Posted on 12/03/2015 6:58:19 AM PST by w1n1
A way to keep your Head Down while Firing at the Enemy
When fighting stagnates and enemy lines dug into trenches, snipers target anyone whose head pops up above the edge of the trench.
Solution: Keep your head down, but your rifle up. The Germans called it Spiegelkolben. Just mount a rifle to a periscope. That way the rifle could be lifted up to get a clear shot at the enemy trenches while the shooter remained safely out of sight using mirrors to see his sights and a length of wire to pull his trigger. While all the major powers in the war developed devices like this, the one we are looking at today is German. It's simple, but effective.
Using a pair of mirrors provide sighting while a cable connects the bottom stock's trigger to the trigger of the rifle. Once the shooter gets acclimated to viewing the sights through the mirrors, the shooter (sniper) became quite lethal. Read the rest of the periscope rifle story and video here.
I want one...
Periscope Gun – A German “Trench Mauser†From World War I
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3366775/posts
I’d imagine there’d be large recoil when fired due to the leverage.
I’d imagine there’d be large recoil when fired due to the leverage.
And notice how close to to the eye the scope is. Bad combo.
The Germans had semi-automatic rifles with magazines in WWI?
A friend has a pair of trench binoculars that his grandfather took from a dead kraut in WWII. Same principle, tall and strange but functional.
They're referred to as a BC (Battery Commander's) Scope.
Jeez, I meant World War I.
The American BC Scope does date to WW1.
Looks like it could be a big lever to multiply recoil muzzle-flip but it seems to have been tolerable by the Nazi’s. Necessity is the mother of invention!
Ah! WWI - I wrote Nazi’s, should have been just “Germans”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.