"Shooting downhill" Topic

I've read in several places that troops on top of a hill firing down at an enemy lower on the hill have a tendency to overshoot their target. Conversely, troops on the lower slopes find it slightly easier to hit the opponent coming over the top of the hill. I can not recall any rules accounting for this. Of course many talk a bonus to higher troops when engaged in hand to hand. Do any rules account for downward firing with a musket? If so which ones and how smother account for it? What about house rules?

While it is technically true that the difference in elevation between firer and target can affect accuracy, I have to believe that with the generally poor marksmanship of Civil War soldiers (i.e. they'd be spraying bullets all over the place) that the actually affect on casualties would be so small as to not be worth factoring into a game (unless you are talking about a 1-to-1 scale skirmish game).

A re-enactor acquaintance, who was also a former Ranger sniper, mentioned this to me some years ago, based on his own experiences in target shooting up and down the hill at the bottom of his garden.

Off-hand, I can't think of any H&M rules I've ever used that take account of this phenomenon. I can think of two AWI examples, the relatively limited casualties amongst the assault troops at Bunker Hill (it took three attacks to build up those losses), and the fighting in the late evening at Freeman's Farm, where British troops were on slightly higher ground and were overshooting.

So, yes, it probably is something rules-writers should be thinking about – perhaps the "Light Bobs" author who posts regularly on here would be interested as it fits nicely into his game level.

Scott – to be fair I hadn't read about this phenomena in any civil war readings but I still cross posted to the ACW board figuring volley fire was used then as well.

SM – the latest book I read where this was mentioned was A Devil of a Whipping – the battle of Cowpens. The author states that there is speculation that Morgan positioned his troops on the reverse sloop To possibly take advantage of the propensity of British troops to over shoot their targets when firing down a sloop.

To me this points to troops firing muskets didn't aim but rather leveled their price and fired straight ahead, leaving it to the commands of their officers which way they should be facing.

Checked a couple of websites. It would appear the affect may be because they are aiming and physics is having its way with the shot.

link

From the article "Two conclusions are evident from these examples. First, shooting uphill or downhill can have a strong effect on the trajectory of any bullet, always causing the bullet to shoot high relative to the bullet path for level fire. This effect grows larger as the slant range distance grows longer and the elevation angle grows steeper. The second conclusion is that a bullet always shoots slightly higher when it is fired downhill than when it is fired uphill at the same angle. The reason for this, as explained above, is that when the bullet travels upward, there is a component of gravity acting as drag on the bullet that increases the drop slightly. When the bullet travels downward, on the other hand, there is a component of gravity acting as drag on the bullet that decreases the drop slightly."

Personally (unless I was writing a VERY detailed set of tactical rules) I would assume this as part of the randomness of the shooting dice. There are many factors which contribute to battlefield performance and you cannot simulate them all.

When aiming downhill, from a physics standpoint, the shot is affected less by gravity because it is traveling somewhat in the same direction as its pull to the ground. Similarly, when firing uphill, you are actually shooting against gravity as you are firing in an upward direction.

I stands to reason that men shooting downhill will have a slightly greater accuracy over a longer range. Men shooting uphill would shoot less accurately over the same distance and probably have a slightly shorter range.

Men who overshoot their target while shooting downhill makes some sense as they will not be used to the decreased fall of their shot in relation to the slope. Or to put it another way, they did not adjust their sights to account for the downhill shot.

I simply give the troops on higher elevation a slight range bonus (an extra inch or two) and call it a day.

