"German Infrared Night-Vision Devices" Topic

Reading this interesting article…
"…In mid 1943, first tests with infrared night-vision (Nacht Jager) devices and telescopic rangefinders mounted on Panther started. Two different arrangements / solutions were created and used on Panther tanks.

Solution A – Sperber (Sparrow Hawk) was made up of one 30cm infrared searchlight (with range of 600m) and image converter operated by the commander – FG 1250.From late 1944 to March of 1945, some Panzerkampfwagen V Panther Ausf G (and other variants) mounted with FG 1250, were succesfully tested. From March to April of 1945, approximately 50 Panthers Ausf G (and other variants) mounted with FG 1250, saw combat service on the Eastern Front and Western Front. Panthers with IR operated with SdKfz.251/20 Uhu (Owl) half-track with 60cm infra-red searchlight and Sd.Kfz.251/21 Falke (Falcon). This solution could be easily mounted on any type of armored fighting vehicle…
Various units received IR Panthers including 116th Panzer Division (3rd company of 24th Panzer Regiment, Western Front, Summer of 1944), Sixth SS Panzer Army (Hungary, early 1945), Panzer Division Muncheberg and Clausewitz.One combat report is by a veteran of 1st SS Panzer Regiment of 1st SS Panzer Division "LSSAH", who states that few Panthers equipped with infrared night-vision devices possibly from 116th Panzer Division were used in 1944/45 during the Ardennes Offensive.In April of 1945, Panthers equipped with IR equipment (solution B) joined Panzer Division Clausewitz and in mid April near Uelzen destroyed entire platoon of British Comet cruiser tanks. Also on April 21st of 1945, same Panthers overran an American anti-tank position on the Weser-Elbe Canal.Most of those reports can't be confirmed and are questionable.

In addition, it is reported but not supported that single unit equipped with Jagdpanthers also received and used infrared night-vision devices…"
From
link

Need to ask if any other Army at WW2 had good night-vision devices and if there were any documentation about the it's use in the battlefield.

thanks in advance for your guidance.

Amicalement
Armand

The Japanese Navy had special oversized binoculars for use at night. Apparently they were very effective.

My favourite item of IR-associated kit was the portable infrared warner the Germans developed -- it was so light it was portable by infantry, to tell them when they were being illuminated by an IR searchlight. It was fielded in time for night patrols during the Saar campaign in 1940. As it never produced any warnings, it was then discarded as useless. Only later did they realise that the French didn't have any IR searchlights for it to detect.

All the best,

John.

" The US Carbine, Caliber .30in, M3, or T3, was an M2 with suitable mountings prepared on the receiver to take various models of infra-red night-sighting devices. No open or conventional sights were provided. The M3, (its development title was T3), was produced in limited numbers as a semi-prototype. Only about 2100 were manufactured compared to 5,510,000 M1 carbines, 150,000 M1A1 carbines and 570,000 M2 carbines.

These infrared weapons were developed in 1943 by the Army, precisely to defeat the infiltration tactics of the Japanese. Although fewer than 500 units were actually used, the Sniperscope accounted for about 30% of total Japanese casualties suffered by small-arms fire during the first week of the Okinawa campaign.

Few combat personnel in the Korean War were aware that the US possessed infrared night-vision capability. Those who did know, didn't welcome them. Objections were mostly focused on their bulk and susceptibility to damage.

In part, the poor reception by combat units of night vision weapons was because the Sniperscope M1 did indeed have significant flaws. However, the vastly improved Sniperscope M3, with almost double the effective range of the M1, with a less vulnerably located IR light source, and with the T23 flash hider was available at about the start of the Korean War. Supplying only the M3, and in quantity, would have made the value of the weapon much more obvious, particularly if done before we faced the CCF"

link

"The US and Germany both developed similar-appearing, bulky, and heavy-battery-tethered infrared weapon sight systems. The German Vampyr system attached to the MP44 and included a superior, cascading image intensifier tube that would be the wellspring of postwar research. The British also developed an infrared scope, although we know little of it today.

An official Army night vision page recounts the early history:

During WWII, the United States, Britain, and Germany developed a rudimentary infrared sniper scope that used near-infrared cathodes coupled to visible phosphors to provide a near-infrared image converter to begin night fighting efforts. Though approximately 300 of these Sniperscopes were shipped across the Pacific in 1945, few were used. With a range of less than 100 yards, they could only provide perimeter defense. These limited range, rifle-mounted scopes ran off of cumbersome batteries and required active IR searchlights so large that they had to be mounted on flatbed trucks. This searchlight could readily be detected by enemy soldiers with similar equipment.

And this page at the Utah Gun Collectors Association recounts more of the Sniperscope's prehistory:

Based on scientific experiments begun in the 1930s, the "Sniperscope, T120" was developed in late 1943. Electronic devices could distinguish objects illuminated by infrared light and make them visible in a telescope. A 6 volt light with an infrared filter mounted under the stock provided invisible light to illuminate an area up to about 400 feet away. This combination of a light source and telescope using infrared light became the first practical night vision sight. A handle and a switch for the light was mounted on the stock. Both the telescope and the light source got their power from a heavy lead-acid wet cell battery carried in a canvas pack.

