Carl Zeiss, Jena Feldstecher 6X18 (View 2)
The D/|\D marking on each objective plate is an Australian Army property marking. There are also D/|\D markings stamped at each end of the leather neck strap, but these are faint and could not be well photographed.
Considering this Feldstecher was manufactured in 1901 and has Australian Army markings, one would think it was used in WW I. But if the Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum is correct in stating that on Australian SMLE rifles the D/|\D marking was used only “pre WW I, then 1920’s to 1960’s” (see “FS-001 Markings on Australian SMLE Rifles” at: www.lithgowsafmuseum.org.au/ ) , it may be that the binocular was impressed for service during WW II. This seems even more likely when one considers that in the first years of the war the Australian military experienced a severe shortage of binoculars: “In the middle of the war there was still a need for binoculars for the Services, and in 1941 the Australian Government decided to impress all civilian binoculars with optical properties similar to the services specifications... Some 18,500 binoculars were impressed of which 8,000 were of good enough quality to be used... The effort of testing and reconditioning the binoculars was formidable. Had they been all of one type then some kind of mass production could have been organized...the Physics Laboratory of the University of Sydney... reconditioned about half the instruments and reported that there were 400 types of binoculars.”( taken from “Optical instruments in Australia in the 1939-45 war: successes and lost opportunities” by H.C. Bolton at: www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/exhib/papers/bolton2.htm )
Carl Zeiss, Jena Feldstecher 6X18 (View 2)
The D/|\D marking on each objective plate is an Australian Army property marking. There are also D/|\D markings stamped at each end of the leather neck strap, but these are faint and could not be well photographed.
Considering this Feldstecher was manufactured in 1901 and has Australian Army markings, one would think it was used in WW I. But if the Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum is correct in stating that on Australian SMLE rifles the D/|\D marking was used only “pre WW I, then 1920’s to 1960’s” (see “FS-001 Markings on Australian SMLE Rifles” at: www.lithgowsafmuseum.org.au/ ) , it may be that the binocular was impressed for service during WW II. This seems even more likely when one considers that in the first years of the war the Australian military experienced a severe shortage of binoculars: “In the middle of the war there was still a need for binoculars for the Services, and in 1941 the Australian Government decided to impress all civilian binoculars with optical properties similar to the services specifications... Some 18,500 binoculars were impressed of which 8,000 were of good enough quality to be used... The effort of testing and reconditioning the binoculars was formidable. Had they been all of one type then some kind of mass production could have been organized...the Physics Laboratory of the University of Sydney... reconditioned about half the instruments and reported that there were 400 types of binoculars.”( taken from “Optical instruments in Australia in the 1939-45 war: successes and lost opportunities” by H.C. Bolton at: www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/exhib/papers/bolton2.htm )