....This and the massed fire of infantry rifles made any movement more than a foot over ground suicide. This forced the opposing armies to dig themselves into trenches, where they remained stuck for the next four years. The usual fighting ranges shrank to 30 to 150 yards and target grew small. The greatest menace to any attempt of attack were the machine guns. Both sides soon emplaced their machineguns behind protective steel plates, firing through small loopholes. The destruction of these MGs in spite of the armor plates was of utmost importance. The British tried in vain to solve the problem using raw power: They tried to use big-game rifles, .40" caliber up, firing solids, to smash the plates. Jeffery of London even supplied a few single-shot rifles in .600 NE to the Royal Navy Marines, who opposed the German marines in the flat fields of Flanders, close to the sea.
The Express rifles were tested against captured sniper shields and found to penetrate them in most cases, so how they can be said to have "failed" in combat I don't know.
Late in 1914 some young German officers tried another approach to the problem. One of them used his scoped 8x57 hunting rifle. With five shots at ranges of about 100 yards they managed to hit into the small steel plate apertures, each time putting the enemy gun and/or gunner out of action. After their report of such success, the German army deemed a scoped rifle an useable tool for trench warfare, but the army had never thought about rifle scopes. As usual with any army, developing and testing an issue scoped rifle would take some time, so stop-gap action was necessary.
If it is being suggested that telescopic sights were adopted by the Imperial German armies as a result of an incident in Flanders, I for one doubt it.
The very high British and French casualties suffered to German snipers in 1914 and early 1915, as well as a few captured scoped rifles and reports of German PoWs, would indicate that scoped Gew98s were in service from the beginning of the war in at least some of the Imperial German armies. It was certainly well known on the British & Empire side that scoped rifles were being used and it was this which led to the belated development of such rifles and snipers on the British & Empire side. The only exception to that is the Canadians, who ordered 500 scopes from Warner & Swasey in 1914, but none reached France until the next year.
The Imperial German forces were not known for ad hoc or improvised measures, particularly not in peacetime with war expected, as it was in the years before 1914. Like MGs, scoped rifles had no doubt also been studied before the war, manuals and scales of issue prepared and the men selected and trained to use the rifles. I believe the Austro-Hungarians had scopes on issue before WWI so it seems unlikely that the Imperial German armies did not.
The British did not have steel sniper plates issued until probably late 1915, so the story of the young officers in Flanders must be mistaken, unless the plates were locally improvised. That is possible in the case of the Royal Naval Division as they would have had Royal Navy heavy engineering facilities available to them which the British Army did not have. The Royal Navy was also more ready and willing to adopt technical innovations; remembering it was the Navy which supported the early tank development for example.
The fact that additional sporting type rifles were urgently collected and issued in 1915/16 would be due to the unexpected evolution of trench warfare which made telescopic sights of far more use and importance than in the open warfare which the military authorities of all countries had anticipated before the war. That is arguable of course, in that scopes would have been of high value in open warfare also, but that seems to be how the military authorities viewed the matter at the time. With obscure or momentary targets as in trench warfare the assistance of the scope in aiming becomes critical.
