Interesting Great War Era Marksmanship Aid.

[Roger Payne]

You could be right Rob, I've never seen anything quite like it before & I really don't know, but it's certainly nicely made. Fragile? Yes, but so are Winchester A5 scopes, & we still bought 907 of them. I don't think that the lens caps not fitting with it in place really matters so much, does it - one generally takes them off before using the scope for its deadly purpose! The owner certainly maintains that it well fits his modified 3rd pattern Aldis.

As I said above I don't know what the gizmo is, but it certainly came with a WW1 scope & seems to fit. Perhaps it was originally intended for a camera & was subsequently found to be suitable for use on a scope by some enterprising individual?? I wasn't at any point necessarily suggesting it must be a military contract item. I'm still open to suggestions.