Luminous Sights for the SMLE

[Eaglelord17]

Those sights for the SMLE could make a massive difference if you were trying to shoot at night. Having tried to shoot irons at night (P14 at around 10pm, my range is open to 11pm), I can safely say without something like that, your really just guessing at what your hitting.

[Peter Laidler]

They would make a difference if they illuminated the target, but they don't. They just put a gloomy glow at the end of rifle that you sort of point at, er......., the target that you can hardly see! We even had parachute flares to illuminate the target.

The thing that REALLY did put the willies up the VC was the claymore and the M-60

[Sentryduty]

Speaking about night fighting, the Elcan C79, like many other sights had a tritium tip on the end of the picket, and unless there was illum as Peter mentioned, you were basically guess where the shot would land.

During my time in Afghanistan the scale of issue for night vision equipment increased from the old standard "Cold War" of 1 per section (10-12 soldiers) usually for the Section Commander to individual scale of issue. The Monocular Night Vision Goggle, MNVG really increased the capability of the individual soldier, we first seen roll out and training with this equipment during BTE 2005, our fall pre-deployment work-up training.

The MNVG would be wore on the non-master eye from a helmet mount leaving the master eye free to use the Elcan. Firing with both eyes open was somewhat effective, a semi-stereoscope view like firing a pistol with both eyes open, but the real benefit was with the addition of the PAQ-4 IR Laser aiming device. This piece of equipment was briefly covered in my other thread.

Basically having a weapon mounted IR laser "sight" allowed the entire section or platoon to see where everyone was aiming, the fighting vehicles could also see it through the commanders NV sights and co-ordination of fire was made much more effective. The old G.R.I.T method of target designation quickly evolved to "on my laser, followed by watch my tracer." This system and vehicle mounted thermal gunnery systems allowed us to take the night back from the insurgents, much reducing the handicap and "fear" of fighting at night. Although after 8-10 hours of having a green illuminated scope screwed into your eye socket, the eye took some time to adjust to normal colours once the sun came up.

I think the next viable improvement over this system would be a full goggle type viewer with a weapon aiming indicator on a Heads-up style display, but we shall see where technology takes us.

Oh, and full colour viewing, that would be nice too, because why not?

In less than 100 years we went from dabbing our sight blades with radioactive paint to everyone can see in the dark and pointing lasers about.

[Surpmil]

If one was aiming at say enemy muzzle flashes at night I can see how luminous sights would be a great help in locating your own sights and then getting them on the target. The Germans also provided them for the Mauser, with a folding luminous front sight featuring a bead about 3/16" dia. IIRC. Not high precision perhaps, but better than nothing. How else do you locate a black sight against a dark target? When you're only a hundred or two yards from your enemy flares light up everyone.

[Peter Laidler]

Some silenced Stens had luminised foresights and a luminised line across the rear sigh aperture. But at 25 yards......... wouid anyone really need it? Ironically, they'd been overpainted several times since 1945 but as soon as the lady doing the radiac survey came in, her dosy-meter started ticking like an overwound clock! Mind you, it started clicking much louder when it came within 100 yards of my old radium laden Omega wristwatch!