"It's all about hardware" Topic

So all documentaries abouy the civil war starts the same, the rifled musket changed the face of warfare ect.

Bug i don't buy it. Yes war and battles are dictated by the technology used. But i feel the american civil war this has become stuff of legends.

The of sited that a rifled musket could kill a man at 600 yards makes it sound so more deadly then a old musket wuth a range of 100 yards, some times to make it even more epic they say but the it didn't really get efficient before 50 yards.

Ignoring that a smothbore actaly is quite accurate up to 200 yards if you can shoot, and use the right poweder. Modern shooters even with papper wadding (not leather) can hit a man sized target near 100% of the time at 150 meters.

It was not the gun, but training, and circumstances that lead it being considered waste of ammo using it oast 100 yards (and the condition if the weapons them self.

So what about those 600 yards? We know the weapon can do it, but how many soldiers could? 1 out of 100 or 200?

It would get more the closer you got, but how close before the aveage soldier in heat of battle , smoke, fright, adrenaline, screams of horror, artillery and musket fire actaly started to hit anything.

Also given that alot of soldiers never fired to kill, they would not be any more deadly if you gave them a minigun or a rock.

Even with modern training, modern weapons and scope most troops are not counted to be effective past a few hundred meters, with designated marksmen and sniper used for that.

I would assume the vast majority of those hit in a firefights would be hit with in the distance of effective range if a smoothbore.

Now add to this, how many times did the enemy cross open 600 yards, lets say everybody was a crack shot.

Cemetery ridge and fredricksburg? How many more? With streams, cornfields, woods lots of woods and croppy hills and hilly woods. I doubt the aveage distance of engagement is any more then 100 is meters.

I say it was the leadership or lack there off (most lower and many higher being amateur) and terrain that gave the acw it's unique feel.

The acw was much more like the awi then napoleonic war, or even fpw (fought with very similar weapons)

The lack of cav in the acw was the same as in awi, the terrain, not the mega deadly minie ball.

In the early war I would tend to agree. As time went on, technological superiority proved to have more and more of a bite. More and better artillery and the advent of repeaters tipped a number of critical points, and the end of the war saw situations more like 1915 than 1815.

What was truly decisive though was the very unexciting but still paramount logistical superiority. The USN, railroads and numbers made what became a war of attrition a foregone conclusion in what was mostly a conventional war.

I doubt anyone had the opportunity to even attempt anything close to a 600 yd shot. The local terrain at the time would prohibit it.

You may be interested in Nosworthy's The Bloody Crucible of Courage.
link

He presents an exhaustive amount of information. Even if one disagrees with some of his conclusions, there is plenty of material to illustrate precisely what the military men of that era knew about their weapons and tactics.

A lot of new research points out that although a rifled musket could reach 600 yards, most men were not trained to do so. The advantage of he rifled musket was therefore a lot more modest than the old considered wisdom would suggest.

It would ESPECIALLY mean that many, many ACW rules sets give muskets a much, much too long a range!

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis

Perhaps not, but I suspect being able to shoot accurately at even 200 – 300 yds. beats the heck out of 50 – 100 yds., so is a game changer, especially if you're on the side used to shootin' squirrels and possums fer yer supper.

Again, the effective range of a rifle-musket with iron sights is about the same as a modern infantry rifle with iron sights: 300 yards.

Although training can and does help, the average man's eyesight let's him pick out a man-sized target from other targets and terrain at right around 300 yards. Some are better, some are worse, but that's what, more than anything else, controls the effective range of a weapon.

In the ACW, terrain was also a big issue. Even with the large open fields that Pickett's troops had to cross, around the middle of the are was a dip in the ground that effectively covered and concealed them until they moved up out of it. It's rather hard, even considering the deforested areas of the east and south, to find more than 1000yds of flat, open ground. America is a land of rolling terrain, broken up by hills, forests, shrubs, streams and rivers, defiles, and all sorts of things that give cover and concealment to even large bodies of troops as they advance.

Add to that the fact that troops weren't taught much in marksmanship, but to aim at center of mass, or for the belt buckles of the enemy. That latter tended to help overcome the natural rise of both the round, and the tendency to jerk when firing.

The whole idea was to make each individual company in a battalion into a giant shotgun. It was weight of fire, rather than the individual soldier's skills, that mattered most.

I can't even see a man sized target at 600 yards. Can only barely see one at 400 yards.

