I finished Bill Bellamy's Troop Commander.  Bramwell served as a Cromwell troop commander before being given command of the recce squadron in which he he a M-24 Chaffee.  He mentions using the infrared sight on it before reverting back to the MK I eyeball.  I've never heard that our armed forces had infrared in WW II and that they were mounted in the Chaffee.  Can anyone confirm this?

In another book, I read the the British Sherman Firefly had no bow gunner as his space was used to store extra 17 pdr ammunition.  I checked out a few images in other books and lo! the bow gunner's position was plated over.  Never noticed that before.

Yes indeed, they were messing around a bit with night vision but as you can see, it was a little clunky.  I've not heard of it being used on tanks, but I'm sure it was.  Not as striking of a photo as the above I guess.

I cannot find any references specifically to the M-24, but it was technologically feasible during WWII.  The British, Germans, and the US all had IR / night vision programs going.  The Snooperscope / Sniperscope, as the previous poster mentioned, was for weapons firing at night, but there was also technology to be able to drive vehicles at night with no headlights.  There are pictures of German tanks with IR technology mounted on them, so it is possible for the British-US to do so as well.

Here are some references I found:


US---

M3 carbine article on weaponsman.com

History of Night Vision, on US Army website

PDF of Summary Technical Report- Image Forming Infrared, 1946

PDF of "Conquest of Darkness by Management of the Stars"


German--

PDF of Brief Survey of German Infrared Development

German infrared night vision devices


British--

WWII British night vision technology article

UK Ebay listing to buy a WWII UK night vision monocular

Here's an article I wrote about an experiment from 1942 fitting a Sherman with inertial navigation and night vision.

http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/The_Chieftains_hatch_Desert_M4/

It's worth noting that the German use of the IR system on Panthers was considered a failure.

Great read!  I wasn't aware that we tried it on our own tanks.

The allies and axis both tried it. The technology of the time wasn't exactly mature though. Rather bulky for field use

My dad helped test first gen starlight scopes in the 60's at Ft. Monmouth.

He was the target.