Once upon a time, in a land far far away, when I was in the U S Army, my teammates and I, parachuted into a shopping mall in Binghamton, NY.
The take-off airfield was 700 feet lower than the landing zone, or put another way, the landing zone was 700 feet higher than the take-off field, and our altimeters had to be adjusted accordingly.
It was kind of a big deal- and having worked in construction using builder's levels and transits, prior to joining the service, I knew that down was up, and up was down, when it comes to elevation discrepancies and surveying instruments. I basically disagreed with my team leader and adamantly expressed the fact that we had to set our altimeters to minus 700 feet to account for the 700 feet discrepancy, not by setting the altimeters to plus 700, which was the conventional wisdom of the moment. It was a tense exchange, but I was so confident that I won my team leader over, but it was a very delicate situation nonetheless, as I was the equivalent of a corporal (Specialist Fourth Class), and he was a Sergeant First Class, outranking me by 3 stripes!
