Military M17 reticle

BigSteve57 · Mar 30, 2011

This may be more related to recreational artillery than recreational shooting but I thought I'd give it a try.
I have a pair of Steiner Military binoculars that has an M17 reticle in the right eyepiece like the one on the left in the attachment.

I get the horizontal scale in mils but I can't find anything on the use/calibration for the non-linear vertical scale.

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Steve

mvee · Mar 30, 2011

This is all I could find
page 3-4
http://www.usmc.mil/news/publications/Documents/FM 6-30.pdf

(2) The vertical scale on the right of the M17 lens is
not used by the FO in determining data for target location.
The scale is used primarily by the infantry for sighting
direct fire weapons (Figure 3-6 ).
(3) The vertical scales on the left and in the center of the
M17 lens are divided into increments of 5 mils and are used
in height-of-burst (HOB) adjustments (Figure 3-6 ).

BigSteve57 · Mar 30, 2011

mvee said:
This is all I could find
page 3-4
http://www.usmc.mil/news/publications/Documents/FM 6-30.pdf

(2) The vertical scale on the right of the M17 lens is
not used by the FO in determining data for target location.
The scale is used primarily by the infantry for sighting
direct fire weapons (Figure 3-6 ).
(3) The vertical scales on the left and in the center of the
M17 lens are divided into increments of 5 mils and are used
in height-of-burst (HOB) adjustments (Figure 3-6 ).

I found that too. But that statement relly made me wonder just what it was actually used for and how. I'm guessing it's for bullet/projectile drop compensation but I'm only speculating.

dneidFIST · Mar 30, 2011

I'm an FO in the Army National Guard so I know exactly what that's for, and I'll try to simplify it here.

The vertical reticle is for adjusting the Height of Burst for artillery/mortar rounds only. It does not measure distance. The reason why you would want to adjust your height of burst for mortar/artillery rounds is to get maximum effects on target. You can request indirect fire rounds to explode in the air above your target, but the rounds rarely explode at the desired height, and that is when you use that particle device.

mvee · Mar 30, 2011

It looks to be the same scale,

TM 9-1611
page 6

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/TM/pdfs/TM9-1611.pdf

The reticle used in glasses of older
manufacture contains a vertical stadia scale with graduations cor
responding to the inverted sight leaf of the service rifle. This scale
is used to locate auxiliary aiming points in indirect fire.

BigSteve57 · Mar 30, 2011

Thanks! this is the best explanation I've seen.

BigSteve57 · Mar 30, 2011

So the scale really is the projectile drop since it's an inverted sighe leaf...
What do you actually do ... call in the sighted values above the horizon so that the corresponding elevation can be adjusted on the artillery piece?

mvee · Mar 30, 2011

I'm not sure. I think it may work like this, In this picture if you had troops with a 200yd zero on their rifles you could instruct them to aim at the peak of the roof to hit a target in the doorway beneath. The barn should be 700yds away.

mvee · Mar 31, 2011

FM 23-45 Basic Field Manual
BROWNING MACHINE GUN,
CALIBER .30, HB, M1919A4
GROUND

p27
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/PDFs/FM23-45.pdf

(3) The inverted sight leaf scale is used to secure range settings on sharply defined
auxiliary aiming points when the target is not clear enough for direct aiming.

Dave MP · Mar 31, 2011

Mil-Relation Formula. The mil-relation formula is the preferred method of range estimation. This method uses a mil-scale reticle located in the M19 binoculars (Figure 4-19) or in the M3A sniperscope (Figure 4-20). The team must know the target size in inches or meters. Once the target size is known, the team then compares the target size to the mil-scale reticle and uses the formula found here: http://www.biggerhammer.net/manuals/23-10/ch4.htm
Paragraph 4-23 (f)
I realize that this is for the M19 reticle but the concept should be the same using the mil relation.

dneidFIST · Apr 1, 2011

I'm glad someone was paying attention... my answer was for the M19 reticle which I thought he wanted to know about. Oops. :sad20:

Dave MP · Apr 1, 2011

BigSteve57 said:
This may be more related to recreational artillery than recreational shooting but I thought I'd give it a try.
I have a pair of Steiner Military binoculars that has an M17 reticle in the right eyepiece like the one on the left in the attachment.

I get the horizontal scale in mils but I can't find anything on the use/calibration for the non-linear vertical scale.

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Steve

Do your binoculars have a model #? My google-fu is not turning up anything with the M17 reticle.

dneidFIST said:
I'm glad someone was paying attention... my answer was for the M19 reticle which I thought he wanted to know about. Oops.

