German hand search light units oder ‘ sheinwerferzuge’
Something I never paid attention to, never realized I actually had an image hidden in my ww1 library.
It seems an engineer battalion ( Pioniere batalione )formed two field battalions, each of them with 3 companies, and a searchlight platoon. A searchlight platoon was set up for each of the many pioneer battalions.
The platoons existed of 2 officers, 39 non-commissioned officers and men, 28 horses, 2 light searchlights, 2 equipment carts and 1 feed cart.
The searchlight was meant for illuminating the battlefield , even the sky during the night. You could find them in the front line trenches too. They existed with electrical power but you also had the ones lit with gas. So it was easy to carry gas bottles. In the ‘German Army handbook 1918’ that was put together by the British intelligence some details are given : there were two patterns of portable searchlights, one being a 25 to 35 cm electric light projector and the other more common type of 25 to 30 cm diameter type that was an oxy-acetylene projector. In addition, there were the anti-aircraft searchlights that used a 90cm naval projector that had a range of 1500 meters. With these small portable searchlights it was easy to sweep no mans land.
I did find “scheinwerferzug pionier-bataillon 4” in a regimental history , but it didn’t give me any details on the lights.
These magazines were published by ‘ Deutschen überseedienst transocean G.M.B.H. Berlin, the editeur was Georg Stilke; You can still find these magazines for sale now and then.
Sources :
The image comes out of de album de la grande guerre n°10 1915
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