Saturday, May 19, 2012

CAN ANYBODY ID THIS AUSSIE VIETNAM SLR SCOPE?


4 comments:

Jim Fryar said...

Not sure what type Bawb, but if it is Vietnam era, it is unofficial. Snipers were given a fair bit of latitude.

I did a small arms coaching course at Singleton in 75/76 and at that stage they were just toying with the idea of optical scopes on military rifles. There was talk of using the SMLE rebareled to 7.62 as a snipers weapon at the time, not sure what happened with that.

The most accurate weapon we had there was the 7.62 Bren, with which most of us could belt out a sub 1" five shot group consistently at 200 meters.

Actually three of the instructors were US Army guys who were bloody good but crazier than even us on the piss. Great time.

Bawb said...

Officially, you guys adopted a version of the Canadian Leitz 4x "Sniper Scope C1" after they "tropic-proofed" it. I don't think there were too many of them. Seems to be an expensive collector's item now.

The scope in the pic looks similar to, but not quite the same, as the Belgian OIP scope set-up. I'm thinking you're right in it being an unofficial set-up.

Oldies but goodies. I think some Indian Army units are still using the L4 7.62mm version of the Bren gun.

Last I knew, the native Canadian Arctic Rangers were still using standard .303 No. 4 SMLE's. I reckon if I ran around in a place where polar bears are not adverse to eating two-legged meals I'd want to be throwing something larger than 5.56mm pills at them too.

Jim Fryar said...

Off topic Bawb, but Redstate has a Roll of Honor from Afghanistan 2012 listing 25 names. 6 of them are officers and 10 are Sgt S/Sgt etc.

It seems rather top heavy and I was wondering if you have some idea why?

http://www.redstate.com/hooah_mac/2012/05/28/memorial-day-2012-freedom-is-not-free/

Bawb said...

Good junior leaders actually LEADING from the front get in harm's way a lot more often, I would suspect.

OTOH, some folks who are not ready to be junior leaders get promoted anyway because there simply is no one else.

The REMFs did away with battlefield commissions ages ago, and did other things to make REMF promotions easier to come by and combat promotions harder to come by.

OBVIOUSLY a BA degree in Hispanic Women's Studies makes you a better officer than 4-5 combat tours and ten years' service as an NCO.