Perhaps not, but I suspect being able to shoot accurately at even 200 – 300 yds. beats the heck out of 50 – 100 yds., so is a game changer, especially if you're on the side used to shootin' squirrels and possums fer yer supper

Again it was training, not the weapon, a British light infantry man could hit a french running at 150 yards.
The french musket was considered more accurate, but french light infantry had less training.

British rifles used the baker, that in theory could kill a man at 700 yards, yet most engagement were easly at less then 300 yards. And most at less then 250. And this was in Spain, while nit flat had much more open battlefields the most acw battlefields. Also less forests.

Also most squirrels don't shoot back, (except those 2nd amendment squirrels, those carry 10 gauge street howitzers)

Those aren't squirrels, those are bears. And they have the right to bear…oh nevermind.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the percussion cap rifle was that it was so much more reliable than a flintlock, increasing the effective rate of fire quite considerably, regardless of battlefield ranges.

Rifle battlefields were different to musket one's, with a far higher proportion of casualties caused by rifles as opposed to artillery, so clearly something had changed. The only obvious variable was the extensive use of rifles, which infantry tactics hadn't caught up with.

I don't agree.

1, canister wounds looks alot minie ball wounds. If the projectile is not in the body, it would be hard to tell.
2. Less artillery generally speaking(we a few exceptions )
3. Bad artillery, bolts used by rifled guns not as good as round shot, south had fuse problems the whole war, making shell and shrapnel.
4. Again terrain, artillery of the period simply wasn't that good at hittig things in hills and forests.

For the same reason rifled muskets almost never could be used at the maximum effective range, is the same why artillery wasn't effective. It need clear fields of fire.

I'm quite sure most of the losses Picket lost in the charge was from artillery, with 100+ guns with clear field of fire for a change it would be devistating.

So the higher number of rifle kills to artillery was not tge dar superior rifle, but less effective artillery.

Acw was mostly infantry4 fights, naturally most damage was done by infantry.

"Acw was mostly infantry fights, naturally most damage was done by infantry."

Fair comment, but that was arguably a function of the terrain over which the fighting was conducted rather than any indictment of the effectiveness of ACW artillery. When artillery had a reasonable field of fire, it absolutely dominated the battlefield – Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, 2nd Manassas where Longstreet's flanking position crushed Pope's left. Lee purposely chose to fight within the Wilderness in order to negate the powerful Federal artillery.

Much of the historical analysis as to relative effect of ACW artillery was based upon returns from the medical corps. I consider it faulty logic, as it fails to take into account the dramatically higher lethality of artillery as opposed to small arms (the same might also be said for blade casualties). The dead never reached the aid station to be counted.

B

I was thinking of all mid nineteenth century battles, including European ones, prior to the large scale introduction of breechloaders. The Franco-Austrian War of 1859 showed similar proportions of casualties.

It is hardly a very controversial proposition as figures for relative casualty rates by weapon type have been available for decades.

Yes, there may be some environmental factors at play, but again, one might argue that open order tactics and rifles let infantry fight in places they hadn't been able to before.

"Modern shooters even with papper wadding (not leather) can hit a man sized target near 100% of the time at 150 meters."

I'm not sure range firing tells us anything about effectiveness under combat conditions. Combat degradation under actual battle conditions is extreme, see e.g. Murrays 'Brains and Bullets' or Rowlands 'The Stress of Battle'.

Murray has an interesting thesis about the multiple loaded rifles found at Gettysburg.

My point was its a myth that the smoothbore was super inaccurate and it was only luck thst made hits.

Someone who is not trained or willing to kill some one will not be any more useful with a rifle then a smoothbore.

A rifle is only more effective in the hands of someone. With the training, skill, and willingness to kill with it.

And those soldiers were few and far between in any war before the Vietnam war.

Having a laser rifle with effective range of 50 miles is no better the having a musket with a range 150 yards, if the user is not willing to use it or don't have the skill.

Gunfreak you are absolutely right and I've been arguing the same thing for many years. While I'm not an expert on guns, I am an expert on tactics and my studies have shown that while the rifle-musket was somewhat more accurate than the smoothbore, the improvement was not enough to force any real changes in the tactics of the period. The by-the-book close order tactics were used successfully from 1861 to 1865 without change. And even Emory Upton's new tactics manual issued after the war still called for the old two-rank, shoulder to shoulder line of battle as the primary combat formation. It wasn't until the Franco-Prussian War with both sides armed with breechloading rifles that tactics were forced to change. Rate of fire, rather than absolute accuracy is the deciding factor.

