"ACW artillery - was it really that useless?" Topic

I remember reading an account by a U.S. WW2 veteran, who said he only once ever fired his rifle in combat "like we did on the [firing] range," by which I suppose he meant aimed fire. (The occasion was when his squad was pinned down by a MG -- he managed to pick off the MG gunner with about his 3rd shot.) Presumably, the rest of the time he just pointed his M1 in the general direction of the enemy and blasted away.

I suspect that this sort of thing was also true in the ACW.

Donlowry, that's a great example from WWII!

Great example of showing how soldiers in certain moments did have the opportunity to use a moment of controlled, aimed fire to attack a target, but that for every moment that came up like that one, there were a thousand other more typical moments where most soldiers were really just firing in the general direction of the enemy. Such was the nature of Civil War combat.

I truly do believe that the Civil War was no different, nor was any war for that matter.

For every moment where a Union or Confederate sniper had the chance to use his Enfield from the prone and static concealment of a tree or crevice to carefully pick off an officer at a thousand yards, the vast majority of the time that same Enfield rifled technology was used for nothing more than massed fire levelled in the general direction of the opposing battleline at frighteningly close ranges.

In one instance the Enfield could indeed be a long-range, precise killing device. But in the other instance, typical battlefield conditions and drill rendered that same deadly Enfield to little more than a glorified flintlock or smoothbore.

Thanks Donlowry!

A more vital improvement to the increased deadliness of small arms than the move from smoothbore to rifling may have been the move to the caplock from than the flintlock. Much less susceptable to moisture, wind, etc. resulting in fewer mis-fires.

In all honesty, based on the available evidence and the record…

I assert that Union rifled artillery technology had a much greater impact on Civil War combat than the rifle musket did. Much greater.

There is no question that rifled artillery outperformed smoothbore artillery in counter-battery fights. There's references again and again of a Union battery of 3-inch ordnance rifles systematically silencing a confederate battery of smoothbore Napoleons in short order. The 3-inch simply found the range faster and simply knocked out enemy guns faster. The confederates hated the Union 3-inch because of this reason. They simply couldn't match it in artillery vs. artillery encounters.

But, having said that, there were features of the older, smoothbore artillery that made it more effective than the newer rifled pieces. Napoleons were in some respects more effective at anti-personnel fire because of their larger sized ordnance, as well as the bounce effect. When a smoothbore Napoleon fired a solid shot, it tended to skip and bounce off the terrain, causing more residual damage in enemy formations. When a rifled piece fired a solid shot, it tended to bury and burrow itself rather quickly because of the higher muzzle velocity.

Smoothbore artillery shell fire packed a bigger punch because of the larger size of the ordnance. Same was true for canister. Rifled canister was good, but didn't deliver the same punch or as big of an impact as the old smoothbore canister did.

To put it bluntly, you simply couldn't fit as many iron balls into a narrow, 3-inch ordnance canister round as you could the wider muzzled canister round of the old Napoleon.

But musketry was an entirely different creature. The rifle musket was used in the same way as older smoothbore weaponry was, and so its supposed effect on the Civil War battlefield was much less dramatic as many would like to believe.

@Firstvarty1979,

The advancement to the percussion cap system over the old flintlock technology only improved the ignition of the powder. It didn't change or effect the way the rifle-musket was used on the battlefield in terms of drill or the individual shooter. Yes, it may have made the weapon more reliable to fire in the rain(to some degree), and may have reduced the number of physical misfires in a given volley…

…but that didn't make up for men's stress under combat, and improving to percussion from flint didn't do anything to increase the mens's ability to hit the enemy, nor did it impact the tendency to overshoot, undershoot, or simply not aim at all.

In addition, under combat conditions, a percussion cap is very small, and placing one on a musket's cone requires a steady hand and a precise placement. Percussion caps are fumbly things even under calm conditions like you would find at a living history event or reenactment, where no actual combat is taking place.

Even without the nerve factor, I found from personal experience that I would often drop the first cap simply during the transfer from the percussion box to my hand. Trying to pull one up through the lambswool protector, you often "lose track of it" in your hands, you can barely feel them sometimes as your drawing one out. I'd finally get ahold of a second one between my thumb and first two fingers, and get it close to the cone and then drop THAT one. Finally, I'd go for a third cap, and succeed in actually getting it into the cone. Not every efficient for an improved technology, not when my fumbly fingers are involved.

