What would you have seen through an Infrared Scope/Sight?

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

What is the Actual Picture a WWII Tank Crew or Sniper would have seen through his IR Night Sight? Having Played some Arma I really wonder, since it does make quite a good Deal of Difference what Color Scheme it is, what the general Landscape looks like and how to make out the enemy in it. 

[unreasonable]

The image on 1st generation image intensifiers like the radioactive Starlight scopes I had the dubious pleasure of having to use in the early eighties (already obsolete) was florescent green  - and very grainy.  

WW2 sights were active IR - but the reflected IR light still had to be converted to visible light, so the choice of colour would have been driven by the same concerns as for moderns scopes, I think.

 

Green emitters last longest and most people have best eye sensitivity at that wavelength but in principle it could have been anything. Ie, I do not actually know....

Grainy I am sure: WW@ systems like the WW2 Vampir or M3 all had very short ranges.

 

Green and grainy would still be my best guess in the absence of a specific source.

Edited March 15, 2017 by unreasonable

[ZachariasX]

Green and grainy would still be my best guess in the absence of a specific source

It's even worse. They did only magnify the reflected IR light form the spotlight, a normal spotlight just with a filter in front of it to emit only in the high IR range. The traditional black light you can buy at any store.

 

The trouble is now that this high IR light does not contain IR signatures coming from the objects themselves (heat signatures), meaning you see ONLY what is reflected from the spotlight. The image is therefore like black and white (greenish, depending on the tube used) blurred image from a flash light in total darkness.

 

And for this you are carrying some 15 kg of batteries on your back. A questionable joy, as you are restricted to a staw vison. You may easier aquire an already identified target, but out there in the battlefield it certainly is not the "night vision" you have when you "activate it" in todays computer games. Straw vision is one way to get you killed if you are within 100 m or your quarry.

 

For tanks, the same predicament holds true. You might see something trough your visor, but tanks are very noisy and slow. If you drive a Panther, all soldiers even far out of your line of fire will identify you. You even wake them up should they consider sleeping at night. It's not cool sitting in a Tank when a platoon of enemy soldiers can creep up on you and light your tank.

 

There are no confirmed accounts that I'd know of, where night vision on a tank (or soldier) was used to some success.

Edited March 15, 2017 by ZachariasX

[Gunsmith86]

Here is the best information i could find:

http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby01.pdf

 

Part 2 with all the german stuff:

http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby02.pdf

 

Edited April 8, 2017 by Gunsmith86