German and Soviet Aircraft Gunsights

[LukeFF]

How many mils does each marking represent on the various aircraft gunsights? I think the German Revi is 6 mils per tick mark, but what about the Soviet gunsights?

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

How many mils does each marking represent on the various aircraft gunsights? I think the German Revi is 6 mils per tick mark, but what about the Soviet gunsights?

 

I'll look at my Revi documents later this evening if somebody doesn't issue an accurate reply before that time.

 

EDIT: I missed that last part... Unfortunately, I have no documentation on the VVS's gunsights and no resources to gather any.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Space_Ghost

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

So far I can only find flight sim sources which can sometimes be less than accurate, but I'll list it anyway if you find the estimations useful.

 

VVS PBP1 inner circle was 133mils just like RAF gunsight circles

 

The dashes inside the circle represent 4 mils each

 

EDIT: It is worth mentioning that the Soviet mil was 1/6000 of a circle.
 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Lucas_From_Hell

[LukeFF]

So far I can only find flight sim sources which can sometimes be less than accurate, but I'll list it anyway if you find the estimations useful.

 

 

 

EDIT: It is worth mentioning that the Soviet mil was 1/6000 of a circle.

 

 

The crazy thing is I remember looking at that linked page years and years ago. 

 

So, indeed it looks like the Soviet sights are 4 mils per tick mark, and 6 mils for the German ones.

[Sokol1]

Topic about PBP-1 in Russian side of forum: http://forum.il2sturmovik.ru/topic/593-pbp-1b-realizaciya-v-bzs/page-1

[SCG_Tzigy]

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=3663&mirror=5229

 

horrido revi gunsight guide

 

circle represents 100 mils i believe.... so the tick mark can not be 6 mils....

 

spit wingspan 12 m, fits once in the circle, the distance is 120m, not 300 as mentioned in one the references above....

[Cybermat47]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what is a mil?

[=362nd_FS=RoflSeal]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what is a mil?

3.438 minutes of arc, aka 0.0573 degrees

Edited December 3, 2015 by RoflSeal

[LukeFF]

circle represents 100 mils i believe.... so the tick mark can not be 6 mils....

 

spit wingspan 12 m, fits once in the circle, the distance is 120m, not 300 as mentioned in one the references above....

 

You're right. I ran a test with icons on, with the target plane being an Il-2. Wingspan of an Il-2 is roughly 14.5 meters. When the Il-2 filled the gunsight, the range shown was 160 meters, but it was probably closer to 150 meters.

 

So, 14.5 meters x 1000 = 14500. 14500 / 150 = about 96 mils. So yeah, the Revi's gotta be 100 mils wide. 

 

[LukeFF]

BTW, on the P-40, which has the N-3A gunsight, the width of the reticle is 70 mils.

Edited September 5, 2016 by LukeFF

[LukeFF]

And for the Italian gunsight, some info I picked up from elsewhere:

 

The angular separation between adjacent central dots was 28 mils, or 56 mils between the outer ones of the three.

The inner circle radius was 60 mils (3.43 degrees), or a diameter of 120 mils, or some 1.2X larger than the Revi's 100 mil diameter circle.

The outer circle radius was 118 mils (6.73 degrees), or a diameter of 236 mils.

[GunnyHighway]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what is a mil?

Everyone is born ignorant, so don't apologize. Besides, few people know what a mil is.

 

A mil is a measurement unit in Sniper Gun sight (Mil dot), Tank sight, Aircraft gun sight also called "Collimator", Submarine periscopes, etc...which represents 1 meter of length, width or height of a target which is at 1,000 meters away from you.

So by measuring how many amount of Mills graduation your target is filling up into the sight, through a quick mathematical calculation, you can estimate the distance between you and your target. A mil is also called a Strich in German, (i dont have a Cyrillic keyboard), but it is called once translated from Russian into English a Mil radian.

 

It is to be noted that if a Mil represents 1 meter of length, width or height of a target at 1,000 meters away from you, a mil can also represents 0.5 meters of length, width, or height of a target at 500 meters away from you. It can sound confusing at first but when you take the time to think about it, it is very logical.

 

I hope that answered your question

[SCG_Tzigy]

And for the Italian gunsight, some info I picked up from elsewhere:

 

The angular separation between adjacent central dots was 28 mils, or 56 mils between the outer ones of the three.

 

The inner circle radius was 60 mils (3.43 degrees), or a diameter of 120 mils, or some 1.2X larger than the Revi's 100 mil diameter circle.

 

The outer circle radius was 118 mils (6.73 degrees), or a diameter of 236 mils.