But all of that is too complicated for The History Channel or even most mainstream historians, so you continue to get the nonsense of the 'revolutionary' improvements in accuracy of the rifle-musket.

Blutarski also hits it square in the black with his comment about blades. In the ACW, the bayonet WAS used, and quite often. Despite the meme that "one side or the other skeddadled before coming to blows", extant documents, letters, diaries, etc, all comment about "pitching in to them with bayonets and clubbed muskets".

The whole mth of the bayonet not being used comes from historians and other writers after them misinterpreting the data in the Official Records from the medical department. Those records are a review of wounds treated in federal hospitals. In other words, it doesn't represent those who were mortally wounded and failed to make it to the field hospitals, or those whose wounds were light enough to be dealt with at the Field Dressing Stations, etc.

Which brings us to the bayonet, whose wounds were almost always fatal. Those which weren't were either light enough to be stitched up, dressed, and returned to duty or the 960+ who were sent to the Division Hospitals and perhaps further up the chain.

The one thing that I will disagree with is the lethality of artillery. Outside of canister range, artillery is the great wounder of men and animals. Infantry is always the great killer.

V/R

As others have said, how the weapons were used, the SOP, is more important than the technical capabilities. The Union artillery cassions had a range table pasted on the inside of the lid ranged out to 1500 yards… considered on that diagram at least, as the extent of 'effective range'. Now both 12 lbers and rifled guns had technical ranges of twice that range.

I have never seen anything to suggest that artillery couldn't or didn't have the same effect in the ACW as the Napoleonic Wars when brought to bear. The issue was the terrain rather than simply the longer range of the rifled musket [which did have an effect, I agree…the question is how much].

I am not sure that artillery was a 'great wounder' at long range as opposed to the rifled musket. As hard to prove with hospital records as whether the bayonet was often used if both had a higher mortality rate than a rifled musket.

It took the command a long time to work out that they could kill at 600+ yards very deadly at 300+ with the new weapons (by the way smooth bores were the main weapons for the first 1 1/2 years of the war slowly replaced by rifles) but when they did they started using it and digging trench works just like WWI open field combat just did not work any more and was mostly dead by the end of the war.

Ron, I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Most veteran officers felt any fire beyond 200 yards was a waste of ammunition and you find few accounts of fire fights taking place at those sorts of ranges. While it is true that in the last year of the war you find a much greater use of entrenchments this was mostly due to the fact that by that time the Confederacy has given up the hopes of winning a decisive offensive victory and had gone over to the defense. The fact that the armies were now supplied by rail meant that they did not have to be constantly on the move to forage and could dig in for long periods.

But when they did come out in the open to fight they still used the same formations they always had, and used them successfully. Battles like Cedar Creek and even Saylor's Creek still saw the text-book formations being used and used successfully. I recall reading about an action in November of 1864 where a USCT regiment formed a square and successfully held off a brigade of Confederate cavalry :)

The rifle-musket was an improvement over the smoothbores, but it still had the same rate of fire and ROF was much more important than theoretical accuracy.

In my opinion the rifled musket did empirically change the nature of combat. Yes, most soldiers in the ACW armies were not trained in marksmanship. That does not mean that a good percentage couldn't shoot straight. Yes, the old tactical formations were still in use, but that was slowly changing. But the kind of "rock paper scissors" dynamic of Napoleonic warfare had come unhinged. You could no longer hope to crash cavalry into an infantry line and route it without losing said cavalry. You could no longer wheel your artillery up to canister range and blast the enemy line without losing said artillery.

The reason is that extra effective range of the rifled musket. The rate of fire was the same as the smoothbore but now you get two or three extra chances to shoot at the oncoming threat before it hits you. Men on horses present a large target. Artillery crews are a few precious men working in the open subject to massed fire. By simple weight of fire directed against them their relatively few numbers get annihilated when they come too close to massed infantry. The danger zone they must traverse to engage the enemy is now too deep for them to do it. This makes the kind of combined arms tactics of the Napoleonic battles impractical.

In fact the "no mans land" created by the rifled musket changes the dynamic of massed infantry attacks too and makes the defense far more advantageous than it had been with only smoothbores. This is why you see failed attacks, even by numerically superior forces, over and over in ACW battles. They have to not only survive canister range artillery fire but now have to withstand a couple hundred extra yards of travel under effective fire by the enemy infantry as well. Put your infantry behind very modest cover such as a stone wall or in a sunken lane and you could expect to repel three times your number.

