A wrong turn for First World War sniper sights, with weapon and firearms expert, Jonathan Ferguson
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- The first British sharpshooters on the Western Front relied solely on their iron sights, with tubular scopes not coming to prominence in the British Army until the penultimate year of the war. But, inroads were made towards giving sharpshooters magnified optics to improve marksmanship. The Lattey, and several other similar 'clip-on' sights were officially adopted by the British Army in 1915, but as Jonathan explains, they didn't cause much of a spectacle.
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Who is this strange man and what is he talking about?
This is Jonathan Ferguson keeper of firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum which houses a collection of thousands of iconic arms through history and this weeks he will be analazing something that isn't from a videogame
@@thecommunistloli1042 yet.....
So, when's that secret video project coming out?
Othais, I remember the first time I ran my vegetable oil covered fingers through your Somalian beard. Those were the days, back at Catholic High School PD. Good times, I still have nightmares about it
Edit: Grammar
*WILD OTHIAS SPOTTING*
Rifleman, C&Rsnal, The Royal Armories, Forgotten Weapons. Is this the Historic Weapons joint universe.
Well the History Tubers have discovered Wall to Wall crossover projects every few weeks to increase audience awareness of all the esotheric channels (or equally likely audience annoyance about all the advertising for channels nobody is interested in ;)) ... might as well go to Historic Gun tube..
And as FW already is a perma Collab with C&R and Gun on the Range ... makes sense, doesn't it?
Could include Hickock as well..?
"The thing we're here to focus on today" pun was so unintended it wasn't even acknowledged
That front sight just looks very fragile to me.
It's a shame my grandfather died many years ago, in digging through some of his "stuff" I found something that looked very similar to those sights. At the time I found a bit of use for the front lens. Sadly all his small stuff was kept in one small box (including his medals) which was stolen when my parents house was broken into 😞
I wish only the worse for that thief..😔
The guy that stole the box probably had no idea what he even had. There's a good chance that poor sight ended up as little more than trash and rubble. Rest in Peace, OP's grandpa, and rest in peace you funky aperture sights
@@RipRLeeErmey Bit of a brutal comment
to be fair, ANY optical sights at that time would have been EXTREMELY fragile as the form factor and the need to make it mountable onto a rifle would pose difficulties for the available technology. glass composition and manufacturing have come a long way in those 100-110 years.
I'm sorry to hear about your family heirlooms, I had assistance with my petty little shadowbox ,that held my AB patch and tab, og blood wings, and 4 minor award metals, wandering off. I had a nice veteran of similar experience noticed 1 metal in a pawn case and went way beyond, to hand it back to me. I had not realized how much it meant to me, until that knock on my door.
Veterans already have suffered enough and lost so much, and a random POS has to take even more from what little trinkets we can have pride in, from them or their families.
I had a Lattey set. Those sights actually functioned well.
I don't think that's in any dispute- they were designed for target-shooting and competitions, so I imagine they'd work well in those conditions, just maybe not so much in WW1 battlefield conditions. Hard to know for sure, though.
Probably fine in good conditions......not so good in combat
@@jacobishii6121 IMHO, very few conditions are good in war.
I wasn't expecting C&Rsenal to be mentioned on this channel! The influence of Othais and Mae stretches beyond the Atlantic...
It is crazy to go back to the early episodes when they were just starting out and now they are globally known. They deserve it as they do the work to bring quality historical content on every gun they cover.
Come on now you don't think Jonathan is on the UA-cam himself? 😉
Same for Ian & FW. It's a fairly obvious friendship looking at the subject matter, but you'd be amazed how many people in Gamespot's videos with Jonathan have literally zero clue about real world firearms and history. Tons of opportunities to show (presumably the younger generation)people what sort of rich history and knowledge from something a teenager may only know as some shitty GS:GO skin.
Yes they are quite brilliant
If they (love ‘em) were as awkward as this guy is, well let’s just say I’m glad they’re not.
A magnetized screwdriver? I was sure Jonathan and the Royal Armiuries had the sonic type.
A secret project from C&Rsenal? Involving Galilean optics? Hmmm…
Jonathan really does have the best job.
Hey this was in forgotten weapons. Nice video too sir. Good job sir.
The more the merrier!
