Indirect Fire from Springfields 



A periscope attachment and a twenty-five-shot 

 magazine are two of the important improvements 



By Edward C. Grossman 



The rifle is growing bulk- 

 ier as its uses increase 



ERISCOPE at- 

 tachments for 

 the rifle are an 

 old story from the 

 days of 1915 when 

 Tommy Atkins put 

 a rude contrivance of 

 sticks and pocket 

 mirrors on his Lee- 

 Enfield and 

 went to potting 

 at the Germans 

 across the way. 

 Periscope, in case 

 you've forgotten, 

 means in this con- 

 nection merely 

 an arrangement 

 of two mirrors, 

 one up in the line of sight on the barrel of 

 the rifle, the other down at the level of 

 the eye, well below the trench parapet, 

 enabling the soldier to aim and fire the 

 rifle while remaining far below the line 

 of the barrel. 



The new combination developed by our 

 Army Ordnance Bureau is put on with- 

 out permanent alteration of the rifle. 

 Our Ordnance Officers look with jaun- 

 diced eye on anything for the rifle that 

 Entails machining or alteration of the gun. 

 The periscope is so mounted that the 

 shooter can stand below the lip of the 

 trench parapet, protected from the over- 

 head fire of shrapnel, which is not true of 

 all periscopes. Also it is so hung that the 

 recoil of the rifle swings the lens away 

 from the eye, instead of pushing the 

 shooting optic all over the face as is the 

 case with some periscopes. An extension 

 enables the trigger to be pulled from the 

 level of the shooter. 



The second point is that the rifle is 

 fitted with a twenty-five-shot magazine in- 

 stead of the customary five shots of the ser- 

 vice rifle. The change is made by merely 

 sliding the present floor-plate out and 

 sliding the top of the frame of the new 

 magazine into its place. This enables a 

 great number of shots to be fired without 



taking the rifle down to reload. The 

 Germans are said to have fitted up a num- 

 ber of their Mausers with these large 

 capacity magazines some time ago. There 

 is without doubt, much need for greater 

 capacity than the present five-shot, clip- 

 loading magazine. 



The third novel point about the con- 

 verted rifle is the use of translucent rear 

 sight, colored red or green. The front 

 sight is colored the one or the other of the 

 contrasting colors — green when the rear 

 sight is red, and vice-versa. The in- 

 ventor, trying out his rifle in actual trench 

 fighting, found that with the ordinary 

 metallic sights, showing, of course, merely 

 black in silhouette against a mark and 

 hard to distinguish, the rifleman could not 

 always define the objective, as the greenish 

 uniform of the German soldiers did not 

 throw them up in sharp relief. Often mist 

 confused the issue still more. So he evolved 

 the contrasting front sight, a vivid green 

 or a violent red. 



The advantage of the translucent slide 

 is that it does not cover up the mark, and 

 enables the rifleman to pick it up much 

 more quickly than is possible when using 

 the steel slide with the small aperture of 

 the service rifle. This should prove very 

 valuable in trench fighting. 



The trigger is pulled from the level of the 

 shooter by means of an extension mechanism 



388 



