Wwii Imperial Japanese Dive Bomber Sight Cased Ww2

This is one of the more unique and some ways iconic pieces of Second World War militaria I have ever had the opportunity to offer. This item a Japanese Type 95 Sight, used on the famous Aichi D3A “VAL” Dive Bomber. Oigee Nihon-Kogaku produced the sights, and I believe that this was the predecessor to today’s Nikon optics company. The optical sight was mounted on the front of the aircraft, just forward of the cockpit windscreen, and was used to line up the target for a dive-bombing run. The dive-bombing sight apparently had no cross hairs or other alignment features, other than a limited 20-degree field of view, which allowed the pilot to roughly gauge where his bomb would land, if dropped from the correct angle of attack. Another version of the Type-95 sight was manufactured with a cross hair reticle for use as a machine gun sight on fighter aircraft. The more advanced Type 99 sight that saw use during the last part of WWII had enhanced optics and aiming reticles and was not nearly as simple as the Type 95 sight. The Type 95 sight was a simple Galilean optical tube with no magnification and a 20-degree field of view. The sight was made from a threaded brass tube, with two slightly larger threaded pieces on the ends, which accepted the front and rear lens mounts. A groove inside the front of the tube allowed the crosshair reticle to be mounted when the sight was used as a machine gun sight. A pair of screw-adjustable bands, much like scope mounts for a rifle, allowed the attachment of the sight to the mounts on the front of the aircraft. The front of the sight was protected by a rounded conical cover, which was held in place by a spring-loaded rod. The rod extended the length of the sight tube and terminated in a short, curved, L-shaped projection. This rod could be actuated by an extension rod from within the cockpit, to push the lens cover out, and rotate it out of the field of view, when the sight was used. The rest of the time that the plane was in flight the front of the sight was covered to prevent damage to or obstruction of the lens. All of the exterior surfaces of the sight were painted black to reduce glare and reflection, while the inside of the brass tube was left unfinished. The sights were removed from the planes between missions, and were only mounted when the planes were armed and readied for flight. When the sight was removed, it was stored in a special hinged wooden case, numbered to the sight. The sight tubes were 26” long (about 28.5” with the front lens protector in place) and the main body was made from a piece of brass tubing with an exterior diameter of 1.825” (about 46mm). The front and rear lens mounts have exterior diameters of 2.12” (about 54mm), with the actual ocular pathway being about 1.73” (or roughly 44mm).The Japanese Aichi D3A1 Dive Bomber, code named VAL by the US, was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in 1939. It was a single engine aircraft, and was the first monoplane dive-bomber to use on Japanese aircraft carriers, replacing the obsolete D1A bi-plane. The official Japanese Navy designation for the plane was the Navy Type 99 Carrier Bomber Model 11. The D3A design was based in part upon the Heinkel He 70 Blitz a German plane that was used primarily for mail runs commericially and saw some limited use as a military reconnaissance and light bomber during the Spanish Civil War and early in WWII. The D3A had the same low-mount elliptical wings as the He 70 and due to its relatively slow cruising speed it was found that fixed landing gear were not an impediment. In fact they provided useful drag while the bomber was diving, and reduced cost and time in the manufacture of the planes. The D3A1 had a 1070 hp engine, allowing the plane a maximum speed of 242mph (389km/h). Its service ceiling was 30,500 feet and it had a maximum range of 915 miles (1,472 km). The plane carried a crew of two, a pilot and radio operator/rear gunner. Its armament consisted of two forward firing 7.7mm Type 97 machine guns, a flexible Type 92 7.7mm machine gun mounted in the rear, operated by the radioman/gunner, and its primary weapon a single 250kg (551 lb) bomb (sometimes replaced with a pair of 60kg / 132lb bombs). The plane was 33” 5” in length and had a wingspan of 47” 2”. The D3A1 was very successful during its initial operations and played a major role in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, scoring a number of hits on both US warships and land targets. Additional havoc was caused by D3A1s strafing US a variety of targets at Pearl Harbor. During the course of the war, Aichi D3As (both A1s and their later production replacement the A2s) were directly responsible for the sinking no less than 22 allied ships, not to mention the many that were damaged by D3As during joint aircraft attacks, but actually sunk by torpedo bombers. Among the more famous allied ships to be sunk by the D3As were the British heavy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire, the British aircraft carrier HMS Herm