 

Awesome!!!! was looking for that info, also

[LukeFF]

Awesome!!!! was looking for that info, also

 

My pleasure! Learning about how these gunsights were designed has helped me quite a bit with improving my gunnery.

[Cybermat47]

My pleasure! Learning about how these gunsights were designed has helped me quite a bit with improving my gunnery.

Same here. I used to just shoot at anything that was in my sights. Now that I've realised that the sight doesn't just tell me where I'm shooting, but also how far away a plane is, I started hitting things a lot more

[LukeFF]

BTW, while on the topic of aircraft gunsights, this is a really good page detailing some info about them: http://www.aircraft-gunsights.com/80-2/

[Cybermat47]

BTW, while on the topic of aircraft gunsights, this is a really good page detailing some info about them: http://www.aircraft-gunsights.com/80-2/

Great, thanks for the link

 

-snip-

Thanks for the explanation, I'll save it to my harddrive

Edited December 4, 2015 by Cybermat47

[Lippisch]

How many mils does each marking represent on the various aircraft gunsights? I think the German Revi is 6 mils per tick mark, but what about the Soviet gunsights?

I saw this topic and decided it was actually in my own interest to learn it for myself since I can never hit anything. 

From my not-so-scientific, empirical testing, I've come up with the following formula to approximate target distance using the Soviet gunsight:

 

[(Target Wingspan x 100)] / [No. of Gradations the Target Fits]

 

So chasing a He-111 with the cross-hair centred on him, as his wingspan fills the space between the first gradation on each sides, he should be at about 1150m. The kill-zone is between that and when the He-111 fills the span of the next 2 marked gradations - ~575m. Any closer and you'll be copping his turrets. 

 

Now the gunsight only has 8 grads marked, 4 to each side even though we can imagine that including the inner circle, there are 7 to each side. Why? Well you don't need more than that. A He-111 filling all the marked grads will be ~288m away, and a 109G2 only ~124m. Much too close! Simply, everything is in an effective kill range at the 4grad span (so 2 marks in each side if you're centered on the target). None of this matters unless you're accurate and collected, however.   No need to worry about mils this 1/1000 that or 1/6000 circle... but I guess this does mean each grad represents 10mil, right? By only multiplying by 100, we simplify the calculation so that we can just speak in grads as marked on the gunsight, not multiples of mils.   I'm not sure what the circles are really for, perhaps just for guestimating targeting error with rockets and bombs?

 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Lippisch

[Lippisch]

Mils are something much more appropriate to Sniper rifles where a 1.6m person would fit between the first vertical mil-dot of his scope and the crosshair at 1.6km. Similarly it assists him to target a 2.5m moving car if it fits between the first two mildots, then he will know that his range is 1250m. Another example is an artillery gunner aiming for a 20m cluster of camp-tents and perhaps the target is 2mils wide on his powerful binoculars then he knows the target is at 10km. 

In an aircraft, the definition of a mil begins to lose clarity as we approach much larger targets at much closer distances than a sniper would.  As magnification of the optic increases (smaller Field of View), the representative increments of the mil-dots should decrease. 

[LukeFF]

10 mils per tick mark does seem to be correct for the PBP-1, based on what I read here.

[GunnyHighway]

The correct formula for establishing distance with mil graduation is:

 

Height or Length, or Width, or Wingspan of your target (any part of your target already measured and/or belonging to its specification or identification card), divided by the amount of Mil graduation the target fills up in your sight then multiplied by one thousand.

(H or L or W or Wsp ÷ x mil) x 1000 

 

You can then for example establish the distance to a road sign post if you know its heights, in case there is a road sign close to a non-measured target or there is no visible target part identifiable. You can establish distance to any point anywhere as long as you know its measured dimension.

Edited December 4, 2015 by GunnyHighway

[Sokol1]

Curiosity about the PPB-1b: Their grid is visible with natural light.

 

In the daytime, it' necessary to remove the light bulbs cap, since otherwise, if the pilot forgets to (turn ON) "sight light," the grid in general will not be visible (in the first version of IL2 2001, the sight was more faint, we can assume that the developers then forgot to remove the cap). 

[bivalov]

apparently, you can take numbers for PBP-1A from manual for PBP-1B (27 february 1945) - https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=D32CCE9E5BA48D80!15029&ithint=file%2cpdf&app=WordPdf&authkey=!ANd3vdMBOpkPCEQ

Edited December 4, 2015 by bivalov

[LukeFF]

apparently, you can take numbers for PBP-1A from manual for PBP-1B (27 february 1945) - https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=D32CCE9E5BA48D80!15029&ithint=file%2cpdf&app=WordPdf&authkey=!ANd3vdMBOpkPCEQ

 

Thanks!