The amazing novelties wars inspire. But better ideas usually evolve from the novelties! Great Video. Take Care and be safe, John
Jonathan, I recall an article in the American Rifleman a couple of years ago, where they did some practical back to back testing of the various Galilean trench sights. They used the well known Bisley double snaps type test, with British Army "Hun" targets. From memory, the favourite was the Gibbs sight, with which most felt a good shot was possible to 300 or more yards.
Absolutely fascinating and, as always, an excellent presententation. Possibly the most stunning Mark III Enfield ever seen on UA-cam but please fix the rear sight protectors - they’re back to front.
Oh dang! Are C&Rsenal doing that sniper special they mentioned so long ago?!? I hope so!
I bet it is the same as the 1911 episodes, making the overall plans is easy. Getting everything lined up and ready to go while still producing episodes consistently is more complicated to put it mildly.
Fair enough but I’m fine with a wait.
From what I remember the number of galilean sights produced, especially early on, was greater than that of domestically made rifle scopes and they played an important interim role, though they were pretty limited in capability. With 11k galilean sights made during the war compared to 6k scopes, they did have a real impact.
Periscopic Prism Co.'s sight was a copy of a Fuess design, so it's pretty understandable that it took time to actually start producing in numbers.
I seem to recall some writing from an Ulster formation being fond of that type of sight showing up in Steve Houghton's British Sniper book.
"Scopes on snipers? Haha..." - Häyhä, ca. 1939
OG noscoper
People tend to approach the use of an offset scope wrong. Do not sight them to converge at a given range. Sight the gun in with the offset distance. Example, if your scope is 1.5 inches to the left of bore, sight your group to be 1.5 inches to the right of the point of aim. You can easily judge 1.5 inches at any distance where it would matter.
Damn it, I had a neal/Olsen(??) Type sights and didn't really consider that they were possibly related to firearms, in anyway...😢
I was able to make a 10yr old kid next-door very happy after noticing they were the first thing that he asked to play with every time he came over for a couple weeks. Now he is able to enjoy looking at the world through them anytime. He was able to find a closer use to purpose, than I was able to so he deserves it. 😊
AFAIK these sights are rare and worth a lot of money. Quite a generous gift for that kid to toy with.
@@BlaBla-pf8mf I also gave him a weaver w7 scope so I am just really good at punishing myself
that rifle looks like it was made yesterday, very nice
A Galileo optics has a converging lense as objective and a diverging lense as eyepiece. (this type of optics was invented by Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands). Since the focal length of the objective is longer than the distance objective -> eyepiece it produces an upright picture. That’s a definitive plus for a scope.
C&Rsenal sniper project, too cool. Perfect companion to the LMG project.
Regarding the sizing issues, I wonder if the manufacturers were simply given a rifle to work with that had a smaller than average, maybe even just within tolerance nosecap. They take their measurements with all the precision one would expect from an optics manufacturer, and turn out sights with exactly those dimensions. Perfectly made to fit a just slightly wonky SMLE.
this man is really just out here living out my dream life while getting paid to do so, I am jealous of you sir.
A few bits gathered from American Society of Arms Collectors articles and information elsewhere on the web:
The 9,000 Lattey sights were purchased at an average cost of 7 shillings 6 pence each.
An additional 5,125 Galilean sights were purchased from among the Neill, Martin, Gibbs, and BSA sights. The Gibbs was 5 guineas and the BSA 3 pounds (I haven't run across prices for the Neill or Martin).
In British service Galilean sights outnumbered "normal" telescopic sights by roughly 2:1 over the course of the war, with most of the telescopics being in the 5-11 pound price range.
Thanks for this bro
Nice one Jonathan. Dont think many people know about these!
You don't need a tube to make a telescope. Many telescopes are tubeless.
Awesome those sights are super rare nowadays as they were fragile and discarded as soon as telescopic sights became available
Oh so these are the sights Mae and Othais talked about having headaches with in their Q&A.
I read about these sights in " Mc Bride's British Snipers of WW1" ( From memory)
I like the Royal Armouries logo. It's all business. They ain't f*ckin around.
Hundreds of thousands? That's just the casualties of one battle on one side during the great war.
I first saw these in an Australian series about Gallipoli. It was interesting to learn a little about these sights.
I think the front sight is the same one they used as inspiration for the CoD: Word at War aperture sight attachment.