I can recall seeing reenactors in battleline having trouble with percussion caps, they were dropped by the hundreds on the ground during mock-battles because of simple fumbling, or because of nerves. Many reenactors would drop their first cap, and completely miss participating in a company volley. They would finally cap successfully, but have to wait for the next volley command.

And that wasn't even a real battle! Imagine how much more fumbling and dropping of caps took place under real battle conditions in which your friends are dying and screaming all around you, and your filemate's brains have just been scattered across your coat….not to mention the fact that you've got several thousand screaming rebels shooting back at you all with the intention of bringing about your untimely death.

Anyone in a Civil War battleline suffering from the jitters or nerves most likely would drop one or two caps on the ground before they finally got the third one on. So any improvement in the speed of loading was probably cancelled out again by the men's nerves and the fumbling of the caps themselves!

I think it's a stretch to say that the improvement from flint to percussion cap made muzzleloading weapons "deadlier". It made the ignition system dryer and more reliable, but that's about it.

In my opinion, it did make them more reliable to shoot in certain moisture conditions, and may have made them slightly faster to load, but as far as impacting the battlefield to the point of saying that percussion weapons were deadlier, I'm not sure I'd go that far.

Let's not forget, that even with percussion caps, you were still dealing with paper cartridges with black powder. Even with water-proof percussion caps, you still had cartridges that were vulnerable to rain, and could be ruined in wet weather in a matter of moments if the rain is steady enough.

Essentially, if you were trying to fire a percussion musket in heavy rain, and water got down into the barrel and drenched your powder – or if your cartidge box got water into it and drenched your cartridges – percussion caps weren't going to help you much. You essentially would have a child's cap gun in your hands, not much more.

Percussion caps did increase the efficiency and reliability of the priming, since the open pan of priming powder from the old flintlock was no longer necessary. Percussion caps were fairly water proof, and once they were placed over the musket's cone, it did create a pretty good seal against the outside weather as far as the breech was concerned. But percussion caps did not help with rain getting into the muzzle of the weapon, or as I said getting into the cartrige box itself.

Black powder was not water proof. Civil War cartridges were just as vulnerable to water and moisture as the Revolutionary War cartridges of 100 years earlier were, percussion caps or no percussion caps.

Not until modern enclosed, brass cartridges became the norm was there a true revolution on the battlefield in terms of genuine weather-proof shooting and increased efficiency and deadliness.

Only when a soldier could pull out a brass cartridge in the heaviest rain, snow, or mud, day or night, in dew or rain-soaked grass, and know it could be loaded and would still fire, would I consider that a true revolution on the battlefield had taken place.

I point to the 1870's and 1880's, when the advent of smokeless powder, combined with the brass cartridge, as the time when the real revolution in deadliness you speak of actually took place. That and of course the transition from single-shot muzzleloader or breechloader to the multiple shot magazine breechloader which carried us through both world wars and partially into modern times.

But I don't think that a deadly increase took place in the transition from flintlock to percussion. Both were muzzleloading technology and both still relied on black powder in delicately fragile cartridges.

@Firstvarty1979,

I'm sure that reenactors like Tkindred and others can readily testify to what I'm talking about with regards to the fumbliness of percussion caps.

As I said, I have had trouble with them in calm, reenactment settings, just from shaky or sweaty fingers, or losing track of them in the lambswool. I can't imagine how much more badly I would fumble with them, or completely forget to use one, if I was in actual Civil War combat.

Scary stuff to contemplate when you're trying to kill and at the same time not be killed.

There's a very good reason they found thousands of muskets at Gettyburg loaded with multiple charges but never actually fired. The men who fought at Gettysburg were scared ***s that's why. Not the best state of mind to be in when trying to remember a nine-step loading process that included pulling a tiny copper thing from a pouch on your belt.

@Firstvarty1979,

Remember, as I said technology doesn't exist in a vaccum. An improvement in military technology such as that of the transition from the flintlock to the percussion cap system was only as good as the men who were using it under combat conditions.

Gettysburg is a prime example of the human factor in Civil War combat.