The other factors brought up so far, the cluttered nature of the battlefields, the improved logistics etc. are all important in the ACW too but lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Scott is on the money here.

The weapon does not determine the effective range for the shooter. The officer commanding the shooter holding the weapon determines the effective range. Even at Gettysburg with a mostly clear field of fire against Pickett's charge, only a handful of infantry regiments opened fire at 200 yards, the majority withheld their opening volley at 100 yards or less and many of those held fire till the enemy was within 50 yards!

Officers knew that the initial volley was often decisive, and holding it until the last possible moment was the preferred tactic. This would usually stop an attacking formation in its place and put it in disorder while troops followed up with more volleys or independent fire.

What target a lone shooter may or may not be able to hit at 300 yards with a rifled musket might be of consideration for a sniper with a scope, but not for formed bodies of men. In this case, practice is more important than theory.

Kim

KimRYoung wrote:

What target a lone shooter may or may not be able to hit at 300 yards with a rifled musket might be of consideration for a sniper with a scope, but not for formed bodies of men. In this case, practice is more important than theory.

That 300 yards has nothing to do with a sniper and/or a scope. It's the actual limit at which the average man, with iron sights and his eyes, can differentiate or pick out a man-sized target and engage him. Beyond 300 yards MOST individuals will require optics to identify and engage a single, man-sized target.

This is the same today as it was in all previous periods. It's the physical limitation of the human eyes in this situation. Now, having said that, SOME men can be trained to engage standard paper targets at 500 meters. But that's a specific set of circumstances.

But effective range and engagement range are two different animals. Gettysburg poses some unique problems, especially during Pickett's Charge.

In the federal army, more than 40 regiments were still armed with some version of the M1816 Springfield musket. Almost all federal ammunition for the ,69, by that time, was buck & ball ammunition. Officers could specifically request round or expanding ball for those weapons, but the issue ammunition was B&B.

The Irish brigade had 3 of it's regiments armed with .69 muskets. Contemporary accounts from men who witnessed them along the rock wall say that many of then men had taken out extra rounds and were removing the inner paper tube that held the powder charge so as to make double-rounds of B&B. Extra rounds were also laid on the wall in front of them. Why that was tolerated, I cannot say, but that it was done is supported by eyewitness accounts.

As Pickett's men advanced, there was a wide depression in the fields that effectively masked them about halfway across the field. The entire lines were hidden briefly.

Almost all sources state that the federal infantry engaged Pickett's men as they were crossing the Emittsburg Pike. The federal officers used the long line of fence poles still standing as a range marker. Interestingly, the pike is approximately 200 yards from the federal lines.

It may well be that those federal units withholding fire until about 50 yards were the musket-armed troops. I'll take a look at my list and check just how many of those federal troops along that line were armed with .69 muskets. Might be an interesting consideration.

And FWIW, it wasn't until the Overland Campaign of 1864 that the entirety of the AoP was armed with rifles and rifled weapons.

The British went off to the Crimea in 1854 with their nice new Enfield rifles and drill that had hardly changed since Marlborough.
Their engaged range was still between 80 and 120 yards, the key thing with the rifled musket is that more bullets will find their targets.

The bigger change is the flintlock to the percussion lock.

flintlock misfire around 1 in 7

percussion lock misfire around 1 in 80

@Gunfreak,

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see this thread! It is without question, this topic is my biggest pet peeve in the all the 25 years I have been studying the Civil War. And it is without question one of the most imbedded and enduring misconceptions about the Civil War.

You do not buy the classic story of the rifle musket – and nor indeed should you!

Several posts in this thread hit upon the key issues, but most are focusing far too much on the technical aspects and capabilities of the individual musket and individual shooter.

There are several glaringly key factors that all but cancel out the "rifle musket revolutionized the battlefield" myth, and they are glaring indeed.

I consider Paddy Griffith, Brent Nosworthy, and Hess to be true historical heroes along with men like Harding, who wrote Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg(another topic altogether of course).

Many on TMP have disdain for Griffith, and tend to criticize his work for a variety of reasons, one being I think that he's an Englishman telling "us Americans about how our own war was fought". But I believe that one of the other reasons is that people can just not emotionally accept anything that rejects or refutes the official story, much in the same way that people cannot accept that the fight for Little Round Top had absolutely no impact on the battle of Gettysburg, and that Lee never ordered an attack on those hills(because they were totally unsuited for the purpose of either an artillery platform or an infantry position), and that the Little Round Top fight actually helped to RUIN his attack plans on July 2, which was to take Cemetery Hill… (all statements are 100% true, which I know will stir up a hornet's nest on here). Nevertheless they are all true.