Johnny Reb 2 gives an extra casualty save for the unit being uphill taking fire from below. This would appear to be the exact opposite of the observation mentioned in this thread.

overshooting due to lack of pointing to an aim – yes

Jany, Curt : Die Gefechtsausbildung der Preußischen Infanterie von 1806. Mit einer Auswahl von Gefechtsberichten.
Urkundliche Beiträge und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Preußischen Heeres.
Herausgegeben vom Großen Generalstabe, Kriegsgeschichtliche Abtheilung II.
Fünftes Heft
Berlin 1903
18. Ein Preußischer Jägeroffizier Leutnant von Seydlitz, später Yorks Adjutant und bekannt als Herausgeber des Tagebuchs des Yorkschen Korps von 1812, berichtet 1808 das „die französischen Tirailleurs schon auf 1600 Schritt blessierten." Ferner : „Die Belagerung von Danzig giebt als Beispiel, daß Jäger ohne Bajonett eine Schanze weggenommen und keine Blessierten hatten, und ihe Repli, Linieninfanterie mit Bajonett, was 1500 Schritt hinter ihnen stand, dazu eine Menge hatte." (…)
S. 103
Footnote 18
A Prussian Jäger officer, lieutennat von Seydlitz, later ADC of York and famous as editor of the diary of York‘s corps in 1812, reported 1808, that ; "the French tirailleurs wounded already at 1600 paces." Also : "The siege of Danzig shows as example that Jäger without bayonet took a redoubt without any wounded and their support, line infantry with bayonets, who stood 1500 behind had many of them."

Colonel Belson of the 28th at the Barossa in the Peninsular War,famously ordered his men to fire at the French on the ridge, saying, "Fire at their legs & spoil their dancing."

I've always understood this to mean he was worried about them overshooting so he gave them a lower target, the French troops' legs, so they would in actuality hit the torso.

Am I wrong?

I think shooting at the knees to hit the torso was a common practice regardless of whether one side was uphill or downhill.

Hmm… I think American Kriegspel lists having a regiment placed on a wooden fence would increase their accuracy by 10% (or was it 15%?), since they could use the posts to fire off of. However, the same book also states that not only streuous but even brisk walking, anything that gets the blood pumping, will have an appreciable effect on fire as well. There's a whole list of things in that book. Another one is that fire at a 45 degree angle is almost as deadly as fire directly down the flank, yet how many rulesets give you a major bonus for angled fire? I once saw a Nap game where someone placed thier nap arty in full view of another battery in such a way as to make the first unit perindicular to the fire of the second. The ruleset (I won't mention the name, but its a popular one) didn't have anything to handle a sitution like that.

Battles are complicated affairs, best left to computers (joke).

The only example that comes to mind is when the Irish Brigade charged the South Carolinians at the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. The Confederates were up on a small rocky hill and they overshot the Irish who then closed in with buck-and-ball (ouch!).

I'm not a big believer in writing rules for something that happened once or twice.

Slopes are not all equal and any effects aren't either. At Abluera, the Spanish and then English were on a rise which supposedly allowed the French to fire up at them several ranks deep over the heads of those in front of them. When you see the rise, it ain't much, and of course the allies were firing down that slope and were still able to stop the French.

Slopes can have significant 'shadows' below them where those on top can't see those below very well if at all, higher slopes more so than lower ones. However, I agree with John TG, what effects would be significant, how often is the question.

The American Kriegspel observations is a good example of the 'gamesmanship' that appears in military thinking as well as among gamers: try and eek out every possible advantage, no matter how small and insignificant because it *might* tip the balance… for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost…

The rules from "All The King's Men" for 54mm gaming give troops occupying higher ground +2 D6 dice when firing at troops at a lower elevation.

These rules also give +2 D6 dice to the saving throw (defense) of troops on higher ground when fired upon by troops at a lower elevation.

dBerczerk – does that mean the troops on the higher elevation are at an advantage in those rules?

One other point, when troops are firing in multiple ranks unless they break formation, troops in the second rank on back would be very hard pressed to angle their barrels down. Unless the person in front is very short however,

does that mean the troops on the higher elevation are at an advantage in those rules?

An advantage in both directions.

How about the thought that troops will fire as soon as the gun is on target. So, troops depressing their guns will fire at the opponents head, and troops raising their guns will fire at the lower torso. With most misses going over the targets head, then the aiming point is the reason for the difference.

That would sound reasonable for skirmishes but I'm not sure about volley fire.

Private Matter -- Affirmative.

With the rules from All the King's Men, troops on the higher elevation are at an advantage when firing (two more chances to hit) and being fired upon (two more chances to save).

