L1A1 Sight

[gsimmons]

For any one interested there is a SUIT sight for sale on Facebook in the Lee Enfield Collectors group. He's in the US.


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[Peter Laidler]

Word of advice that should be of roundabout interest to you Gary........ Do NOT buy a SUIT sight unless you want it for show. They are totally crap and the word SUIT stands for Shooter Undoubtedly In Trouble. Having a SUIT on a rifle is like having a mickey mouse watch on your wrist. Good to look at but not much use when it comes to telling the time in the dark, when what you really need is an Omega

[browningautorifle]

Having a SUIT on a rifle is like having a mickey mouse watch on your wrist

Pretty funny Peter. That's how I feel about our own C79...that's another story though.

[gsimmons]

I'm not trying to sell it, just passing on the info. for the people who need one to display with their SLR...

[mrclark303]

Blimey Peter.......... it might just be me but I feel you really don't like them very much

At the risk of being denounced as a blasphemer.....I do have an early L2A1 fitted to my rifle and it groups beautifully, perhaps the next shot will send it flying through the air, but for now it really does work very well.

While we are on the subject of L1 optics, when was the ANPVS-2 introduced into service chaps?

[Gil Boyd]

July 1977 hope that helps

[Charlie303]

Maybe we're looking at the SUIT from the wrong perspective? For most of us the L2A1/L2A2 is now just a piece of history, and should be looked at from what it was trying to achieve at the time.

The armourers will correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the SUIT an attempt to have a quickly mountable tactical (not sniper) device, a gun sight giving better low light target acquisition and general surveillance? It got away from the fixed optics, which were generally unavailable anyway, and was an early attempt to give the ordinary soldier (or at least one member per squad!) something better than naked eye/iron sights.

That it wasn't completely successful, mostly due to its fragile mounting system is well known, but it led to better things. It’s a piece of history and should judged accordingly.

[Peter Laidler]

Are you saying that the AN was introduced into our service in '77 Gil? WELL before that...... We had those in the late 60's/vietnam era and you might recall that they were zeroed in on the base as opposed to the RankPrecision RP-SS20/L1 IIW that zeroed internally. The big AN2's sights were taught at first and then when the RP SS20's came on stream the AN's were phased out. THey both fitted onto the same side mounted L1A1 rifle top cover but the additional 'intermediate' mount on the AN made it a bit side-heavy.

I have the instructional dates handy too.

At Shrivenham, we played around with a black plastic insert that you could press into the OG lend housing with a tiny stop-down hole so that you could use them in a daylight classroom. Later, this tiny stop-down hole idea was incorporated into the rubber OG lens protector that had the words DO NOT OPEN IN DAYLIGHT embossed across the front

As for the SUIT sight. I see where you're coming from Charlie and it was a good effort at making a self contained prismatic fixed focus rifle telescope AND lead the way for the VERY good, tough and hardy SUSAT. But the mounting was absolute crap, as were the pure Alice in Wonderland range callibrations alluded to by that lever. If you can move the sight on the mount, then guess what? It WILL move

There was a better low light target acquisition device in the early 70's and that was the big 7x 50 Artillery binos. Mind you, better things were on the way - like the big SS20/L1 IIW's The thing about giving one person that night vision ability is that only he can see what he's looking at! And if he's giving the fire orders it's going to spell trouble...........

Maybe I should tone down my views of the SUIT and say that while it's not quite crap, it's, maybe in the shxxe arena! A mickey mouse watch maybe.......

[gsimmons]

The Omega it is, then.

[mrclark303]

I thought for one brief second then that Charlie had done the impossible and won you over Peter...... but then " Maybe I should tone down my views of the SUIT and say that while it's not quite crap, it's, maybe in the shxxe arena! A mickey mouse watch maybe.......

I would agree with Charlie though, as collectors we look at such items as the SUIT through different eyes, as a way of representing our rifles as they appeared in a particular time period.

Peter, you view them retrospectively as a complete pain in the arse that you had to deal with professionally!

Just two different points of view, thats all.