Of the thousands of muskets picked up military authorities afte the battle, many were found to have multiple loads of ball and powder, but had never been fired. Some muskets had two or more charges rammed home. Others had at least three. Some had four, five, six, seven balls and powder rammed down. One musket had TWENTY-THREE charges! What was that poor man going through psychologically when he was trying to load and shoot? That man literally raised his musket to his shoulder twenty-three times, neglecting to put a cap on his weapon each time,thinking he was firing, and what was worse he never even noticed that each time he was loading a new charge, the barrel must have been gettting "shorter and shorter" as each charge was rammed on top of the next.

Now THAT'S what I called scared to be in combat. Heck, that man might not even have been scared. Maybe it was just an adrenaline rush, maybe he was just so eager to fire back at the enemy, that he completely forgot the percussion cap part of the loading process!

That's always been the main focus of my argument against the notion of how the rifle-musket supposedly changed the face of the battlefield. So much focus has been on the improvement in the musket technology, that we all assume that rifling, percussion, and a rear sight automatically meant that the Civil War battlefield was suddenly a more efficient, deadlier killing arena than the smoothbore and flintlock arenas. Not so. The rifle-musket was rifled yes, it was an improvement over smoothbore, and yes it could shoot father. Yes, percussion caps were more reliable than the old priming pan.

But it was still being handled by men who were scared to death, and who were fighting under the commands of company officers and by the restrictions of volley fire and by company and regimental formations.

The muskets at Gettysburg with multiple loads is the perfect example of how improved weaponry doesn't always translate to an increased efficiency of the individual soldier, nor does it increase the efficiency of a battle formation or battleline.

You made reference to the notion that the percussion cap system reduced the number of misfires when a volley was fired, because the caps were a more reliable form of ignition over the old, open pan of priming powder from the flintlock days.

This notion is true enough. However let's look at the reality of combat and what happened during the loading process of Civil War muskets.

There were three things you were sure to find in the aftermath of the typical Civil War battlefield. One, thousands and thousands of dropped percussion caps. Two, thousands of discarded or dropped, misloaded muskets. Three, ramrods stuck in trees like arrows.

If there was any reduction in the number of misfires because of the percussion cap's ignition reliability, I am quite certain that this advantage was quickly cancelled out simply because of the amount of misloading and misfiring that was being caused by the men themselves.

Remember that in order to fire a percussion musket, one had to successfully get a percussion cap onto his weapons's cone. A soldier had to successfully load a charge(ball and powder), and make sure his weapone was primed with a cap so that it would ignite when the trigger was pulled.

Now get a mental picture of this for a moment. A command has just been given for a Civil War company or regiment to load as quickly as possible.

Some men are fumbling and dropping their first percussion caps as they draw them through the lambswool protector of their cap pouches, and are forced to go for a second one. Other have dropped their cartridge and are attempting to go to their cartridge box for another. Some have successfully gotten their cartridge to the tip of the barel, but because of shaky hands they are taking extra time centering their rammer over the barrel to drive the charge home.

Still others have gone through the ramming of the cartridge successfully, but in their haste and fear have completely forgotten about the percussion cap altogether.

Now this company of soldiers raises their muskets and levels them for a volley.

Out of a company of 50 men, there have been 5 misfires due to the men neglecting to complete all phases of the loading process, including failing to apply percussion caps to their cones. In addition, there have been a few more misfires due to the cap going off, but failing to ignite the powder due to fouled and blocked cones from previous volleys.

Of the 40+ or so muskets successfully discharged, 5 men have in their haste either aimed slightly too high or too low. Those bullets sail completely over the heads of the enemy.

This "successful" volley now leaves only 35 bullets out of 50 that are sailing towards the enemy, and there's no guarantee that if the general level at which the muskets were fired was accurate, or if the whole volley is going to "go slightly high".

Then the whole process is repeated.

Now this company begins to take hits themselves. One man breaks. Most begin to reload and fire back….suddenly down the line a man is hit in the face and his blood and brains are scatterd across the faces of the three men in line next to him….

The mental picture I'm trying to convey here is that the loading process of the percussion musket, under combat conditions, was vulnerable to MANY mishaps, and skipping any step in the process means that your weapons isn't going to fire, period.