Now, back to the rifle musket.

I don't mean this to sound like I'm being arrogant, but in order to truly understand this legendary weapon of the Civil War, you first need to push to the margins all posts in this thread that stress the technical capabilities of the musket. Yes, they do have SOME merit, but they are misplaced, and for the Civil War overall as a wider conflict, it is absolutely the wrong thing to focus on.

The rifle musket could indeed shoot more accurately and shoot farther than the smoothbore of earlier wars.

The rifle musket did indeed have "an effective range"(a phrase which absolutely drives me insane and a phrase that I despise, because it creates a horrible misconception about Civil War weaponry) of 300+ yards, and it could shoot its ball up to 600 yards and beyond.

ALL weapons throughout history had an "effective range". ALL weapons had accuracy statistics. ALL weapons had "maximum potential".

And the point to this is that the rifle musket, be it the Springfield or the Enfield, never lived up to its potential and were never USED to their potential. This simple truth alone negates whatever technological ability the muskets had on the test range back at the military arsenal.

The Civil War had terrible casualties, but not any more terrible statistically than the biggest of the Napoleonic battles. In fact major Civil War battles like Gettysburg actually have comparatively mild casualty rates when compared to some of the big Napoleonic battles. I don't say that to minimize their deaths by any means, but only to show that there wasn't some new horrendously high kill or hit rate on Civil War battlefields because of the rifle musket. The high casualties on Civil War battlefields were for the same reason that all wars of that period had high casualties – repeated close-range volleys, over and over and over. The rifle musket did indeed kill but it didn't do it more quickly and more efficiently than in previous wars. Not by a long shot(no pun intended).

The following are all facts about the Civil War with regards to the rifle musket. And once you put all of these together, it is a simple equation that concludes that the rifle musket did not have the supposed impact on the battlefield as is claimed.

The range of combat in the Civil War was, for all intents and purposes, virtually the same as it was for previous smoothbore wars; 100-150 yards. Period. NOW, does that mean that there weren't instances of soldiers firing at longer ranges? Of course there were. Were their instances of volleys being fired at longer ranges? Of course there were. But "instances of" do not tell you what happened most of the time in Civil War combat.

And what happened most of the time in Civil War combat was that the two sides would get into deadly close smoothbore ranges, 100 yards and often UNDER, and blazed away at smoothbore ranges. And within the first 100 yards, the rifle vs. the smoothbore offer no advantage to either weapon. Period.

Why did they do this? Because during the Civil War there was practically ZERO, and I mean ZERO training in the use of the REAR SIGHTS. This is the key to all this. The rear sight on a Springfield was a curiosity with it's three flip-tabs. And if the Springfield rear sight was a curiosity, then the ENFIELD sliding rear sight was a positive ENIGMA.

During the war, training with the musket focused on ONE THING. Massed volley fire and volume of fire. Get three shots off in a minute, use the FRONT sights and just point the thing at the smoke of the opposing battle line. And 99% of the time that was about the extent of the sophistication of it. Literally.

Forget snipers. Forget shooting prodigies that hunted squirrels on Daddy's farm. These people were nothing more than a minor blip in the overall mass of the federal and confederate forces.

People love to quote Sedgwick's last words; "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis"…as if that ironic quote proves every alternate musket theory wrong. Nonsense. Sedgwick was killed by either a sniper in a fixed position taking his time (and probably an instance of a individual soldier using the rear sights I might add), OR equally as likely he was killed by a stray bullet that just happened to be his bullet. Nonsense and enough of that legend.

So, now that we know that Civil War commanders trained their men to fire with speed and volume in mind, and NOT accuracy, while completely excluding the rear sight from volley firing, we know that these mighty weapons were used with the front sights, and were used just like smoothbores.

So, now that we know that the mighty rifle musket was used like a smoothbore in the Civil War, we can get into some of the key technical aspects of firing with the FRONT sight that most assuredly COMPLETELY CANCELS OUT any potential new killing power these weapons may have had.

It is called the parabolic effect. For some reason this phenomenon is mysteriously ignored by people who praise the rifle for its deadly accuracy.

