[ Optics on Sturmgewehrs ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and this is a PTR-44 Sturmgewehr and that is a scope on it.
And that's what I want to talk about today, the reality, or lack thereof, of optics on Sturmgewehrs.
I think we see a lot of reference to this sort of thing in pop culture,
especially in computer games, where ZF4 scopes
are pretty common accessories on these rifles in game environments.
And I think there's a wide expectation that this was a thing.
Like it makes sense, right? We see it on guns like this, wouldn't be there if it wasn't real.
We see some pictures like this one and ... really just kind of everything follows.
It makes sense that the Germans would have put ZF4s on Sturmgewehrs,
and this was a thing that you saw ... running around in World War Two.
The reality is it actually wasn't, like not at all.
And I want to talk about what ... was the reality behind optics?
Why do we see a few of them, like this one? And what actually happened?
So we're going to start by going back to the MKb-42(H).
This is the early developmental trials version of the Sturmgewehr.
It fires from an open bolt, a few of the details look just subtly different.
And when it was developed, it was developed with the idea that it could mount an optical sight.
But it wasn't the ZF4, because the ZF4 didn't exist at this point.
This is a scope that wasn't actually developed until 1943,
and wasn't ... actually fielded until 1944.
Instead the scope that was put onto ... some of the original prototype MKbs was the ZF-41.
That's a little tiny, long eye relief, 1.5x power magnification scope
that Germany adopted as a substitute standard sniper scope.
And it was put primarily on K98k carbines.
However, there were some mounts made for some of the early MKb-42(H)s.
And I've actually got some footage here of one of those that I did a video on many, many years ago.
So that was the first iteration.
Now when the Army General Staff got a look at that,
they really liked the gun, they really didn't like that mounting system.
They specifically wanted something that was a little more traditional,
more along the lines of how you would mount a scope on a hunting rifle.
Really they wanted a side receiver mount like here.
So rather than fix that on the MKb-42s,
by the time ... there's any opportunity to fix it the MKb-42 is being phased out.
The ZF-41 is being phased out, the ZF4 is going to be the new standard scope.
the gun is now called an MP43/1 and the date is September/October of 1943.
And the German Army has decided to run a test on the new ZF4 scope that is in development.
It's a very inexpensive stamped sheet-metal tube scope, 4x power.
And it's intended to be sort of a universal scope, and it would go on to be used
on four different rifle platforms, the K98k, the G43, the FG-42 and technically speaking, the Sturmgewehr.
So let's take a quick look at how this thing goes together,
because it's kind of an unusual style of mount and scope.
So there's the gun to begin with, let's go ahead and take the scope off.
We are going to do that by taking this lever and flipping it rearward like that.
Then I can just slide ... that scope back ... (there we go) off its rail.
That rail is spot welded onto the side of the receiver.
Now it's interesting that PTR opted to put rails on all of these guns,
even though this really wasn't a thing beyond a small number of
test guns and other specialty patterns.
And they did it slightly differently than the original for understandable reasons.
On the PTR this is a single milled piece of metal that's spot welded onto the receiver.
On the originals, the scope mount was stamped.
It was a piece of sheet metal that was stamped up and around into this,
then had some ... milled shaping done up here to be a smooth mount.
But the base itself was stamped.
And the original ones are spot welded, like ... not continuously,
but they have a ton of spot welds on the top and the bottom.
So in general layout though, that's the same way that they did these test mounts.
Like I said before, this is a reproduction scope and a reproduction mount.
So this isn't intended to be a video to show you how to differentiate between original
and reproduction ZF4s and their mounts. There are a lot of reproductions out there.
I think they make a fantastic option for someone who wants to actually do some shooting
without endangering a now 80-something year old scope that can be kind of fragile.
But there are a lot of people out there who are trying to deceive collectors with fake scopes.
Anyway, the way this thing works, this is a cast mount and ... it slides onto the rail here.
And then it's got like half of a little cradle right there to hold the scope.
And then these two rather unusual style of I guess pseudo-rings.
This is a roll of flat sheet steel that has two little drums in it and a screw connecting the two.
And so you tighten this down and it pulls ... the sheet metal and the drums together,
and that tightens the scope down onto its base. It's really an unusual setup.
We have our elevation dial out here, this has a bullet drop compensator for 8mm Mauser.
