night vision has become a key technological advantage employed by almost all modern militaries
used on everything from helicopters to ground troops and of course modern tanks but although
this may seem like a strictly modern technology their origin can be traced all the way back to
the second world war let's journey back and uncover the early origins of these devices
throughout history there have been countless tanks all designed to kill but not all
have been a success what happened to the ones that never made it and why did they fail my name
is ConeOfArc join me as we journey through time uncovering failed projects and forgotten creations
cursed by design our story begins in 1929 with a Hungarian physicist named Kálmán Tihanyi and
his invention of an infrared camera for use on British anti-aircraft defenses this marked the
first infrared device to be invented and used in a military function the Germans would go on to
improve and implement this technology in their army with systems designed to be used with the
stg44 assault rifle among others credit for the first tanks with night vision however would not
go to the Germans surprisingly the soviets would beat the Germans by beginning development of night
vision for their tanks as early as 1939 the first two of these devices named ship or possibly spike
and dudka were intended for use on the bt7 light tank the first of these designs named
ship featured two periscopes giving the wearer an almost snail-like appearance the later dudka
design would look similar although the periscopes were inverted both only allowed the driver access
to nighttime visibility with a narrow field of view of only 24 degrees in an extremely limited
range of 50 meters that visibility wasn't much but it was satisfactory enough to be put into
production being produced in plant number 211. the soviets did not stop there however and during the
war 1942 to be precise they began another project to create a night vision device this time for the
t-34 this device was still only intended to be used by the driver to allow movement at night
like the previous design work was continued on this design until the fall of 1944. after
this the device known as the ikn-8 was installed and tested on the t-34 85 this work would prove
to be critical in early post-war night vision development for the soviets although it was not
used much during the war as i mentioned earlier however the Germans also attempted to harness this
technology for their armored vehicles in 1942 an infrared device was designed for use on the pac-40
and troop testing was favorable enough that it was decided to begin development for use on tanks as
well several vehicles were equipped with this system and specific dates are spotty but one of
the first was a martyr ii self-propelled gun with the system mounted above the gun as pictured here
the next and most famous use was on the panther tank two separate versions were used on the
panther with the first only being usable by the commander and was intended to provide 360 degree
vision for him the commander would then provide directions to the driver who would be completely
reliant on him since he had no vision system for himself the range of this device was twice that of
the soviet counterpart with 100 meters range and a slightly improved 30 degree field of view in
order to increase the view range a much stronger infrared equipped vehicle known as the Uhu or owl
was developed built on the Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251 this would allow visibility up to a maximum
of 700 meters for the panthers sites and a maximum observable range of 1500 meters the second version
to be placed on the panther would provide the driver gunner and commander with vision by using
three separate night vision devices however the information is extremely spotty with fake images
and information the use of this second variation is not completely impossible though with some
information potentially describing it within some British reports but i was unable to locate these
so without conclusive evidence this is just a possibility regardless this technology saw
very little use during the war but it was still fielded as examples were captured by the allies
and soviets as the Germans abandoned their tanks today one panther equipped with a reproduction of
the fg 1250 night vision device exists although it is currently not on display from what i could find
clunky and fragile the systems employed during the second world war may not have been instrumental
to victory but they paved the way for future warfare technology in the years following the
second world war night vision technology would go on to be used in every conflict from the Korean
war to today to varying degrees for this reason world war ii night vision is commonly considered
as generation zero for the evolution of this technology with generation one not being fully
introduced until the Vietnam war a special thanks to all my YouTube members for choosing this topic
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