Looks kinda cool but frustrating, at least for shooting quickly...tho having never seen anything but pictures of those I could be way off.
I just had a thought, were the scopes set up like that to allow the use of irons for utility, or because of the scopes not being super reliable?
It is a bit of a soda straw, but you get used to it pretty quickly. The low mag means its not bad when shooting with both eyes open.
All scopes back then were pretty fragile, so the Wehrmacht liked QD, return-to-zero mounting systems that allowed putting optical sights into protective cases until needed. In the case of the ZF-41 forward mount, the scope is positioned just high enough to clear the front sight hood anyway, so it was probably a happy accident to leave simultaneous access to the irons. I believe (SWAG) the Germans were more concerned with making the scope removable in a couple seconds if the situation favored iron sights.
Incidentally, with the field-installable mount on my rifle the rear sight cannot be depressed below the 300 meter position becauser the sight slider runs into part of the mount. This means using the irons with the scope mounted required holding
very low; for that reason I don't think iron sight use while the scope was mounted was a priority so much as a bonus. Earlier ZF-41 factory-installed mounts positioned the scope very slightly further forward (note the difference in distance between the front of the mount and the handguard) and didn't suffer this particular issue, however the early mounts also appear to sit lower and may have blocked the iron sights partly or entirely -- I'd like to have a closer look at one someday.
The original idea seems to have been a simple sighting improvement for designated marksmen at typical engagement distances, where it works reasonably well. It ended up being issued to snipers, who needed something much better for precision long-range work -- a classic case of using the wrong tool for the job. One small advantage of the ZF-41 mounting arrangement is that a cheek weld is still possible without adding a riser to the buttstock -- other German scopes had to be mounted on much higher sighting lines to leave clearance for the bolt.
Wide issuance was evidently a matter of availability and cost -- the ZF-41 used small, low-magnification lenses and could be produced in larger numbers than more conventional rifle scopes at a time when the latter were in short supply, thanks to poor production planning early in the war. German snipers were also frustrated by a lack of dedicated high-quality ammo for precision shooting.
The later mounting system for the ZF-41 that could be field armorer installed came with serious zeroing problems.
