Tweet
Infra Red night vision technology had already been discovered before WW2 so the concepts were known, it was just that there was nothing really suitable for military use until late in the war. In fact it was the man who invented television, John Logie Baird, that first conceived of IR vision in the 1920s but he's given little/no credit for his ideas (or for the appropriately 1920s Pulp name he gave it - the Noctovision apparatus).
Most early IR vision systems developed by the Allies focused on night driving for convoys rather than combat which is probably why we hear more about the Germans apparent use and so little about the Allied use. The German were the opposite with their attempts directed towards night combat and their earliest systems were actually fitted to artillery and AT guns. The British developed a night driving system called Tabby that consisted of IR lights on the vehicle and the driving wearing a pair of night vision binoculars - that weighed 4kg.
There's a good set of pages here that discussed night fighting and the general history of night vision gear - even the Soviets had a go at producing night vision devices
Most early IR vision systems developed by the Allies focused on night driving for convoys rather than combat which is probably why we hear more about the Germans apparent use and so little about the Allied use. The German were the opposite with their attempts directed towards night combat and their earliest systems were actually fitted to artillery and AT guns. The British developed a night driving system called Tabby that consisted of IR lights on the vehicle and the driving wearing a pair of night vision binoculars - that weighed 4kg.
There's a good set of pages here that discussed night fighting and the general history of night vision gear - even the Soviets had a go at producing night vision devices
Comment