You begin to see pretty quickly that whether percussion cap or flintlock, you still have human beings under stress who are going to make mistakes while attempting to properly operate their weapons.

The Civil War percussion musket's loading process was terribly vulnerable to error and to men's nerves.

As I have said, the percussion cap was vulnerable to simply being forgotten altogether.

There were still more things that could go wrong. Soldiers might ram their cartriges, but fail to return the rammer. When they fired their pieces, they fired away their rammer like a crude Civil War arrow.

To be fair, I would surmise that MOST of the time MOST Civil War soldiers did manage to become fairly reliable loading veterans to the point where after a few combat experiences, they did become accustomed to loading and firing successfully MOST of the time during the stress of combat. Over time I am sure veterans did become cooler under fire and better at delivering that fire.

But think about a large battle. You have new regiments of raw soldiers never before in combat. You may have regiments of veterans, but in that same regiment you might have soldiers who despite their combat experience never really get used to the stress of it. The "live wires" of the outfit. Then you have those who are used to combat, but are still deathly scared of being killed. Then you have those soldiers, who, despite their best and most sincere efforts, just NEVER get used to being in combat, and simply can't perform efficiently.

All these elements combined to make the loading and firing of muskets quite an interesting and haphazard business, at best!

Percussion cap technology,and rifled technology didn't protect soldiers from adrenaline, fear, and terror, or make them immune from any of those errors or mishaps.

They still were the ones who had to do the loading and firing, the weapons didn't load and fire themselves.

Interesting point about the caps.

At Inkerman the fire of HM 88th was halted because they ran out of caps. Not rounds, they had plenty of them left, but caps. I'd never considered why until now.

Of course the cap had one major advantage other than reliable ignition. It was much easier to stay looking down the "sight picture" without the pan flashing.

Dang. I wrote two sentences, and got a bucketful as a response!

I'd clarify my "more deadly" to mean more likely to fire in case of poor weather. In my experience (reenacting civil war 10+ years) a percussion cap will go off pretty much 100% of the time, whereas a with flintlock (reenacting Rev War 30+ years), the weapon, especially on a humid day (even WITHOUT rain), gets increasingly unreliable as the weapon is fired to the point of uselessness due to fouling and the flint breaking, ESPECIALLY in the hands of a novice.

I can't argue with most of your points regarding the emotions of the troops under fire and their inabilty to load and fire effectively.

@Firstvarty1979,

Indeed sir, I meant no intention of specifically picking on your assertions. I tend to pretty badly overelaborate in my long-wided rants. Please forgive my overbearingness and for carrying on like I do. When I get into a mindset, I attempt to say everything all at once!

You being a reenactor yourself, you certainly understand the complexities and variations in the human elements of soldiering.

You are quite correct in the moisture and weather aspect of percussion caps. It did improve the reliability of the discharge of the weapon over the old, open priming pan to be sure.

@Firstvarty1979,

The point you made about the flintlock's shortcomings is a powerful one.

I spent most of my reenacting career doing Civil War. I only did perhaps one or two events over a 20+ year period where I had the opportunity to fire flintlocks. One was Rev. War and the other was French and Indian War. I also had the opportunity, again only once, to fire some live balls from a flintlock at that same F and I War event.

WOW was my response. I fired three live balls from my flintlock at a target(a mock deer), at a range of about twenty yards maybe? Didn't come within a barn's length of even coming close to hitting the damn thing. At twenty yards!

I can tell you this. Flintlocks take much more getting used to in terms of the chaos going on around the pan upon discharge. What 67thtigers said about the fact that the percussion cap eliminated the flash in the pan distraction when firing is completely true! I cannot IMAGINE how they manged to hit anything with flintlocks back then, given that you're pretty much blinded by fire at the moment of discharge!

At least Civil War soldiers could enjoy a clear line of sight down the barrel, without flame going off in their face, again as 67thtigers alluded to!

I tend to pretty badly overelaborate in my long-wided rants

Don't sweat it Campaigner1, if it ever turns to Bull we will advise! :o)

In the mean time continue to Testify!

Though my specific "Arm" is Artillery, I'm a pretty fair shot with a musket. In years past when the State of Maryland held their Firelock Match at Ft. Frederick, I placed a close 3rd several times (with certificates to prove it) and 4th twice, out of roughly 50-60 shooters. Having a small fireball right in front of your face gets getting used to, but I guess it's something I've apparently managed! :)

P.S. No offense on the long posts; hopefully people read them and learned a little something extra.