I recall a local wargamer of the "old school" informing his opponents that if their troops attempted to fire downhill, the musket balls would roll out of the barrels and their weapons would be rendered useless. Well, that` s what happened in his rules anyway.

I was trading about the battle of King's Mountain recently, and the writer stated that the attacking Patriot militiamen had an advantage over the defending Loyalists because the militiamen were shooting uphill, whereas the Loyalist shot downhill, which spoiled their aim. It seems counterintuitive to me, but maybe it has something to do with body angles:

      I
     /
    /
  I/
  /
 /

Excuse the poor drawing, but clearly more of the upward standing figure's torso is exposed to the lower man's aim, whereas the upper man has a much reduced target profile to hit. Given the great inaccuracy of a musket, this issue might simply be geometry, not physics.

Nosworthy writes about this in one of his books. For him the big issue was lack of training about levelling the musket in volley fire. He cites an example of an Austrian unit being overrun by Turkish cavalry because it was upslope and its volley went overhead. (This was 18th C)

I think he says that there was a tendency for untrained troops to shoot too high anyway – being upslope made this worse. Being downslope ( it strikes me) could be a problem for the second rank.

As to whether it is worth factoring into rules we should ask whether this was something that influenced the choices officers made at the time. That I don't know, but I think the answer is not much.

Personally (unless I was writing a VERY detailed set of tactical rules) I would assume this as part of the randomness of the shooting dice. There are many factors which contribute to battlefield performance and you cannot simulate them all.

Yes indeed.

Designing games – and even adding "simple" modifiers – for edge cases tends to create more problems than it solves.

I forget the battle but I was Reading about Jackson in the Shenandoah valley and there was a passage related to this.
The figure firing downhill couldn't quite make out the targets among the woods and seemed to also be firing high from the ball strikes on the tree trunks.
However, firing uphill the target was more easily seen against the sky and suffered more casualties.

David

I tend to lump all those little anomalies into the random factor that the dice generated. Score good – the men aimed low, straight or whatever. THrow a bad dice and that means that they fired too soon, overshot, everyone aimed at the same guy – that sort of thing.

Kiltboy is probably referring to the Battle of McDowell, May 8, 1862.

Jackson's men were defending the top of steep Sitlington's Hill, which has dense trees 1/2 way up, then is devoid of cover. Rebel casualties were higher, even though the Federals were repulsed.

Almost all of the battlefield has been preserved by the Civil War Trust. It is well worth visiting. Follow the route of the Yankee ascent. It will enlighten you.

There is a good map on the Internet.

Brian, I would agree with you on larger scale battles. But, would it make sense for company level games such as Sharp Practice or Light Bob's? Also I don't see this as an issue for individual skirmishers (which maybe wrong) but rather a problem for volley fire. In volley fire, the second rank fires over the shoulders of the front rank much of the time; so wouldn't that impact the ability to aim down hill when you are at the top of the hill? I don't know if this mattered much.

Shooting Uphill and Downhill

By Chuck Hawks

The hoary old question of where to aim when shooting up or down hill regularly rears its head. It seems that many hunters understand that shooting at a steep angle changes the point of impact, but can't remember why or in which direction.

The correct answer is to hold lower than normal when shooting steeply up or down hill at long range. (At gentle angles you can ignore the problem altogether over the maximum point blank ranges of hunting rifle cartridges.)

This seems odd to many, and they insist on making the problem more difficult than it needs to be. But the reason is simple. Trajectory, the bullet's flight path, depends on the horizontal (level) range to the plane of the target, not the line of sight range up or down hill. Your eye sees the line of sight (slant) range from your position to the target, which is longer than the horizontal range.

Remember that it is gravity working on the bullet during its flight time that causes it to drop. If you were to shoot straight down, say from a tethered balloon, the bullet would have no curved trajectory, it would travel toward the earth in a straight line, just as if you simply dropped it. Likewise, if you shoot straight up, the bullet travels up in a straight line until its momentum is expended. Again, there is no curved trajectory.