I've thought the same thing over the years
The Lattey is in BF1
I was very bamboozled when I saw the thumbnail.
remember seeing a picture once of a front lens for one of these or similar in a book that had been struck by a bullet
Nice one, thanks Jonathan and helpers.
With regard to not requiring a tube between the objective and eyepiece, that is readily possible with a Galilean telescopic sight because only those two lenses are required.
More conventional telescopic sights are based on the "terrestrial telescope" design, which uses three lenses, so a tube is used to hold the middle lens (or these days prism) in place.
The use of three lenses in a terrestrial telescope also explains the use of "three drawer" (or three tube) designs, for example as per object XVI.74 in the Royal Armouries collection.
I guess the way those three tube designs collapse (or "telescope") into one another for carrying and storage also spawned the application of "telescopic" to such diverse items as shock absorbers and tactical batons (e.g. as per item VIII.165 in the Royal Armouries collections).
to be fair, the astronomers usually prefer using tubes ONLY because it reduces stray light that could dillute or blur out the extremely faint objectts they like to study all the time. their telescopes would work just as well with only the lenses in a rudimentary frame or even mounted to a broomstick or sth.
It may also have a miniscule protective effect for the vulnerable lenses and keeps the distances more stable than just a single point of fixture, but that wouldn't be the biggest selling arguments as they already treat their instruments carefully and especially those mounted into an observatory would be less prone to influences that make the lenses deviate from an optimal arrangement.
Galilean, I would guess, because the ocular lens is a simple convex lens. The Galilean system gives an erect image (right side up) without the need for prisms or a lot of other optics. The downside is a very narrow field of view.
Interesting episode. I had heard about these but had trouble visualizing them from the description.
I remember seeing this in the netflix series Gallipoli and was so confused about what is was good to finally know
Filing things down was rather common practice in much of the world's industry at the time, and even into WW2.
I think the front lens needs to be in front of the front sight, not behind
Never saw one of these installed !
Some sport regulations in Gemany allow low magnification lenses in the tunnel front sights of match rifles to compensate for the declining eyesight of older sport shooters. I cannot judge the military value of this type of sight. But for target shooting it definitely makes a difference. Of course nice scopes make things much easier, but if these are not around or allowed, this simple optical device is at least better than nothing.
One of the Gallipoli films or shows showcases one.
I feel like you could get a similar effect by drawing a dot on 2 magnifying glasses and taping them on the rifle
why is the rear sight protector on backward?
I think a very important thing to have covered about this type of sight is the problems of retaining zero, having repeatable zero in terms of getting your eye in the exact position to be accurate. It's interesting because modern optics often either look through another optic or co-wittness iron sight in a way that retains the zero of the original sight. Like flip away image intensifiers or magnifyers looking though a dot sight.
I am curious about this arrangement and how it would fare, it seems there could be 3 different bits that could slide a little to destroy the zero, or maybe that being slightly off the optimal eye postions could have a greater impact on accuracy with this style of sight..?
But then again maybe the fact that the front sight is close to the objective lens makes such that insignificant... I can't seem to intuitive about it and would like experts to hold my hand I guess is what I'm saying :)
Very easy to loose those small bits in the mud of WW1!
As someone whom has actually used these on one...they either throw away the front sight and kept the rear sight, or they knocked out the glass in the front sight and used the rear like a peep sight, or like what the ones I had...the glass was knocked out of both of them and they were used as peep sights...I don't know if the glass broke overtime or if it was on purpose.
That's not how you use "whom".
I’m sure this worked PERFECT in the lab . Someone said : Why that us Brilliant ! We’ll have that then !
That looks like what William Sing and Ion Idriess described using during the Gallipoli campaign.
Looks very similar to WW1 Martin ring sights...
Lattey sounds a lot like Lahti and i keep getting confused
so dice are not to far of in BF1.^^
only that you could put it on way to many guns.
Bf1 is not a historically accurate game but it's fun. Verdun is a better game to play if you want realism.
@@sleepyrasta420 what I mean is that sight, not bf1 in total. ;-)
But it was fun. That is true.
Could it be adjusted to only use that cool front sight?
I used a Lattey sight once. The front site just rotated to one side.....
so if the latte sights dont fit all rifles in both collections i assume its down to differences in the rifles ? were the rifles all made in the same factory at the same time ? the makers of the sight must had had a sample rifle to model thier product on
So it's a bit like the Glassvisier 16 with the magnified front post?