No.

In the debate about the 3" artillery versus CS batteries, et al.

I would postulate that the real reason the CS artillerymen disliked their US counterparts so much wasn't the inherent accuracy of the 3" round. Rather, it was the unreliability of CS artillery fuzes which caused many of their rounds to either explode prematurely, or not at all.

With an unreliable fuze, you might as well be throwing solid shot downrange with every round.

The 3" rifled guns also had one drawback and that was the use of percussion fuzes. Unless it hit something solid, it too was about as useful as solid shot. It was difficult to develop a fuze that could be ignited by the powder charge, as the rifled gun depended upon a gas-tight seal for the round to engage the rifling properly. That precluded the hos gasses from the burning powder from lapping around the front and igniting the fuze, as happened with the smoothbore guns.

As to the failure of infantry to cause more damage than would normally be expected with their new rifled weapons, I lay the blame completely at the feet of the US tactical system which ignored, almost completely, any form of marksmanship and/or target practice for the regular soldiers.

Although some target practice was available to the field artillery, it. too, was primarily trained in it's gun drill, and in the estimation of range to target and selection of the appropriate round.

The only actual target practice carried out by the US Military seemed to be with the coastal batteries, learning how to skip shot over the waves, and by the US Navy which conducted regular gunnery practice against floating targets.

Absent any sort of primary weapons training beyond loading and the manual of arms, it is more to be wondered NOT that the infantry performed as well as they did, but that they hit anything at all.

V/R

This is an excellent set of postings; Camapaigner1, you have concisely encapsulated the argument against the greater effectiveness of rifle-musket.

Please let me add several points. The regulation package of 10 rounds also included a wrapped set of 12 caps. The regulations thus appear to have been written with the expectation that at least a certain number of caps would be lost. Many re-enactors will fill up their cap boxes to capacity as they fully expect to lose an even greater proportion of caps.

The problems of a poor rate of fire could and would be mitigated by having troops load (and possibly cap) their weapons before going into action. In turn, knowing that the rate of fire would subsequently drop off after the initial volley would encourage delaying fire until the enemy was in very close range to maximize the effects.

Fred Ray's Shock Troops of the Confederacy: The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia (2006) offers a view of what could be accomplished with units armed with the rifle-musket. The ANV sharpshooter units adopted both extensive weapons training as well as the adoption of new "light infantry" tactics.
Although Ray does not directly address the issue, it may be useful to hypothesize that it was the use of sharpshooter units that enabled the heavily outnumber ANV to both increasingly halt Union attacks and then successfully launch counter-attacks during the Overland Campaign and subsequently even more so during the siege of Petersburg. Conversely, in his Training, Tactics, and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee (2000) Andrew Haughton argues that the AoT's poor record was a result of a slowness in adopting new tactics in comparison to both the ANV and the Aot's Union opponents.

Therefore the range of engagement might only be the start of looking at the broader picture of tactical doctrine and how any changes were, or were not, implemented by the various combat forces. I don't know of any study that has addressed this question in any detail and most certain don't know of any ACW rules set that do this.

In 21 years of US Army artillery, I can certify that troops do not take dry fire the same way they do live fire. They know that no matter how poorly they aim (or dont) there are no negative consequences. And it has been proven again and again, that in the stress of combat, soldiers will go back to thier most basic training and act that way. So the old endless repition teaches them to fire quicklywioth no regard to hitting anything.

While it can be a bad idea to draw to close a paralele between todays people and those of the Civil War era, I dont think we have changed that much.

As for the morale effect of artillery, it is huge. I have been ubder both hostile morter and artillery fire, and it really gives you a sense of helplessness thast small arms does not. You can hit back, and sort of feel like you can exert some control over your destiny. Under artillery fire you can only take it. At least in my case, once we located the hostile guns, we could reply. Infantry never have that chance.