In 1944 a slightly modified version was designated the "Snooperscope, M1" and in 1945 additional small changes were made, resulting in the "Sniperscope, M2".

While the night vision telescope was being developed, the Ordnance Department was working on adapting the M1 Carbine to use a telescope of some sort. In March, 1944, the T3 Carbine was approved for production. This has a specially made receiver with integral mounts for attaching a scope with Redfield Junior style rings. Only about 811 of the T3 carbines were made by Inland Division of General Motors, and 1,108 by Winchester (compared to over six million standard M1 carbines!).

About 1,700 of the early (T-120, M1 or M2) Sniperscopes were made during WW2, and about 3,000 more after the war. All were classified as "SECRET" at the time, and nearly all were destroyed, along with most of the T3 Carbines. Perhaps a few dozen survive.

About 150 of the T3 Carbines and early Infrared Sniperscopes reached the field in time for the Okinawa campaign (April through June, 1945). Reportedly they were effective in stopping night time infiltration into U.S. lines by the Japanese."

weaponsman.com/?p=4192

There was also the British "Tabby" Night Vision Monocular. Rbert

Just for the record all the claims about 'combat use' of the German system are fiction.
The linked article has the warning:

"Most of those reports can't be confirmed and are questionable"

One wonders why they bothered!

PDF link

PDF link

The research for the article seems to have been rather poorly done. There was no 24th Regt. in the 116th Pz Div.

Nothing wrong with the research for the article. For the time period in question the Panther Abteilung in 116th Pz Div was I/PzRegt 24, detached from 24th Pz Div.

Nothing wrong with the research for the article

Apart from the fact the 'Comet losses' and the Panthers overran an American anti-tank position claims are fiction…………..

You really should see a doctor about that knee jerk. It's perfectly clear I was referring to the unit. As for the rest of the article, I really don't care as I'm not that interested in fantasy.

Thanks for your guidance Robert.
So, the germans never had any night vision device?

Amicalement
Armand

They definitely had them.

The question is whether or not they were used in action.

Given that most tech is eventually used in battle, I suspect they MAY have been used in small numbers, and their opponents didn't notice them, and/or they were destroyed in combat before people had a chance to analyze them.

Had, yes. Used in combat? Very unlikely.

But if you're modeling some late-1945 units, the production numbers are high enough to justify the fancy toys.

As the others mentioned the Germans had the Zielgerät 1229 "Vampir". And the use in combat is in question.

Robert

Given that most tech is eventually used in battle, I suspect they MAY have been used in small numbers, and their opponents didn't notice them, and/or they were destroyed in combat before people had a chance to analyze them

Given that the UK was flying Mosquito aircraft specificaly equiped to find IR signatures and that the British Tabby IR detectors were shipped to the continent in bulk and were available for distribition the minute the first IR vehicle was found then I think we can be pretty sure the German system never got into combat. The other problem was that the use of IR on the Western Front was forbidden in case they were captured.
To counter all that there is a book that has some interesting claims:

"Accidental Journey," by Mark Lynton, who served in 3rd RTR, 11th AD.

link

"We moved from Neumuentser to Bad Segeberg that same day – an idyllic little resort town by a lake and surrounded by immense pine forests…some of our divisional patrols reached both Luebeck and Flensburg without encountering any resistance, and Eleventh Armored had effectively cut Germany in two. west of the dividing line, on the British side, the German forces were dissolving in a relatively orderly fashion; neither side made any attempt to fight, and the Germans, sometimes in large formations, at times in small groups, all of them frequently still armed, were trudging off in various directions, most of them presumably heading for home…O)n our second night in Segeberg, the first in a while on which we all had baths, a change of socks and underwear, and a concomitant attitude, one of the tank sentries reported a German officer outside, who was insisting on seeing someone who spoke German. That was how it all began.

Hauptmann Geiger was a short, swathy, twinkle-eyed man, about my age, massively self-assured and no wonder. A Knight's Cross was not unusual onm a Panzer captain, but the 'hand-to-hand combat clasp' in gold was. (Hitler invented the weirdest nomenclature for decorations.) This particular bauble meant that Geiger had fought hand-to-hand at least twenty-five times, which, for a tank person, is either heoric or careless. He was wearing a full German tank uniform, a rather stunning ensemble based, I always suspected, on some road company performance of Lehar (a composer who could fairly be called a Hungarian Gilbert & Sullivan), which Hitler may have seen as a young man. Jet-black all over (tankmen were frequently confused with Waffen SS, which upset both parties) with a profusion of scarlet and silver pipings, black half-calf boots ending in some nifty black plus fours (rather like a golfer in the morning), and a liberal sprinkling of death head insignas (another SS-related gimmick that made for misunderstandings), the overall impression was faintly ludicrous, but German tank crews were nothing to laugh at.

