I have a pile of Russian magazines that cover most of the war with a lot of subjects not found in Western ref materials (i.e., bodies, etc), but the Russians had a real knack for re-staging scenes for propaganda purposes. I have one series that shows the same knocked out Pz IV from different angles posed with different tanks and crews that claimed to have destroyed it. Most of the photos are of Russians at rest and Germans as POWs.

A majority of WWII photos aren't combat, so it's hard to say how things were approached. I've read a lot of Combat unit histories and mmemoirs over the years, but Carius was the only one I recall criticizing driving while buttoned up. If you've ever scene a photo of him, he could get pretty low in the early cupola, it wasn't like he was standing up in combat. Since the original early cupolas were switched out for their shot-trap profile and their propensity to fly off the turret when hit (commander's head still inside), I would think most of all armor forces were using the periscopes in actual combat. I have a few photos of a Das Reich commander from inside the buttoned up turret using the cupola sights and unless he's an Oscar awarded actor, he's pretty stressed, so I'd imagine it's not propaganda.

Hey, even Oddball stayed inside.

In terms of the TC apple, I made 2 designs, both using an IR filter as the belt which worked (at least for both Russia and Germany since they used waist high belts), but are kind of hard to produce in numbers. One uses a pyramid like Tamiya that I could make, but I can't get the same mirror finish as Tamiya, so the range is about half. I tried Alcad, etc, but everything short of chrome dipped plastic won't work. The second uses 4 sensors, but I'd would have to sell it as a kit since the assembly would be ridiculously time-consuming. I haven't ruled out trying though, it's just on the back burner. Another issue would be club resistance in a non-Tamiya apple.

I moved on to putting the sensors in the cupola like on the StuG and Tiger I, it alleviated the need for a TC apple (and an apple itself)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2uR9KtTJZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpSZzFiF6I