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This isn’t aimed at anyone… just a rant
The Aldis sight has got to be the most miss understood piece of flying equipment in WWI (just like the Bf-109 slats in WW2).
The Aldis is a 1:1 (no magnification) collimated sight fitted with an aiming ring. It was not a telescope. It didn’t magnify the image. You didn’t need to put your eye right up against it but hold your head roughly behind, with one eye roughly lined up but with BOTH eyes open.
I’ve never used an Aldis sight but I have extensively used an almost perfect modern equivalent. It’s the standard sight on the Steyr AUG rifle used by the Australian army, a 1.5:1 collimated sight with aiming ring. The whole idea of this sight is it’s faster and easier to snap shoot with, not slower and harder like most people believe. With normal iron sights, when you have a target, you raise your rifle up that last little bit, align your head so that the front and back sights line up (this is called a sight picture) and then move the sight picture over the target. Old hands bring up the rifle so that the sights are almost perfectly aligned every time and then it only takes the slightest unconscious movement for them to get the perfect sight picture. New shooters or even old hands under pressure, often take the shot without getting the correct sight picture meaning a miss no matter how well aimed the shot. With the low magnification collimated sight of the Steyr, you spot your target, raise your rifle, roughly align your head with the sight and with both eyes still open (Huge difference from a telescope) align your sight on the target and fire. There’s no need to worry about sight pictures. If you can see the ring, that’s were the bullet will go. And as you keep both eyes open, situation awareness doesn’t drop and lining up the target is easy. When you’re rushing to get that shot, the low/zero magnification collimated sight is the way to go. The Australian army was so impressed with the Steyr sight, it is now fitted to all our Minimi LSW’s (Australian version of M249 SAW) instead of the original iron sights.
Since the Steyr was designed in the eary 1970’s, a newer generation of zero magnification collimated sights has been developed featuring a lighted aiming dot for better targeting in low light conditions. Called the red dot sight, it’s the ultimate snap shooting sight today.
What I don’t understand is why everyone keeps stating that Aldis was no good for dogfighting compared to the ring and bead. As a zero magnification collimated sight with a HUGE 5cm wide lens, it should have been kick arse in an environment where your head is being thrown around by g forces and turbulence. The fact that every airforce adopted a version of it after the war until it was replaces by the reflector sight (another zero magnification collimated sight) shows that it was.
I must admit though that it I did feel uncomfortable with the Steyr sight initially, having grown up with iron sights. I had no issues with the iron sights of the SLR and would have preferred an iron sighted Steyr but I had no choice. It didn’t take long to warm to the Steyr sight and discover how good it is. I wonder if that’s the reason some aces removed their Aldis sights on their new machines. Why change something that’s working for something new and ‘uncomfortable’, especially in a situation where losing means death…
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