As for watching a guy get spattered, for some reason it is different. Yes, if you are killed by a rifle or heavy ordinance you are just as dead, but seeing somebody really shreded is much more wrenching. Sometimes I stop and wonder how on earth men advanced at G'burg at all. Of course you can say that grumpy old sgts( like me) made themn do it, but what made them do it? They where just as scared and wanted to live just as much. Or at least I was as scared, and really didnt want to die, even if I was a bit better at hiding it than them.

Greast thread BTW.

Owen

A question for the reenactors. I have fired black powder a small amount, but never in mass or with sustained fire. And, the reenactments I have seen there are not large numbers of rounds being fired steadily, like a fire fight would generate.

So have any of you ever burned that many rounds? And where they full charges or just enough to make noise? I suspect that after a very few rounds from both sides, questions of aiming are largely pointless, as nobody much is going to see out of thier own smoke screen or into the other sides. So perhaps it was not so bad to not train to much at aimed fire because you could not do it anyway.

I dont actualy know, which is why I am asking.

Owen

I have been to large or huge events where I have fired off over 50 rounds. Many 'regular' sized events one particular battle for the public usually burns about 30 rounds. We always load 80 grains of black powder which is what was used historically.

Don

actionfront.blogspot.com

"Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?"

OK, but how much did it obscure things? It sounds like you will have had a good look at it, close to historical. Was it a problem to get a good sight picture on somebody down range? Or am I wrong, and it didnt cause that much obscureation?

Owen

Sight picture assumes aiming and target practice. Suspect those things were abnormal in the ACW. But smoke can cloud a battlefield. Most reenactments are not big enough to really grasp what smoke can do. Reenactments are also growing smaller with the graying of the hobby and gas/powder costs. Would recommend a visit to one of the major reenactments (Gettysburg or this year's Shiloh) for a good view.

Smoke is very important. There was an old US Army Chemical Warfare experiment that showed that if the Federal artillery hadn't stopped firing before Pickett's Charge and allowed the smoke to clear then they would have been unable to sight the advancing forces and their fire would have been totally ineffective.

Good thing for the Union Hunt ignored Hancock….

Owen,

I have been at a few events that featured over 8-10,000 reenactors. It all depends upon the weather conditions. If there is a breeze blowing the smoke isn't as big a deal as you might think. You can't aim well enough to shot at one head but you don't have to. Aiming at mid-body in a 200 man regiment is fine to hit someone there. That's all you need.

I've also been to events like the 135th Antietam one in which we did a battle at dawn and no breeze. The light was coming up and we were on a hill with about 8 artillery pieces right in front of us before we moved forward. They fired about 5-6 times each and the smoke was so dense that I couldn't see anything beyond the guns. When we moved forward (through the guns) the ground dipped (in front of the guns)into a little valley between hills. The smoke from the guns had settled into this valley. You could barely see the end of our own regiment (about 300 men). Once we cleared the valley and the sun was up it was totally clear again. The rest of the fighting (infantry vs. infantry) the LOS was good enough to pick out Rebs 400 yards or more beyond. Well enough to aim at the body of the Reb regiments. Remember, in the CW you didn't need to pick out 'That guy! Shoot at him!' kinda thing. The strength of a regiment was the amount of Minie balls being fired down range by the _entire_ regiment. One man with a rifle is meaningless, 400 men means someone (and more) is going to die.

Don

Rifled canister was good, but didn't deliver the same punch or as big of an impact as the old smoothbore canister did.

To put it bluntly, you simply couldn't fit as many iron balls into a narrow, 3-inch ordnance canister round as you could the wider muzzled canister round of the old Napoleon.

The Light 12-pdr (Napoleon) canister contained 27 cast-iron balls, each weighed c. .43 pounds. The 3" canister round had 49 .96" iron balls. (presumably smaller than the 12-pdr's). The problem was that the 3" can was long and narrow compared to the 12-pdr's, so presumably did not spread as much -- and/or, the balls being (probably) lighter, did not carry as far.

BTW, the bore of the 12-pdr was 4.62", or about 50% larger than the 3" rifle. Even the 6-pdr smoothbore was somewhat larger, at 3.67", the same as the 20-pdr Parrot!

Camapaigner1, you have concisely encapsulated the argument against the greater effectiveness of rifle-musket.

Campaigner1 has indeed made some excellent points, but "concise" he ain't! ;o)

well, consice for a historical discusion at least.

