Rifle Scopes and WWI

The advent of war in Europe began with grand plans on both sides that their armies would sweep the enemy from the battle field. After some rather dynamic gains on the Western Front as the war in France became known, the French entrenched themselves along a “front” and dug in. The German advance was halted and the era of “trench warfare” ensued. Pitched battles among thousands of troops charging across the barren shell pocked “no-mans-land” has been recounted in numerous movies and books. I am not going to give a history of warfare in World War I. This is about the how and why of rifle scope development.

Suffice it to say that between the massed charges across no man’s land to capture the enemy’s trench, that life in the trenches was fairly static. Troops were often fairly close (often only several hundred meters or less). The rifle scope had developed somewhat more sophisticated optics by this time. A major problem was that scopes were still frail by battlefield standards. A British manual for their scopes recommended “frequent cleaning” with a “clean cloth” something that became often impossible in the mud of trench warfare. So scopes were used, but without mass acceptance and often a good old country boy with some hunting savvy using iron sights could hit a target (helmet stuck above the top of the opposite trench). Scopes fogged often rendering them useless early and late in the day when temperatures cooled. Rain was a constant problem since the scopes of the day were not waterproof. Snipers did prove that scoped weapons shooting from a distance could inflict psychological havoc on enemy morale. There was nothing wrong with the concept of rifle scopes – but the scopes themselves needed major improvements and innovations. Scopes would be very different by the outbreak of World War II.