British 6 Pdr Gun Sight!

[staff]

Hi Johnny,

Just landed on on your find whilst researching some 6pdr details and thought you might like to know that this sight was also used on the airborne 20mm Polsten canon but probably with different optics. The key on the top as you probably know was for aligning the sight in it's mounting or bracket at top dead centre. This type of sight as far as I know was not used on the six pounder anti tank gun as the No22c MkI, II and III were favored.

Regards Louis (Staff)

[eddy8men]

hi louis
i think you might be wrong about the no. 39 sight being used on the polsten as this was a british tank sight and the polsten is an american aa gun and as far as i know the 2 countries didn't use each others optics but you are right about the smaller no.22 being used on the anti tank gun.


eddy

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Eddy, no the Polsten gun is British made in this case.

My friends built 3 replicas of these. I found them the guns

I have pics of them on the forum, I think?

But here is a link to some on the net:

Bolton IPMS 20mm Polsten

Cheers, Ade.

[eddy8men]

hi ade
that is a bit of a revelation, i thought the quad polsten was american. thanks for putting me straight. i might also be wrong about the sight aswell then as all the british tank sights look the same externally so it's concievable that the same shape sight fitted with different optics could have been used. i collect british sighting telescopes and thought i had them all i would be very interested to find out if it's true about the polsten sight being the same.
that's the trouble with sighting telescopes, there's hardly any information available either online or in books.

cheers

eddy

[staff]

Hi Eddy, the polsten gunsight is the No29 Mk1 and is externally very similar to yours, I can tell you that the word POLSTEN appears on the optic when you look through and the reason this type of sight was used was because it was anticipated that the weapon would be used more in the ground support role by airborne troops, in any case the airborne carrage had a spider sight for anti-aircraft. Like ade's friends who I also know I will be building four of the airborne versions next year and already have the sights. If you let me have an email I will send you some pictures. The Polsten was a British/Polish weapon hence the name POL=Poland and the STEN company. The Americans used the Oerlikon and the Hispano. The Polsten and the Oerlikon used the Oerlikon snail mags and had interchangeable ammo, where as the Hispano had it's own 20mm round. The Quad Polsten is actually a Canadien/British weapon, The mount is of canadien design and the barells are of course British. The Polsten was also used in various roles mounted as singles, doubles, trebles and quads on armour and softskins.

Regards Louis

[eddy8men]

thanks louis, first let me apologise for casting doubt on your post i had thought the sights were only used in afv's, i was wrong and although i must admit i don't like being wrong it's still great to get a bit of new information about sighting telescopes. i have collected all the british telescopes except for the no. 24, 29 and 34 so it's great to learn a little bit more about them. cheers.
about the only useful article i have found online is the link below which states the no. 29 as being used for the 25 pdr field gun but i have spoken to the president of the 25pdr association and he had the no. 41 as the direct fire sight on his gun so i wouldn't put too much store in that article and to be honest unlike the tank sights which are marked for the main gun and mg combination the graticules are a simple cross hair and the letters R & L meaning right and left so it could be used for any gun, anyway thanks again for putting me straight.

cheers
eddy

British Sighting Telescopes

ps. pm sent with my email

[grinch983]

hello there johnny-D in answer to you question "Would this have originally been painted black" hope my photo will help you i found this scope the other day in a charity shop