Owen

Ryan Toews wrote:

"The problems of a poor rate of fire could and would be mitigated by having troops load (and possibly cap) their weapons before going into action. In turn, knowing that the rate of fire would subsequently drop off after the initial volley would encourage delaying fire until the enemy was in very close range to maximize the effects."

__________________________________

This is an excellent and key point to understanding the rifle musekt, and musketry in general. Having the men cap their weapons before going into action would at least ensure that an entire formation of men would successfully discharge together in the first volley. This point also bears out the fact that in battles of that era, the first volley was nearly always the most effective, while the effectiveness of subsequent volleys dropped off considerably!

Thanks for contributing that excellent detail to the discussion.

Donlowry,

Excellent work on the information about the 12 lber canister vs. the 3" ordnance canister.

I should have done my homework and read up more before assuming that the 12 lb. canister held more balls than the 3". I was going on the poor assumption that the canister balls for both rifled and smoothbore rounds would have been the same size. That would be silly. Of course they could put any size balls they wanted into canister rounds. As you said, they put more balls into 3" canister rounds by making them of smaller caliber than the balls used in 12 lber rounds.

I jumped the gun on that one, no pun intended.

You are 100% right. The issue was one of spread. Seems that they tried to make up for the 3"'s spread problem by putting more, smaller balls into its canister rounds.

So if I understand it right, the 12 lber had fewer, but larger balls in its canister rounds, and enjoyed a more favorable spread when fired. Meanwhile the 3" had more balls in its canister rounds, but were of a smaller caliber than the smoothbore canister balls, and did not have as a good of a spread when fired as the 12 lber did.

That makes perfect sense. A wider muzzle would allow for the balls to spread along a wider pattern.

With artillery, I guess it came to trading off a "bigger punch" vs. more precise aiming. Which is why of course each type of gun could do certain things better than the other and vice versa.

In close action against infantry, the Napoleon was the king of canister, because you didn't need precise aiming with rifling when firing a giant shotgun blast into opposing infantry. A smoothbore gun worked just fine when blasting holes in an enemy battleline only a few hundred yards away. You just needed a sufficient spread to do the most damage. On the other hand, the 3" Rifle was the king of long-range targeting of enemy artillery, it could zero in and pinpoint its target pretty efficiently and better than the Napoleon could.

Thanks for clarifying that and for correcting my misinformation.

Campaigner

Campaigner,

As I mentioned up above, canister for the 12lb gun wasn't the only lethal punch it carried. Gunners were trained to use both shell and spherical case, especially the latter, with either no fuse, or fuse cut to burst at the muzzle.

I can well imagine that the swath of fragments of spherical case bursting at the muzzle, with the full force of the expanding charge driving them forward and outward away from the gun would be terrifying in it's effect.

And remember that inside of 50 yards, it isn't just the canister you have to worry about, but, in conjunction with the other two rounds mentioned, it's also the metal strapping holding the round onto the wooden sabot. The sc3ws holding the straps in place. The wooden sabot, and for canister, the tinned sheet metal fragments of the can itself.

Horrific indeed.

Normally Canister came in two varieties, heavy and light, based on the size of the balls.

However, all M1857 Napoleon canister was heavy canister, with 27x 1.48" balls. This was because spherical case (78 musket balls, with the void space filled with sand to facilitate dispersion of the balls – the balls being 20 to the pound) with no fuse was effectively identical to light canister.

The US also issued a grapeshot round of 9 balls for the M1857, although it is not known at what scale. Certainly not a large one.

In this they follow the trend in Europe. At its' extreme is the British Armstrong battery, which carried a single round type adjusted to be either solid, shrapnel or canister by change the fuse.

One more question. How severe was the ctual muzzle blast, and how far out from the muzzle was it dangerous? I have seen people get badly concussed from muzzle blast in modern guns, but we use a lot of powder. I am sure that if you asre close enough a Napoleon you will have the same problem.

What I dont know is how close is close enough. If it is only a few feet, then no big deal. But if it goes out to say 50" then perhaps it can have a bit more effect.

Owen

Owen,

More than 50', actually. In almost every case where infantry was supporting artillery, they were placed to one flank or in rear. In cases where they were forced to deploy in front (or artillery to deploy in rear of the infantry) the infantry would have gone prone while the guns were in action, and there would be at least 100 feet of distance between the units.

