Russian Thermal Scope Baigish 5P Night vision rifle scope

Russian Thermal Scope Baigish 5P Night vision rifle scope

Its Firearm Friday and we are shaking things up by focussing on a scope!

There isn't much information online but luckily we have Ron! haha so I wrangled him into writing his experience with one the Americans made...

The technology behind this scope was designed in the 1960s. The first one I saw was on an American M1 Carbine, in about 1964, the Americans were 10 years in front of the Russians, so this one is probably from the 70’s

It was horrible to look through at night, like looking into a swimming pool full of green water. During the day it had no use at all. It had a built-in infra-red lamp that shined black light toward the target, and with that unseen illumination, the scope had a hazy picture. One of our officers wanted me to fit it to an L1A1 SLR, however with the mount situation and the SLR only having a tin cover on the top of the receiver (I had to try and explain it was impossible). This scope was intended to go on a Draganov rifle, what they call an SVD, (whatever that means?) however in reality the action of the AK is a slightly smaller version than the Sniper Draganov. So the mounts could be drilled and tapped to either rifles. The vision and the accuracy of the rifles are dreadful and if in a trench battlefield someone turned on the infra red beam, it would light someone up like a Roman candle and anyone else with night vision on the other side would use it to shoot Mortars, Arial Bombs and rifle fire to the source of the beam.

No one wanted to be near anyone that tried to use them. That was why they took 60 years for further development before they became accepted.

Magnification, x 2.5XField of view, deg 7Diopter Range (Ocular adjustment),Dptr±3Supply Voltage, V 9V batteryMounting 11MM Dovetail Overall Dimensions, mm 420x105x70Weight, kg 1.5Resolution in the centre of field of vision, lin/mm 20