And it's very simple. If you are live-firing a Springfield or Enfield, and you are using the FRONT SIGHT only (and bear in mind, this is on a calm firing range, NOT standing in a smokey line of battle with chaos and insanity all around you), you CAN hit targets at the "legendary ranges" of Civil War lore. IF you practice standing stationary, and IF you do it enough to become accustomed to where the bullet goes when you do only use the front sight. But what I am describing is peace-time firing range MARKSMANSHIP, NOT 19th century battle line combat.

But if you want to hit a target at the ranges that so many on here claim the rifle musket killed masses of soldiers at; you must utilize the rear sight.

What people tend to forget, is that for a rifle musket to hit a target at 500 or 600 yards, you are actually aiming the musket UPWARDS. Why upwards? Because a musket minie ball doesn't travel in a straight line over that distance. It has to be LOBBED onto its target. The bullet actually goes up, and comes down, in an ARC, it PLUNGES down onto its target. It was an aspect of the rifle musket that virtually NO Civil War soldiers ever came close to practicing let alone mastering.

If you aim straight at a target 500 yards distant without accounting for the parabolic effect and without utilizing the rear sight, you know what you'll hit? Air. Or a tree nearby. Or the house behind the target. OH, the bullet WILL travel that far, but you won't kill or wound squat. An entire infantry volley fired in this manner would be practically impotent and useless, the tops of trees would catch hell, but that's about it.

…which brings us to the clincher of this equation.

The personal accounts of the soldiers and officers themselves.

Soldiers often describe in their letters and diaries a sound during battle, a sound overhead like the buzzing of bees. That sound was generated by the thousands upon thousands of musket balls that were fired during volleys some distance away, and the balls are all flying 20 feet over the heads of the men in battle line, striking the tops of trees, the sides of barns behind them, etc.

THIS IS KEY: After the first 100 yards or so of a rifle musket balls flight(if you fire it by aiming straight ahead at the target, it begins to RISE. The parabolic effect happens after about 100 yards. THAT'S WHY during the war whole volleys often completely and almost comically missed! And it's not hard to envision!

The confederates are about 150 yards off, right? So the Union regiment halts and prepares to fire a volley. The soldiers load and dutifully aim their muskets straight at the enemy, looking straight down their front sights.

BOOM. SMOKE. And the smoke clears. And out of about 250 musket balls, about 10 confederates are hit. At 150 yards. Why? Because the parabolic effect after the first 100 yards carried most of those balls over the heads of the confederates. The balls that DID hit were from the Union soldiers who had aimed slightly lower(by pure CHANCE by the way, NOT because they were marksmen), and so when the bullets began to rise, they "rose into some portion of the target" as opposed to completely flying over that target. Simple.

What I have just described is the way Civil War combat worked. Period.

And here's another bombshell; the hit ratio during the Civil War was about FIVE PERCENT. What? Yes, five percent. That means that about 5 bullets out of 100 found their mark? 5 out of 100. That's insanely bad. Deadly new accuracy? A battlefield revolution? Changed the face of the battlefield? It did?

Then why may I ask does the mighty rifle musket in the Civil War have the same abysmally low hit ratio that the smoothbores of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars do?
Could it be be because the rifle musket didn't actually kill masses of soldiers at longer distances? Could it be because most Civil War soldiers who were killed or wounded by rifle musket fire were hit mostly at much closer smoothbore ranges?

NOW, having said that, what commanders did learn and did adopt to was the idea that if you had your men aim LOW (and you would aim LOW because the front sight is all you have as an aiming guide), you would aim LOW because they knew that at some point the bullets would rise and fly over their targets.

THEREFORE, that is why at 75-100 yards, commanders would implore their men to aim at the enemy's KNEES or belt buckles. Their KNEES or belt buckles. And why? Because by firing downward it would mean that the ball would lift upward and carry into the target as opposed to flying over it. That was only way you could compensate for the parabolic effect. "Fire low!"

The tendency of men in battle line is that you want to hit the enemy in a vital spot – so naturally at 75 or 100 yards you would aim at the soldier's head or chest – and completely miss.

OH, and incidentally, there is compelling evidence for this – do you want to know what a common wound was during the Civil War? The right thumb. What? The right thumb? Why?

Because when an opposing battle line was loading, the soldier had his right thumb up on the ramrod at the highest point when the rammer was about to ram the next ball down the barrel – AND, since Civil War soldiers so typically aimed too high, they would either miss completely OR nick the enemy's rammer thumb as it was held high over his head.