You can infer from this that the farther from the level position a rifle is held when a bullet is fired, the less the bullet's drop will be over any given line of sight distance, whether it is fired up or down. Since your sights are set to compensate for bullet drop, and there is less bullet drop when shooting at an up or down angle, you must hold lower than normal to maintain the desired point of impact. For example, if you are shooting up or down at a 40 degree angle and the line of sight range is 400 yards to the target, the horizontal range is only 335 yards. 335 yards is the distance for which you must hold.

If troops had a point of aim on their opponents upper body then if not properly compensating for slope they would tend to overshoot targets at a lower elevation. With that same aiming point however, shooting uphill there would still be a chance of hitting the enemy in the legs or lower body.

There may also be a factor that shooters are better at judging the true range when the target is above them rather than below.

The Regimental Fire & Fury Scenario Book, Volume II, 1862-1863 has a scenario for The Battle of McDowell, VA, 8 May 1862. It has a Special Scenario Rule entitled Setting Sun and Steep Slopes in Fire Combat. The Union troops were firing up hill at Confederate troops facing westward that were illuminated on Sitlington Hill by the setting sun, while the Union troops were in the shadows of the valley below Sitlington Hill.

Although the Union forces were outnumbered and fighting up hill, they inflicted a 2 to 1 casualty ratio on the Confederates. The effect of the setting sun on the up hill and illuminated Confederates on Sitlington Hill and the Union troops on lower ground and in the shadows of the setting sun certainly had an effect on the disparity of the casualties.

Best, Lowell D. Hamilton

For my hunting course I was taught, "When shooting downhill, aim high; when shooting uphill, aim low". I used this rule while moose hunting back in 2005, which is why I am in the record book for 2005.

I think that most all experienced soldiers and officers would know the vagarities of shooting up and down hills, considering how significant they were--particularly when it is common knowledge among hunters. The experience of the soldiers would be the telling part, not necessarily the terrain.

A friend of mine mentioned firing period flinklock muskets and how inaccurate they were. [He was using the actual loads and cartridge material.] He had difficulty hitting targets at 70 yards… that is until he got the idea of wrapping the ball in the cartridge paper when loading it. It significantly reduced the windage between the ball and barrel. THEN he could a man-sized target 8 times out of 10 at 150 yards. It would be reasonable to think that most experienced soldiers would know about such things. It certainly explains why skirmishers with smootbores would regularly engage at 150 yards or greater as it is so often reported.

I am still not sure about York's report quoted in Jany above ""the French tirailleurs wounded already at 1600 paces." Spent balls?

BlackJoke 16 Apr 2015 5:53 a.m. PST
wrote"

Checked a couple of websites. It would appear the affect may be because they are aiming and physics is having its way with the shot.link

Actually, if you read down in the article, for the modern loads that they list, there is almost no difference in bullet drop shooting up or down hill. For example, the 0.38 S&W at 100 yards shows bullet drops at 0, +45 and -45 degrees of -16.04", -16.03" and -16.05". Not much difference there.

I wonder if the real factors in napoleonic volley fire up and down hill is due to other factors. These would be [1] the effect of terrain on how the muskets were leveled and [2] for the less common aimed fire (e.g. actually trying to estimate range and compensate by aiming higher or lower), the effect of the difference between distance on the ground versus distance relative to gravity (perpendicular to the earth- surveyor's distance).

The drop of a musketball, that was fired @1200fps from a level barrel is approximatly:
-12" @ 100yards,
-28" @150 yards and
-48" at 200 yards.

So leveling your musket (in the cloud of smoke) and firing away should hit a big wide target with no trouble. IF it is on the same level ground as your are. At typical effective combat ranges (125 yards or less), you are still going to plop the shot into the enemy. When you get around 150 yards distance, then you are going to start to have shots start to miss by being to high or low- but that isn't an effective musket range even on level ground.

Now the question of what is "level", as in I leveled my musket.

Does level mean:

[a] parallel to the slope (or a straight line) which connects the firer and the target? If both are on the same slope, which is the same at the firer and to the target, then there is not a problem.

