Not sure what I'm looking at for a couple details in the photo below:



Above the 75mm mantlet there is apparently a cage of some sort protecting one of the open type of sights.

First off, am I right, is it a protective cage?

Secondly, what kind of sight is it, the single blade or the fore/aft peek through type?

Third, anyone have any better photos of this area?

Last, this is the tank that a friend's father drove, and it is supposed to be the Royal Wilts Ymry. However the A squadron sign on the turret, the triangle, doesn't look to be yellow, I'd bet red or blue from the contrast. Has my friend been misled on the unit her dad was in? This is apparently him and his crew (I have other pictures of him and it certainly is at least him in this photo). Looking for any context that might help resolve this bit of my confusion.

If yellow at the time and with some films would show up this dark against light mud and black, then I'll call it closed and move along.

All my references are packed away from a move and reno, so I can't look it up in my own library (PITA, that).

Thanks for any help.

Paul

I can't answer the rest of your questions, but certainly the orthochromatic film often used in the 1940s would show yellow as a darker colour (modern black and white films are panchromatic).
This effect is well demonstrated in early photos of RAF aircraft with A1 or C1 fuselage roundels, where the yellow outer ring appears black

The thing you're seeing and questioning is probably the gunner's periscopic sight. This vehicle has the M34 narrow mantlet and so would certainly have had that sight on the right front corner of the turret roof. Guards are sometimes seen but there was no official guard for it, so if that is a guard it's probably something made locally. But I'm not sure exactly what we're seeing: could be anything really. It's much bigger than the usual guards, which typically resembled the more usual periscope guard introduced later. There seems to be gear on the glacis, so it could just be something lying on the turret roof.

It's a periscope with an inbuilt graticule, so no vane etc. Vane or peep sights were fitted later, but for the commander's use. Not on M4's of this early vintage.

If you go to the Sherman Minutia site you'll find photos, drawings etc. http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/

The SIght unit is an Alladale(?) indirect fire Sight and common on British AFV in Italy. If you can find a copy of Jungle Armour http://www.missing-lynx.com/reviews/britain/junglearmourbookreviewab_1.html by Dennis Oliver he has some more detail on the mount. RWY were part of 9 AB and may have ended up wiht a higher seniority later in the italian campaign but I think this is just one of those photo dependant things that show lighter colours as darker as detailed in the other posts above.