And then the top drum is for windage.
And this is the exact same configuration that would be used on the G43 and K43 rifles.
So kind of cool that the scope mount is totally interchangeable between the two.
Alright, so the German Army wants to see how this is actually going to work,
and they put together a test to compare the G43 with this scope to the MP43/1 with this scope.
Now they only do one of the MP43s.
And it actually gets a slightly different scope mount
that has three vertical risers on it instead of these two.
And it is this test actually where we get the photos taken that you typically see of this rig.
It's that photo, that specific rifle, is the one rifle that was tested in September and October of '43.
And the testing turned out terrible.
The gun was ... a failure on every conceivable level.
First off, the just standard regular grouping was awful.
The average group size that this rifle gave was 6.7 inches by 10.8 inches at 100 metres.
So by our way of measuring things that's going to be just about an 11 MOA group.
From a scope and a rest, that's really bad.
They also noted that if you fired bursts, you couldn't ... use the scope for anything after the first round.
Like you couldn't actually keep a sight picture through the scope on burst,
even though it's a heavy rifle with relatively light recoil.
And they found that after 30 rounds of burst fire, after you fired a full magazine,
the scope would have completely lost its zero.
The experiment they did was empty a magazine in bursts
and then they fired 5 rounds on their target and essentially didn't hit the target.
Like the zero just completely wandered off.
So this is deemed a complete and utter failure.
The G43 doesn't do great, but it does a heck of a lot better than that.
However it is recognised that this was one test with one gun.
So maybe there was some flaw with the gun, maybe there was some problem.
And they come back in January of '44 to repeat the test.
But to give the StG a little bit better chance they actually make 10 of the guns
and put them through a similar test.
And ultimately they come to the same conclusion, like they just don't group well.
And the rationale, the reason that they come up with for this
is that this rail spot welded to the side of the StG receiver
is just not a repeatable stable mounting point for a scope.
And that is essentially the end of optics on Sturmgewehrs. It ain't going to work.
There was maybe some thought of developing a replacement after that January test.
Some alternative point that they could mount the scope on,
something that would be a little more stable.
But in April of '44 that all goes away. April '44 is when Hitler personally sends out an order
to consolidate weapons development, like, "We got too ... many weird models out there,
we need to consolidate, we need to streamline industrial production."
And that is the end of the idea of an optics mounted Sturmgewehr.
So they go back and focus more on putting ZF4s on G43s,
that's supposed to be the sharpshooter's rifle.
Now whether it worked or not is another separate story. Spoiler - it didn't really work that well.
But we do have an epilogue here.
So the short version of this is you never actually saw this in the field.
This was tested and that's it.
The standard production ... Sturmgewehrs from MP43/1s through StG44s
do not have that optics rail on them in the first place, they can't mount a scope.
So no, this essentially is not a thing.
Epilogue: the exceptions. Because there were a few.
They did put rails on some StG44s and maybe MP44s later in the war.
And those were primarily for use with the Vampir night-vision system.
That night-vision scope used the same mounting bracket that the ZF4 does.
They'd already been developed, why bother changing it?
The Vampir was a very close range system and really didn't require
the sort of precision repeatable mounting that the ZF4 did, so it was used for that purpose.
There have been just a couple of reported ZF4s calibrated for the Kurz cartridge.
Which means that they were intended for some flavour of Sturmgewehr,
or possibly actually the experimental 7.92 Kurz version of the G43,
which was a thing, and they did I believe have a scope mount on.
So only a few of these have been noted.
It's worth pointing out that the ones that do exist that appear to be real,
have elevation dials that are limited to 600 metres, where the standard here is eight.
When they did the original testing on these setups,
they didn't bother trying to calibrate the ranges.
They were just trying to find out if the mounting system would work,
and how the whole thing would go together before they went any further with the development.
So the scopes that are out there for 8mm Kurz guns specifically
are sometimes marked "P", and sometimes marked "P" and "Kurz" for the 8mm short Kurz cartridge.
Very, very scarce. My own perspective:
like I'd want some good documentation on one before I'd accept it as being legit.
There's a lot of fakes of this sort of stuff.
Really cool German World War Two stuff gets a lot of fakes to it.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Hopefully I didn't spoil too many people's video games with this not being a thing.
Thanks for watching.