Reticle types in miltary rifles

At the suggestion of the fine folks on this blog I bought and am now reading Steve Houghton's "The British Sniper, A Century Of Evolution". Great read. Anyway I'm reading about the SMLE MK III, MKIII* conversions. These were supplied with Winchester A5 scopes. Winchester supplied them in two different reticle types. I got to wondering why. Does the crosshair solve a different optic problem than a post? I'd buy user preference, but no military I know of cares about user preference so can anyone shed some light on this for the slow kid?

Hesketh Pritchard shows a drawing in his book which illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of each type. I would suspect that at first there was little official understanding of reticules at all, and crosshairs were probably supplied by Winchester by default. Later on perhaps, the advantages of the post probably filtered through the C of C and those were ordered instead/as well?

Purely speculation on my part, and those who have military marked WA5/B4 scopes can perhaps chip in on what reticules they have.

It comes down to visibility versus target obscuration. What was really needed was a vertical post from the top of the FoV down, as some of the later German scopes had. However, the "good enough" mentality was almost as prevalent then as later. ;)

The reticule in the Winchester scopes is just soldered to a thin sheet brass ring which was designed to be easy to replace, so it would be possible that reticules were replaced or changed post-war as well.

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Originally Posted by Surpmil

Hesketh Pritchard shows a drawing in his book which illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of each type. I would suspect that at first there was little official understanding of reticules at all, and crosshairs were probably supplied by Winchester by default. Later on perhaps, the advantages of the post probably filtered through the C of C and those were ordered instead/as well?

Purely speculation on my part, and those who have military marked WA5/B4 scopes can perhaps chip in on what reticules they have.

It comes down to visibility versus target obscuration. What was really needed was a vertical post from the top of the FoV down, as some of the later German scopes had. However, the "good enough" mentality was almost as prevalent then as later. ;)

The reticule in the Winchester scopes is just soldered to a thin sheet brass ring which was designed to be easy to replace, so it would be possible that reticules were replaced or changed post-war as well.

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I have an old Lyman scope with the post coming down from the top - and it is not installed incorrectly.....

That's interesting, in the A5 IIRC the reticule could probably be inverted.

In case anyone isn't sure, the advantage of the top-down reticule is it can be more easily seen against the sky or the upper (lighter) part of the field of view, than a typical post can be seen against the darker lower half, especially at night.