What I wonder though is that with the Swiss being such riflemen why the heck they didn't put a good aperture sight on it?
I believe the Swiss were more of rifleman than the US Army, I read the Army Ordnance Magazine back to the 1920's and the US sent rifle teams over to compete against the Swiss. The Swiss did well. Issue Schmidt Rubin rifles are very accurate, in my opinion, more accurate than the issue 03 Springfield.
When you look at contemporary military rifles, very few had a windage gage. This is still true today. The 03 Springfield had a windage with 4 MOA marks, which made adjustments between the 4 MOA marks difficult to estimate. Again, in my opinion, what you see is pragmatism by the military department. Marksmanship takes years to learn, it is a skill. No military today spends the money to train all of their troops to a high level of marksmanship. Less than five percent of the current US Army are trained to an expert level of marksmanship:
20 July 2015
Military leaders question rush to arm soldiers after Chattanooga
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article27952513.html
“They’re not expert marksmen,” Stimson said. “They don’t have the annual requirement to qualify on a shooting range like a (Navy) SEAL would or a Green Beret or a Marine.”
Of the five military services, only the Marine Corps requires every member to qualify as a rifleman, in part because Marines provide security at U.S. embassies and other American facilities around the world.
The other four services provide only basic weapons training to most of their members, providing combat-level training only to those who are headed to war zones.
In the Army, by far the largest service, only 5 percent of soldiers obtain an expert badge, the highest rating. For the rest, their jobs don’t require such high proficiency or they lack the necessary skills.
I expect this attitude is typical of Armies throughout the world and is the average attitude through out history. Militaries are not going to spend the time, effort, and money training their troops to a high level of marksmanship. Therefore, they won't spend money on expensive, complicated, and easy to get out of order rear sights. The rifle is zero'd at the factory and that is good enough for the infantry man. The foot soldier is not expected to zero his rifle, in fact, the British put a special screw on the front sight of their No 4 rifles to prevent anyone but the factory or a Armorer from adjusting the weapon for windage.
What you see with the Swiss experience is that the gun designers and manufacturer's came up with an inherently accurate rifle, but the powers that be decided not to spend extra money for an adjustable rear sight, due to their low expectations of marksmanship for the general population of Swiss troops.
Other nations were quite happy to issue service rifles that were less accurate than the Schmidt Rubin rifles, and they did not issue windage adjustable rear sights either.