Edited December 9, 2015 by LukeFF

[Riderocket]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what is a mil?

A mil, is also known as a millimetre, 10 mil is about 1cm (1 centre metre)

[LukeFF]

Ok, so the mystery of the Soviet PBP gunsight has been solved. Per Han:

 

10 mils one line

65 mils small ring radius

100 mils large ring radius

Edited December 9, 2015 by LukeFF

[Wulf]

The most useful guide I've found, to the use of reflector gun sights, is the RAF manual, 'Bag the Hun', originally published in 1943.

 

The guide is obviously concerned with British reflector units but as you'll already be aware, the sights are really all much the same.

 

If you want to learn how to use your gun sight for range estimation and the calculation of angle-off in deflection shooting this should help.  In particular it moves people away from an overly narrow focus on the 'details', which although interesting, are in reality of little real use in actual combat.

 

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, download it and have a look. 

 

 

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=3084

Edited December 9, 2015 by Wulf

[LukeFF]

The most useful guide I've found, to the use of reflector gun sights, is the RAF manual, 'Bag the Hun', originally published in 1943.

 

The guide is obviously concerned with British reflector units but as you'll already be aware, the sights are really all much the same.

 

If you want to learn how to use your gun sight for range estimation and the calculation of angle-off in deflection shooting this should help.  In particular it moves people away from an overly narrow focus on the 'details', which although interesting, are in reality of little real use in actual combat.

 

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, download it and have a look. 

 

 

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=3084

 

Good stuff, thanks.

[The_Sparrow]

Awesome posts Lippisch and Wulf! Thank you.

 

With the sights for the Lagg-3 and Yak-1, have they removed the outer ring (the 100 mil radius) in game?

 

The total circle seems to be 130 mil, which would put an enemy 109 around 77m away or a 30m bomber conveniently 230 away. 4 marks = 250 for fighter, while one circle = 230 for bomber, which is why I set 250 as my convergence.

Edited December 10, 2015 by The_Sparrow

[LukeFF]

With the sights for the Lagg-3 and Yak-1, have they removed the outer ring (the 100 mil radius) in game?

 

The total circle seems to be 130 mil, which would put an enemy 109 around 77m away or a 30m bomber conveniently 230 away. 4 marks = 250 for fighter, while one circle = 230 for bomber, which is why I set 250 as my convergence.

 

You have to get in closer to see the outer ring of the Soviet gunsight.

 

As for the other part: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19684-german-and-soviet-aircraft-gunsights/?do=findComment&comment=312935 

Edited December 10, 2015 by LukeFF

[216th_Peterla]

Thanks for all the information contained in your posts. I still need to carefully read all to made a proper sketch.

This is quite important to properly aim at enemies on air and ground. Quite interesting.

Regards and thanks.

[andyw248]

Great topic, thanks for all the details and links!

[LukeFF]

 

 

Even on the 109 with central guns I seemed to be now be getting much more damage done because I at least know at what distance I am firing, maybe it also takes in some vertical convergence?

 

You don't really need to worry about convergence with nose-mounted guns, since they are positioned so close together and thus fire straight ahead. Range is the only thing really important with that weapon arrangement. 

[Retaliator]

Thanks all for the very precious contributions. 

 

According to this document : http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=3654

 

the russian gunsight markers are 9 mils each. So, 64 inner ring, 99 outer AS RADIUS not diameter. 

 

Could someone please help me confirming these two calculations?

 

1) According to my calculations then, the British and German rings are approximately at the same 100 mils in diameter, but the Russian inner ring is at 130 mills in diameter and the outer at 200 mills, so double the size of the others.

Is this correct?

 

2) Furthermore, according to the "Bag the Hun" document, can we say that to aim a plane at an angle off of 30° you should center it at 75 mils radius? This comes out for the fact that at 20° angle off you should aim at 50 mils radius, and adding or subtracting 25 mils each 10° variation of angle off. Does this make sense?

Thank you!

[LukeFF]

According to this document : http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=3654

 

the russian gunsight markers are 9 mils each. So, 64 inner ring, 99 outer AS RADIUS not diameter. 

 

Could someone please help me confirming these two calculations?

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19684-german-and-soviet-aircraft-gunsights/?do=findComment&comment=312935

Just to add something Viks sent me. The numbers are slightly different than the ones I posted up above, but not by much:

 

 

Small deflection ring: 70 mils radius

Big deflection ring: 105 mils radius