Adjustable Soviet gunsights

[Charon]

The Typhoon's gunsight can be adjusted for elevation when used with rockets. Now that the work of implementing this has been done, can the same feature be backported to the Soviet gunsights? The RS-82 rockets are very difficult to use against bombers without the ability to use the adjustment dial.

[BMA_FlyingShark]

Would be a good idea.

Now, I'm not sure about this but maybe the Soviet gunsight was not meant to be adjusted in flight and done on the ground to leave it there and maybe that's the reason we can't adjust it in game.

Correct me if I'm wrong tough.

 

Have a nice day.

 

[Charon]

While I've never been able to find a PBP-1 manual, I think it's clear that they were adjustable by the pilot. You can see here the large graduated knob, as well as the housing that would have held the gear mechanism. The reflector glass attaches to this housing rather than the gunsight base.

 

Many reflector gunsights weren't equipped with an adjustable reflector glass at all (early Mk 2s, US B-series reflector heads, probably type A & B San Giorgio sights, etc), and there's no need for that complexity if a pilot isn't expected to adjust it in flight.

 

This sort of adjustment for rockets is also typical of other reflector sights of this era:

 

Quote

The A- series of sighting heads was developed to allow fixed gunsights of the N- series to also serve for low level horizontal bombing (also called skip bombing) and later rocket firing. In order to do so, the line of sight could be easily and rapidly depressed (by a variation of the angle of the reflector glass) to a desired angle corresponding to a known altitude, speed and type of ordnance to be dropped. The line of sight could also very easily be restored to its “zero” position used for gunnery.

Quote

All Mods [of the Mk 8] could either be used with or without a fixed reflector glass (in which case the reticle was projected directly on the armored glass windscreen or to a reflector glass fixed directly on the windscreen) or with an Adjustable Reflector head for rocket firing and/or toss bombing.

And of course the British Mk 2: once again, an adjustable reflector glass was introduced for rocket-equipped fighters. Earlier versions of the Mk2 had a fixed glass.

 

Given how much the Soviets loved equipping planes with rockets, I think it's pretty clear that the adjustment knob must have been intended for this purpose, like adjustable gunsights in every other air-force.