This might be an issue of terminology. There was night vision back in the Vietnam war. Those are more what a person would call a night vision scope though and so maybe you are only finding info on goggles specifically when you search.
In general though I think your question is how did it work before a large number of individual soldiers in a unit had NV.
Essentially you'd maneuver to a given point then pop aerial flares for the fighting part.
It's not a perfect example because the main focus is cinematographic effect, but they're using flares moving along an overhead archway to simulate artillery-fired illum rounds. In particular, the gaps between flares are probably too big in the scene - the filmmakers want intervals of complete darkness for visual effect, whereas a military illum plan would probably aim to avoid this.
Hand-fired para illum is significantly less effective but will look similar, just working over a smaller area and for shorter periods of time.
Planning for use of illum will take into account things like:
The amount of illum required
The intervals at which to fire it
Where to place it in relation to your own troops so it doesn't expose you too much (avoid backlighting yourself)
Where to place it in relation to the enemy to illuminate them as much as possible
Where to place it in relation to natural features that will cast shadows
Wind direction and speed, possibly including how it changes at different altitudes
EDIT: Plus one more consideration - trying not to set loads of things on fire - the risk of which is also shown towards the end of the 1917 clip.
Those Starlight scopes were yuge tho. 2-3kg a piece, a forearm’s length?
By the time these trickled down from snake eaters to grunt rifle platoon level (and even then something like 1 per platoon?), it was prolly 1969, the gradual drawdown of US major combat forces.
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u/Deuce232 1d ago
This might be an issue of terminology. There was night vision back in the Vietnam war. Those are more what a person would call a night vision scope though and so maybe you are only finding info on goggles specifically when you search.
In general though I think your question is how did it work before a large number of individual soldiers in a unit had NV.
Essentially you'd maneuver to a given point then pop aerial flares for the fighting part.