Geiger had informed me that his unit had had us under surveillance for the past few days and gave me a totally accurate report of our itinerary to prove it…his commanding officer had come to the conclusion that we would be the people he would surrender to, provided we observed his conditions. these simply were, that the unit – with all the men and equipment – should be handed over directly to a British team of technicians and scientists, and go with them to England, rather than be detained in any local prisoner's cage.

Geiger went on to explain that his was one of two tank units that had been in operation on the Russian front using equipment so secret and so effective that it represented another era in tank warfare. Their sister unit had been wiped out, but not before destroying whatever the gadget was (which clearly had limits to its effectiveness; otherwise how come?)…Geiger assured me that our scientists would be simply ecstatic at the sight of whatever they had…So I joined Geiger in his Kuebelwagen (the military forerunner of the Volkswagen and almost as good as a jeep), and we drove for about twenty minutes out of Segeberg and along various forest paths till challenged by first one sentry, and fifty yards beyond, another, and yet another; the kind of security you associate with guarding the Coca Cola formula! We ended up in the depths of the forest, in the middle of a tank leaguer, all of them Tigers, Panthers, and Jagdtigers (A Jagdtiger, like a Jagdpanther, did not have a rotating turret, but carried an extra-heavy gun mounted on a fixed platform and was principally used to destroy other tanks) – about as scary a sight as I had seen since Normandy. everything and everybody looked alarmingly competent, tough and neat, and if anyone was playing at soldiering around here, I was the only one. The officer commanding the whole lot, a Count Dohna-Strelitz, littered with decorations just like Geiger, was impeccably courteous but managed to convey the evident disparity in our ranks, experience, and social backgrounds did not warrant idle conversation. It took five minutes to establish 'ground rules,' and another five for the entire unit to be on its way, and out we came again from the woods, Geiger and I leading the convoy in his Kuebelwagen, and a 88-mm gun of the first Tiger literally ten feet behind us, the closest I have ever been to a moving Tiger. Do not let them tell you any different – it was scary.

There must have been about twenty of these monsters and perhaps thirty half-tracks and trucks, and the whole lot came thundering into Segeberg to the bafflement and apprehension of the locals, who had very much an 'enough already' attitude as far as the war was concerned. To their evident relief, this did not turn out to be some last ditch counteroffensive; instead all the Tigers, Panthers, and trucks formed up in a leaguer on the local football field, tightly guarded by their own crews, and we, in turn, had a guard ring around them – real Chinese box fashion.

…Geiger and Count Dohna, evidently convinced of our zeal and our discretion, promised us a tiny preview that night, just a glimpse, rather like throwing a single fish to a seal.

It was a moonless night, and I was once again heading out into the countryside. Geiger was at the wheel and Teddy and I were in the back of that Kuebelwagen. First he drove at a speed which dimmed-out headlights allowed, then he switched them off and really hit the accelerator. It was so dark a night that we could barely see him in the front seat, and while he had not given the impression of being nuts, I guess you do not have to be Japanese to go kamikaze. Before we could think of some way of saving ourselves, Geiger just as abruptly slowed down, stopped, and suggested that Teddy take the wheel and watch the road through a particular portion of the windscreen. Teddy did, said, 'well, I'll be damned' and proceeded to go even faster than Geiger.

Then it was my turn, and there it was: if you looked through a rectangular area in the windscreen, maybe six-inches-by-four, the entire road ahead was clearly visible in a pale greenish light for perhaps fifty yards or more. That was it – the 'black searchlight,' as some garbled press reports called it many years later. Geiger told us that every tank and vehicle in his unit was fitted with it, that the tank beam was considerably longer and had enabled them to mount numerous successful night attacks against Russian armor. I have no idea how it worked, and I doubt whether they knew; the fact was that, if you threw a switch, you got that beam, which was totally invisible unless you looked through the screen.

So we drove right back to the mess and called our masters then and there, told them all about it and expressed the conviction that if they showed no interest the Yanks would, which was one sure way to get some reaction out of them. Needless to add, the Americans got it in the end, but at least we tried.

By the morning the place was swarming with eggheads and security wallahs, one peering and poking about and the other making us swear all kinds of blood oaths that we had not seen what we had seen, and by mid-day everybody was gone…I never saw any of them again nor heard anything about the gadget , until sometime in the 1960s, when there were press reports about night-fighting equipment of extraordinary efficacy, which British and American tanks had been using in Korea, and of which prototype was a German World War II development."

German aircraft had I/R detectors very early in the war (1941 – 1942, if I recall correctly, but could have been in development as early as 1940), for nightfighting, so I see no reason to not believe they didn't at least do a little wartime testing with land-based equipment too.

The aircraft-borne units did work, but detection ranges were short, so deemed to be less than satisfactory compared to aerial radar.

Given the push to get new "wonder weapons" to the front, I'd be surprised if some German units didn't field I/R equipped Panthers with their supportive halftracks too.

Wow!. That was a very interesting data mkenny!
Thanks for share.

Amicalement
Armand