Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
with a World War One idea reborn for World War Two.
This is a Deckungszielgerät
(which I'm probably nowhere close to pronouncing right).
But it is a trench rifle system,
a trench rifle periscope system,
designed not in 1918, but in 1942.
So basically what happened is the German army got into Russia, kind of got into a stalemate.
And combat in many places actually deteriorated into a trench warfare
situation with enemy snipers that was remarkably reminiscent of World War One,
at least for the Germans.
And so they had this problem of anyone who sticks their head up outside the trench gets shot,
so what can we do about this?
What is there in perhaps our bag of tricks from the last war
that might be applicable here?
And the answer is ... one of these guys.
The Germans, as well as pretty much everyone else,
had developed this sort of system for trench warfare in World War One.
The idea being it is a mechanism that allows you to lift
the rifle about a foot or two above the shooter.
There is some sort of linkage connection for the trigger.
There is a periscopic sight so that you can look in down here
with your head nicely safe below the trench line,
and look out up here down the sights of the rifle.
Now what made these contraptions really contraption-y in World War One
is that everyone was using bolt-action rifles.
And so all of these devices had a complicated mechanical set of linkages
so that you could cycle the bolt from down here.
To make the things a little more practical, and [not] having to set it up, aim it,
and then bring the whole thing down every time you wanted to fire another shot.
What the Germans did here is design this specifically for their self-loading rifles,
the Gewehr 41s, both Mauser and Walther made.
Now, it turns out not a ton of those got into actual field service,
and so as a stopgap they actually modified these things
to accept Russian SVT rifles that had been captured, which is kind of interesting.
And in a pinch you could also just stick a Kar98k in it, and it would fit and work.
Like this is a very German version of this sort of device, it is highly adjustable,
it is multi-purpose, it's got clamps and screws, and all sorts of bits to it.
They would eventually develop one that was lighter and specifically for the Sturmgewehr.
It's not clear exactly how many of those were actually made.
Frankly, it's not clear how many of these were made, but probably not very many.
At any rate, let's go in and take a closer look at it,
and see what did the Germans do to go back to trench warfare in 1942?
We have a great many thumb screws on this, and they serve all sorts of different purposes.
So, down here you can actually loosen up this screw on the stock,
and pivot it up like that for transport or storage,
to make the thing a little bit ... more compact.
You can also take out the front screw, and take the stock off entirely.
The periscope is actually detachable, so we have this clamp.
We can take that off, and have just the periscope itself.
There is what looks like a bolt flange on the top.
These holes are specifically there for you to attach camouflage material to.
The idea would be to set one of these things up and have the enemy not notice it,
so that you could use it for both shooting and observation in general.
The rifle is attached by a whole combination of adjustable pieces.
So we have two latches that clamp the rifle down, like so.
So I can lift this out.
And here's what we've got going on inside, there is ...
a V-rest in the bottom for the bottom of the stock.
And then this cover has two adjustable pads that you can tighten down to get the proper fit.
... The idea being this was a multi-rifle capable piece.
That bottom pad is attached down here, so it can pivot here,
and you can move the supports to a couple of different holes.
And allegedly the "R"
is where you have to position it in order to properly fit an SVT Tokarev rifle.
The trigger mechanism is also simple and modular.
So we have a trigger, right there, which connects to this pivoting lever.
And then there is a long chain hanging off.
There ... was originally a stirrup attachment that went at the end
that you would loop around the trigger on the rifle.
And note that this link can be swapped around.
So for rifles with different length of pull
you can actually adjust the length of this trigger chain to fit properly.
And so what does that all add up to? It adds up to ...
you can come down here safely below the level of enemy sight,
and actually see ...
your sights, mostly.
I don't quite have the rifle perfectly aligned,
but you can certainly see how this would work.
And it would at least sort of mostly work, certainly better than sticking your head up.
I think everyone would rather make a few less effective shots than risk a Russian sniper.
A formal manual for the device was actually published in January of 1943.
As I said at the beginning, it's not clear how many of these were made.
This particular one has been extensively refurbished and rebuilt.
But it's the closest I've ever seen to an intact one,
so I thought it would be pretty cool to bring to you guys.
And man, it's just kind of weirdly anachronistic to see a semi-auto battle rifle
clamped into a World War One periscopic trench sight.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.