Hard to opt for this over a Winchester A5 scope
How secret is it? The American "Top secret" or the much more cosy British "Most secret"?
It's "If I told you Jonathan would have to shoot you" secret
If it is the project I suspect it has been mentioned a few times as something the channel was planning to do, this confirms it is on the way. It was the episode on *static*
What is that black gun between the DP28 and the SCAR?
Funnily enough I made a similar scope to the fist style of sights shown about 35 years ago when I was 10 for my air rifle using lenses from an old prism scope, some flat Lego planks and glue! I had no idea they actually existed as a real world item until this video! Interestingly bow/archery magnifying sights seem to consist of only one lens on the riser (handgrip) and using the peep sight in your string, I think you just move the lens back and forth for focus and they come in different fixed magnifications; always meant to buy one and try it out.
While objectively terrible the idea of optical sights without a heavy metal tube has some merrit.
Quick question - Battlefield 1 has some dubious weapons, one of which I cannot find the slightest legend on, which is a SMLE mk3 Carbine - there was a mk1 carbine I can find, but no sign of an mk3 - any ideas?
"the choob is imaginary" :)
In fairness, they would probably be much easier to fit if you didn't have to wear gloves while doing it. I get that you need to protect the things you show us, but the gloves are a bit of a handicap sometimes.
I don't even like using the Lattey sights in Battlefield 1. Weirdly, the game treats it as a lower magnification than the default iron sights. Jonathan can you confirm if English troops had telescopic eyeballs?
Lots of carrots
A propos of nothing, you have a Campbell sight aka the Neill sight aka the Ulster sight; and the series "Peaky Blinders" has a character from Ulster named Major Campbell played by actor Sam Neill. Weird....
heh the FOV of the rear sight on the BF1 gallian sights are also crap ... least they got that part accurately ...
not the best vid from this channel. but defo worth a thumbs up and some algo-jazz
Since the Picatinny rail is designated as M1913, I honestly thought they were developed in that year. WWI soldiers could have used it in 1913 lol
Does anyone know what video c&r did with these, if they ever did? I can’t tell
DISCLAIMER: My qualifications for asking this question - pretty much NONE. I went to university to study history and archaeology, and that's about it.
That said - and this is completely mundane and uninteresting - having worn those cloth gloves when handling historical items, nobody ever explained who, or how, they were kept clean.
As an amateur historian, I'm honestly curious about that. Regular laundry detergent? Dish soap?
Natures bleach.
Semen
I expect they are disposable and you just get a new pair if they are dirty.
I think you just throw them in the laundry. The purpose is to keep acids in skin oil off the artifact. In libraries, their use is deprecated on manuscripts and early books, because parchment or early paper isn't attacked by acids (some of the inks were acidic), and they make the person handling the book clumsy. Only needed for industrially produced papers of the 19th c. and later, which can be self-destructing because of the residual acid, to start with. There was a time when some libraries liked to make a thing of them, because of ceremonial and Precious Objects. I imagine they'd be really important for metal objects (and at least they keep off fingerprints), but for some other things the risk of damage by clumsiness would be higher than the harm of contamination with precious bodily fluids.
"They didn't cause much of a spectacle". Ba-dum-pum!
It's like an S.M.L.E. has taken to wearing a monocle!
Quickscoping in the 1910s
Is the arrangement of the rifles on the left in the beginning done on purpose, so the letters in between spell FNC? (like the rifle from FN)? ;)
This is not a Lathy you are looking through.
Standard upgrade in BF1. Can't have a BF game without optics.
The Lattey sights are usually 1.25x ... and default iron sights are at least 1.5x. That doesn't make any sense.
A black background with black objects makes it very hard to see.
Cool
aparently some brittish weapon inventors were actualy living in the ealry 21st century. im reaaly supprised this is a ww1 relic ive seen and heared about them but i thought they were used in ww2 only.
How is the name spelt? Could it be a Finnish make Laaati or is it spelt Latty (etc)?
I must start using my glasses. I miss read the title as sights for a French sniper.
I was hoping to see an apparatus for the firing of a rifle over ones shoulder.
Still a jolly good and interesting video.
Oh no. Mae with sniper scopes.