No worries, this one is stumping me.

mvee · Apr 1, 2011

Mils are angular measurements, like a degree, but finer.

On the first picture you posted. Suppose this is a mortar impact. If the observer was at roughly the same point of view as the firer, he could tell the firer to adjust the mortar 30 mils to the left, or 40 mils to right.

http://www.boomershoot.org/general/TruthMilDots.htm

Using mils, the actual size of an object observed in the field can be estimated. An object that appears to be n mils wide when it is 1000 units away from you, is actually n units wide - the units used does not matter, feet, yards, meters, miles
From http://www.compassdude.com/compass-units.shtml

Dave MP · Apr 1, 2011

I did read that on one of the sites I landed on. For some reason I thought that the same concept would apply in a linear fashion.
Looks like it works for size but not distance as you would have to know the approximate distance to estimate the size. Is that right?

mvee · Apr 1, 2011

If you knew the distance, you could estimate size; if you knew size you could estimate distance.

In the mortar example, you wouldn't necessarily know what the distance is. In the example I gave, I said that the observer was roughly at the same point of view as the firer, so the distances are very close to the same.

BigSteve57 · Apr 9, 2011

Dave MP said:
Do your binoculars have a model #? My google-fu is not turning up anything with the M17 reticle.

No worries, this one is stumping me.

The binoculars are Steiner 7x50 Military Marine with the number 48076 stamped on the bottom of the center post holding the two halves of the binoculars together. I have no idea if this is a model or serial number. I have written to Steiner and asked the same question about the reticle but I have not heard anything back from them.

mvee · Apr 15, 2011

I found some documentation on the steiner website. The descriptions show a M-22 reticle which apparently is linear. Maybe you have a special ordered set.

http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/binoculars/law/538.html
http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/downloads/ReticleInstruction.pdf
http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/downloads/MIL7x50.pdf

BigSteve57 · Apr 15, 2011

mvee said:
I found some documentation on the steiner website. The descriptions show a M-22 reticle which apparently is linear. Maybe you have a special ordered set.

http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/binoculars/law/538.html
http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/downloads/ReticleInstruction.pdf
http://www.steiner-binoculars.com/downloads/MIL7x50.pdf

Thanks I'll have a look.
I still haven't heard from Steiner; I'm not optimistic I'll ever hear from them.
Re. the special order. I ordered them through a local sports shop after having seen them in a catalog. I ordered the 7x50 Military Marine. It came labelled with 7x50 VWST M19 reticle. The original directions which I still have make no mention of the vertical scale. I just always wondered what it was for and exactly how to use it. I realize now it's an M17 reticle and that the packaging is wrong!
It's becoming one of those mini-obsessions I get from time to time. :banghead:

BigSteve57 · May 22, 2011

mvee said:
This is all I could find
page 3-4
http://www.usmc.mil/news/publications/Documents/FM 6-30.pdf

(2) The vertical scale on the right of the M17 lens is
not used by the FO in determining data for target location.
The scale is used primarily by the infantry for sighting
direct fire weapons (Figure 3-6 ).
(3) The vertical scales on the left and in the center of the
M17 lens are divided into increments of 5 mils and are used
in height-of-burst (HOB) adjustments (Figure 3-6 ).

I found an understandable simple description of it! FINALLY!!!
It's a scale in 100's of yards out to 2000 yards for the purposes of auxiliary aiming.

The description and a worked example is on page 5 of TM 9-575 TECHNICAL MANUAL AUXILLIARY FIRE-CONTROL INSTRUMENTS (FIELD GLASSES, EYEGLASSES, TELESCOPES, AND WATCHES). Title is all caps - I'm not yelling,

I'm not sure if the manual is copyrighted or not so I'm afraid to post the image & text in case it is.

But it goes something like this:
Imagine a fence, a man standing behind the fence and the sky line.
The man is known or estimated to be 900 yards away.
Line up the man's head at 9 or 900 on the vertical scale.
Further let's say the skyline crosses the scale at 5 or 500 yards and the top of the fence crosses the scale at 18 or 1800 yards.

So, to hit the target at 900 yards: set sights at 500 and aim at the sky line or set the sights at 1800 yards and aim at the fence line.

I guess this is handy if you know what yardages your sights are set for. You could simply keep your sights fixed and choose an alternate aiming point. With practice I bet one could learn to do this very very quickly.

It's so easy. Geesh. :banghead:

PS: Any measurement will also work, the example could have been in meters.

Military M17 reticle

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