\
 \ Firer
  \  
   \ 
    \ 
     \
      \ Target

{b} OR parallel to the ground at the location of the firer

Firer  =     =     =    =    =   >>>
_______
        \
         \   
          \ 
           \
            \  target

If the slope varies across a hillside or swale you are going to miss because even a very small difference in shallow slopes will put you way high or low.

Here is the results from a little geometry where the difference in elevation for various slopes and distances (tape measure on the ground distance) is calculated. A "steep slope" is 15 or 20 degrees. I have

		distance  # of        "gravity"
		on 	heights	         or
		ground	difference    "surveyor"
                          units=         yards
n in 1                   6' man
step	 degrees			
0.13	7.5	   100	   2	        99
0.27	 15	 yards	   4	        97
0.47	 25	 	   7	        91
0.13	 7.5	150	   3	       149
0.27	 15	yards	   7	       145
0.47 	 25	 	  11	       136
0.13	 7.5	200	   4	       198
0.27     15	yards	   9	       193
0.47     25	 	  14	       181

First column slope is .xx feet per 1 foot
2nd column slope in degrees
3rd column range to target, tape measure on ground
(and also distance that bullet flys)
4th column how many six foot man heights the target
is below the leveled bore (relative to the
earth- not the local slope)

Lets say that the shooter has placed themselves in a nice level spot at the top of a hill (that is level with the surface of the earth). People like to stand in these places because they don't have to continually brace themselves against falling down. They level their muskets and fire. The 4th column is how many man-heights the target is below the boresight. It is roughly how much they have to lower the barrel to hit the target. Lots of luck.

I think John W. Mauck pretty definitely shot down Hill.

There's also the fact that the horizontal range will be different than the line-of-sight range.

This becomes a rather significant difference at longer ranges and greater elevation differences. Firing at a target 100 yards distant horizontally and 300 feet above you in elevation, the line-of-sight range will be 140 yards, but the range gravity cares about will only be 100 yards.

..but Lion in the Starts, that is 100 yards out and 100 yard up. A 45 degree angle or almost as steep as a set of stairs ( 7" run, 11" rise is typical) (I've learned that the usual technical terms is "run" and "rise"). What I am finding surprising is that even modest slopes at 100yards will have a "leveled" musket firing 4 man heights above the enemy. Without that front and rear sight there is a big problem and this is enough to explain all those missed volleys at reasonable ranges. I'm going to try and find pictures of such slopes for head-space calibration.

Actualy lion gravity does not care in the least about how far it is going, it cares about how long that it takes to get there. So the greater slant ranges means that gravity does have longer to act on the projo, and it also means there is more time for air to scrub off velocity, giving gravity even more time to work on it.

And this does not matter if it is up or down hill, the slant range is the same.

What we are discussing here in the US Army Field Artillery we call Site. As targets are almost never on a flat plain with you, we have to calculate it every time. Or at least use the formula for it, we dont actualy do longhand , it would take way to long. Site is considered the biggest cause of initial round misses and hence adjustments as it is very difficult for even well trained observers to get the exact difference correct.

owen

There are other factors at work which give an advantage to defenders on an elevated position, not least the increased difficulty for the attackers to advance and fire and maintain formation on the slope, especially if it was wet. My experience with battlegame rules is that "moral" effects are sometimes used, but most rules heavily rely on casualty rates to determine the outcome of conflicts. It would therefore probably give the attackers an unrealistic advantage to reduce the accuracy of downhill fire without introducing compensating "moral" factors to account for the other advantages of defending an elevated position.

Yes, there should be several such effects. The uphill attacker should be winded, should hand-to-hand fight (or the anticipated fight) at a disadvantage and should be worried about what else is up over the hill. On firing, I suspect that the guys uphill might shoot over the heads of the attackers, while the guys downhill might fire low but still bounce some of the low shots into the enemy. Both sides should have a chance to shoot without any effect; however, most firing casualty tables show some sort of fall-off in effect with range. Maybe we should roll two die-something like the following. A D10 for where on the casulty (range/shooters versus enemy loss) table AND a D6 for a screwed up volley. Maybe a 1,2,3,4 (for green) and 1,2 (for veteran) number on the D6 means only half casulties (or something of the like).