Stop simping for Mae and simp for big beard Othais
this seems soo finicky, I doubt the boys in the trenches could have used it for long.
still want to know what that watch of jonathan is.... i need one
An old 90s casio calculator watch I guess?
Probably and antique watch he got at work.
Need a Collab between British and American gun Jesus, they contain enough knowledge to destroy civilisation XD
Forgotten Weapons did a thorough review of this sight two years ago. This is a little late to the game.
:)
So very British to be slow to adopt new ideas and then select something that makes life worse.
First
Adam was the first man. Repent for your sins and become a Buddhist Atheist today, before it is too early
Secret project by folks at C&Rsenal and it involves some obscure telescopic sight from WWI?! Dangit, now I've got my hopes up that it's going to be a "Sniper rifles of the Great War" series or something to that effect. Though, whatever it is, I'm sure it's gonna be great. And that I'll be clicking on it the moment it goes up! 😄😄
Would be cool if they did something like Project Lightening except with "Sniper rifles"
Project thunder?
I find it delightful that Othais, Mae and company are now considered reputable enough that they're loaning items to museums and collaborating with them.
@@RedBeardWalking Project Zoom ;)
I first heard of these on Forgotten Weapons, and they seem like a pretty good idea, having a low profile optical system that increases the iron sights profile by 2x. Shame there aren’t modern reproductions being sold.
Considering WW1 is (fairly) recent history in the grand scheme of things, it's amazing that we know so little about who designed them and how they were used on the front. I guess a lot of information gets lost during war time.
Suggestion: I think that you should maybe but a white sheet or something over your table for your videos. This would improve the contrast of the items highlighted. It would make it easier for old people like me to see the items better.
Here is a link to Ians Video on the Martin Galilean sights
ua-cam.com/video/c5f--O2UQNc/v-deo.html
To be fair, lots of telescopes of various types and sizes have to this day, been either semi-enclosed or lacking an enclosure. Note I am not talking about domes here, I am talking about the tubes of telescopes. Enclosing the path the light takes inside a telescope is pretty good to do as it eliminates the potential a ton of unwanted light and helps protect the telescope, but it is not actually essential for operation.
Also of note is that refracting telescopes (think spyglass looking telescopes) are still pretty popular in certain areas of interest. Of course the lenses, especially the eyepieces are going to actually be complex in a way something like this is not going to be (probably). (look up how high quality camera lenses and telescope eyepieces are made if you haven't and this will make more sense to you, even the glass is element after element after element.)
While it seems odd that a “standard” pattern sight like that doesn’t fit all “standard” patterns of SMLE that’s more common on old machines than you’d think. Mass production and interchangeability of parts was still a somewhat new concept at the time so a part that works on one might not work on something that’s ostensibly the same thing. For example I’ve read that the parts from one French Chauchat won’t necessarily work in another one. Or another example on the show Tank Restoration they often complained about WWII British tank parts almost always needed to be worked to fit the tanks they’re designed for while American parts always just dropped right into the vehicles they were made for.
Same when Rolls Royce licensed the Merlin engine to Packard.
There were no tolerances on the Rolls Royce drawings, they were all hand fitted until they fit that engine.
Packard's engineers had to come up with suitable tolerances for mass production.
I don't know if Rolls adopted the Packard method or continued to hand fettle their engines?
We really wouldn't see interchangeable mass production of identical parts until the 1930's. Henry Ford is often considered the father of mass matching parts. But guns are still a bit of an oddity, especially wartime produced firearms as corners were commonly cut.
And even for parts that were supposed to be interchangeable some dimensions are more critical than others (i.e. some are specified to tighter required tolerances than others). For a rifle's nose cap the the interior tolerances affect how it fits to the rifle, so they're important, but the thickness of the cap and thus its external size would be pretty unimportant. Being even several mm thicker than "nominal" wouldn't affect its use as a nose cap at all -- and so their external dimensions probably varied significantly.
They'd probably have been better off designing the sight to slip over the end of the barrel, like a bayonet, and then have a couple little arms to reach back and clamp onto the open spot in the nose cap. The barrel external would have been a more tightly toleranced surface due to the need fit the nose cap and bayonet.
OTOH for such a limited issue item it probably wasn't a big deal to either gunsmith it on (as they had to do to the upper handguard for the rear sight anyway) or simply sort through the available rifles to find the ones the sight did fit.
you are the only british person i like