I've recently started collecting British military maps of wartime Scotland, but I can't seem to find a definitive list of the actual scales used. The ones I already have are in these scales: Army- 1" to 1 mile (1/63360) 1/4 " to 1 mile(1/253,000-ish) Air Ministry- 1/4" to 1 mile 1" to 10 miles (1/500,000?) BUT just to complicate it, both the RAF and RN used Plotting Maps at 1/1,000,000. I know most of these were 1940 revised editions of pre-war maps, but can anyone tell exactly which scales were used?
depends what it was for. The modern OS Maps are exactley the same. If a greater degree of detail was needed, say for army manouvers on foot, then a lower scale would be used for greater detail (Liek the modern Pathfinder maps). However if you need distances and only major landmarks, such as hills, roads etc then the higher scales as used by the RAF. So easy answer is the scale depended on the use of the map, and how much ground detail was needed.
