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In the European theater of World War 2, as early as 1943, the German Army deployed a small number of special Panther tanks into the field. These Nachtjäger or “night fighter” tanks had been equipped with powerful search lights, however these lights did not cast light in the visible spectrum. They emitted invisible infrared light, with beams stretching about 600 meters. Inside the tank, operators viewed the scene from outside via a small monochrome cathode ray tube (CRT) that was fed through an image intensifier, which converted the infrared spectrum into visible light. In this way, operators of the Nachtjäger Panther tanks had a crude system to see outside when in complete darkness—essentially the first practical night vision apparatus. Some 50 to 60 such night vision tanks were deployed throughout the war.
Toward the very end of the war, some German soldiers were similarly outfitted with the new “Vampir” variant of the Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle. The Vampir was equipped with a miniaturized, backpack-powered night-vision scope for nighttime sniping. Advanced as they were for the time, whether or not these weapons contributed to any battlefield victories is uncertain.
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I have frequently commented that the Germans would have won the war if the Allies had not had overwhelming numbers of men and massive amounts of equipment.
The Germans’ technology was far superior, but they didn’t have enough of it to combat the Allies combined strength.
And thank Heaven that they did not.
My grandfather told me a story related to this. After the Germans started using the infrared search lights there were a few Allied soldiers who reported seeing them. There weren’t many reports and they were scattered throughout the forces so it took a little time for their commanding officers to realize that the soldiers weren’t crazy. It turns out that some people can see far enough into the infrared spectrum that they were able to see the spotlights.
While the German technology was superior in some areas, such as tanks, they were lacking in certain key areas. Most notably, computing and cryptography, centimetric radar and heavy bomber design. They also took on most of the world, all at the same time, which was both crazy and stupid in equal measure.