Album and related items.

The album, full of excellent photos mostly private photos and intact nothing missing, the owner had taken time to lay it out well and to be very art deco in his decoration and script.
This came from a dealer.
The rangefinder is a Kdo36, this was replaced by the 40 a larger and more complex device, radar prediction replaced but did not do away with optical rangefinding completely.
Two optical collectors I know have working examples of the Kdo 40's which can track a modern 747 with ease.
The rangefinder had to be exactly positioned in relation to the guns so when a firing solution was given it took into consideration the exact position of the guns it was directing so no error occurred.
High-quality gear, working examples of the rangefinders are quite rare museum pieces really, the optical devices which were mounted on them still good today but intact working examples which idiots have not tried to open " to see how they work", using nothing better than knives, forks and screwdrivers " from the garden shed" simply because they were " interested" and had nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon..... don't talk..... maddening.

 

These are the six monocular devices that are seen on the rangefinders shown in the album.
They are all made by Carl Zeiss and to get these examples took rather a long time - about 12 years to be exact which a lot of "horse-trading" and buying/selling of lesser examples.
What has been an issue is so few have managed ( as I hinted at earlier) to avoid the attentions of fools who wanted to take them apart, removing their base mounts as " they were heavy and I didn't want them".
To date, I have not found the mounting plates for the "half binoculars" ( as most people described them) have only seen one in a collection in Belgium.
The box came from Norway disposed of from Norwegian Army stores as " surplus to requirements", I saw it on eBay and bought it at once - finding a transit case with its fittings is "bloody near impossible."
Examples pop up from time to time on eBay with the most amazing descriptions and rarely intact, the quick sight hooded covers being missing, the rubber eyecups have gone and occasionally someone thought that a coat of Hammerite paint might "look nice" .
One eBay seller in California had a nice intact example on sale for almost $900 give or take a few $'s and his "military guy" told him ( wait for it) that it was "DEFINATELY A PANZER TANK SIGHT", and why not it will sell for more.
The man selling it proved to be impossible to buy from wanting an impossible price for it and funny when he corrected his description the price stayed the same. , part of the frustrations in trying to obtain items.
( He had not got a clue what it was but somehow "knew what it was worth". Work that one out if you can.)
The wiring looms came from a friend in Munich - one of the Kdo 40 owners one of the monoculars came from Volgograd - having been there since 1943.
Missing are the anti-glare hood for the rangefinder and a calibration device that will probably never surface, getting this far has been a stop/start struggle.
The devices are number 1-6 so they can be set up easily, each has a different range scale/grid in them - interchangeable coloured filters and a means to adjust the grid or scale within the view of the individual user, the tools for doing this - lost.

 

I might add that the person who took the pictures and put the album together was a very good photographer!

 

One of the restored Kdo40 I mentioned, seen at BHS meeting in Munich Oct 2017.
The 12x60 binoculars mounted on it - narrow field of view but one of the best binoculars to be made in WW2.

 

He certainly was all of that .