The reason isn't just the muzzle blast. THAT is pretty severe in itself. There's also the danger of shrapnel wounds from the disintegrating metal bands and the wooden sabot to which the rounds were attached, which in turn were the attachment point for the powder bag. Those tin-plated sheet iron strips, the iron or brass scr3ws and then the hardwood sabot could fly quite a ways.

Here's an example of a 12lb round for illustration:

Tkindred wrote: "More than 50', actually."

So, that means veteran infantry would've walked right up to the muzzles if it meant maintaining their drill book formations, right? Or would they have known better or not ?

BD, I think it would have been a race. I dont think anybody wanted to commit suicide. So they where attempting to get past the muzzle before the gun went off. Directly in front of course you get vaporized. But councusion spreads out fast, so offset would still get hurt badly.

more later have to take kid to school

Owen

There's a technical component to this thread I haven't investigated yet, but some initial responses…

1. Anti-personnel capability at increasingly longer ranges was greatly improved over the Napoleonic Wars.

2. My suspicion is that Graham's Brigade, Third Corps, AoP was pounded by concentric Reb artillery fire at 1000 yards and less prior to being smashed by the Reb infantry.

3. The 21st Mississippi screened/pressed Bigelow's Battery with a loose skirmish order type formation while the rest of Barksdale's Brigade swung north to crumple the Union line… which demonstrates to my mind the respect accorded to the capability of 12pd. Napoleons by veteran infantry on the attack. In short, no one in their right mind was going to charge those cannon muzzles.

Wouldn't the Rebs just love it when they captured Yankee artillery ammunition ? I bet they treated it like treasure. Using it very carefully.

IIRC, Bigelow had lost a lot of horses to both counter-=battery fire and CS small arms fire. As a result he began to prolong his guns which helped to slow down Barksdale's assault.

In this engagement, the 3rd Maine lost it's national color (the only flag they were carrying) as a result of a volley from, I believe, the 22nd Mississippi.

The 3rd had been facing south, with it's right posted on the Emittsburg Pike, and was keeping a lot of Kershaw's men at bay. It was ordered to change faceing to meet the attack from Barksdale. As it was doing so, the volley it received killed or wounded every man in the color guard and the color company (K).

In the vicious hand-to-hand combat which followed, the 3rd was forced to retire with the rest of the Federal line. It wasn't until they rallied on Cemetery Ridge that Colonel Lakeman realized the colors were lost. In his official report of the regiment at Gettysburg, Lakeman writes that had he known of the loss of the colors at the time, "they would have had me and every man in the regiment" in an attempt to retrieve them.

Good point. Infantry remnants would've been a welcome addition to a retreat by recoil/prolong artillery defense.

No major pitched battle of the Civil War produced an effect in which the opposing army was completely destroyed and rendered permanently disabled to a point from which it could not regroup and recover soley because its casualties were so high due to an increase in weapon ranges.

Well, Nashville and Cedar Creek came very close, if you include the pursuits as part of the battle. But normally army commanders were not stupid enough to hang around and see their army completely annihilated; they would retreat once things became hopeless (or in some cases, long before that). And a disorganized rabble can usually outrun a disciplined unit's pursuit.

Part of the problem, however, is that there were often enough casualties to disrupt command and control, so that the commanders' plans, whether long thought out or hastily improvised, could not be implemented, even by the winning side.

How about 1st Bull Run, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chickamauga ?

Casualties at 1st Bull Run were not actually that high compared to the others on that list.

link

Union
2,896
(460 killed, 1,124 wounded, 1,312 captured/missing)

Confederate
1,982
(387 killed, 1,582 wounded, 13 missing)

Compare that to the 20K+ at 2nd Bull Run or Antietam.

As has been said elsewhere you are more motivated when you are running to save your own life, versus running to take someone elses. During the Napoleonic wars it was noted that Infantry was nt that likely to bayonet other infantry when they where running away, but Cavalry had no problem with sabering them. But in the ACW there simply was not that reserfve of cavalry waiting to be unleased in a persuit. So there is not that great rundown to destruction that you saw in the earlier wars.

Owen

I've had a cap or two fall off the nipple of my wep,and had to replace it.