8×60 Torpedo sight, NIFE and Officine Galileo

I have to correct a mistake I made in the book. On page 46 I show a torpedo sight from the cruiser “Tre Kronor” and state that the binocular used on the instrument is a development of the NIFE 8×60” Deck mounted”.

As I finished my book in 2009 I was not familiar with the Officine Galileo instrument. It is a very heavy (22 kg) 8×60 binocular. There is a scale on top of it, obviously used for some kind of angle measurement.  The binocular has 3 filters  simultaneously rotatable with the single knob on the right side. My first theory was that these instruments were bought to Sweden in the 1950´s, but I was definitely wrong. As I found this picture of the binocular used on a Swedish destroyer in 1942, I had to think again.

In the book on page 30, I discuss the import to Sweden of ordnance from other countries, mainly at the beginning of World War 2. In 1940 ten railroad-wagons of optical equipment was bought from Italy. Were these binoculars part of this delivery? A part of the ordnance delivered were torpedoes, can these torpedo sights have been included in the delivery? I will try to find more facts about this.

Now it is obvious to me that the NIFE torpedo sight has more similarity with the Italian binocular as with the NIFE 8×60 “Deck mounted”. My theory is that NIFE built a copy of the Officine Galileo instrument. The NIFE 8×60 “Deck mounted” was an observation binocular, not a torpedo sight. I will have to look into this too.