Seriously, it's not rocket science folks.

And in my assertion, Griffith, Nosworthy, and Hess are akin to being folk heroes of history to me. They have successfully debunked nearly a century of historians and authors all spewing the same thing about the rifle musket simply because the next guy was saying it.

I'll end with a simple conclusion. Many Civil War wargames rules give the musket far too much power, and give it very misleading misguided stats.

My only quibble with this is your fanboy adulation of Griffith, whom I despise , and that whole "3 rounds a minute" rate of fire.

3 Rounds a minute was the maximum rate of fire during experiments done by the Ordnance Department with pristine weapons, cartridges, and a range. In real life, you'd get about 2 rounds/minute for the first 20 rounds or so, then start slowing down as fouling built up. It was especially bad during humid weather. This is one reason why the Ordnance Department adopted the Williams pattern Cleaner Bullet.

I used to live fire both an Enfield and Springfield rifle-musket. Both were (and still are) fine weapons, but live firing them brings out those same truths: fouling builds up at a steady rate and after 20 rounds, loading slows down, and after 40 rounds, it's difficult at best to even get one round a minute. Muskets didn't have this problem because, not having rifling, they were easier to wipe clean in an emergency.

But otherwise, I agree with your remarks. I would also reemphasize terrain as a limiting factor during most ACW engagements. Sure, there were some instances of long, open areas, but for the most part, being able to physically engage at more than about 300 yards just wasn't possible.

V/R

Baranovich: I found you posting very informative. Thanks, John Miller

TKindred: I was under impression that the only unit other than the three N.Y. regts. in the Irish Brigade, to be equipped with smoothbore muskets that had any part in repelling Picketts Charge was the 12th N.J., which I believe was in Hayes Division. Could be wrong of course, but that is how I remeber it. Thanks, John Miller

Dean Thomas' book "Ready…Aim…Fire!" has the entire federal OB and lists each unit as regards what arms it had, etc. By my tally, there are more than 40 federal units still equipped with muskets in the AoP at Gettysburg.

If I can find the time next week, I'll see if I can gin up a list for you of them.

V/R

@Baranovich,

In the spirit of discussion, not argument, I ask the following questions:

In a Napoleonic battle if you coordinate your forces you could do something like this: Your cavalry charges the enemy line, forcing them to form into squares for self defense. Meanwhile you have brought your artillery within grapeshot range of those enemy squares and you blast them once your cavalry is out of the way, annihilating them. Why does this never happen in an ACW battle?

American cavalry are basically dragoons, mounted infantry more or less, though the southern cavalry seemed to be quite proficient at fighting from horseback. Why didn't they form up at two hundred yards and charge the federal lines and rout them? No doubt someone will cite an example of this happening, but it wasn't a common thing. In fact it seems to me that they tended to keep a healthy distance from massed infantry.

Why wasn't artillery routinely wheeled into canister range for attacks in the ACW? The max range for canister is around three hundred yards. Wouldn't that be just as effective in the ACW as in the Napoleonic battles? As far as I know this was not done. For example, the bombardment of Cemetery ridge in preparation for Picket's charge was done with shell and shrapnel at long range if I am not mistaken. Why wasn't that artillery brought up into canister range to blast that very thin blue line?

Why does the "no mans land" between battle lines seem to be quite a bit deeper in ACW battles? When not making an attack, ACW armies kept their distance unless there was cover for both. When infantry did march forward in attack they had a relatively short time to bring the matter to a decision before they had to find a hole to crawl in or run away. It seems that almost any frontal assault you can name in the war (against a determined enemy) failed. What percentage of this was due to canister firing artillery in defense is, I grant you, an important question.

An argument comes to mind, American officers were so woefully ignorant of standard military doctrine that real Napoleonic tactics never occurred to them. West Point was very good at turning out engineers and horsemen but nothing else. Although this stings, I think there may be a small element of truth to this. Certainly it isn't the whole explanation though.

It seems to me that it is empirically true that frontal assaults are doomed to fail in the ACW but not in Napoleonic battles. Could it be that what is really happening is a combination of factors. The smoothbore musket may have a max range of 150 yards but it is really only effective at around 50. And the rifled musket with an awesome max range of 600 or so is really only working with say 200 yards or less effective range. That is still four times the range of the smoothbore. Often enemy infantry would be allowed to advance to 50 yards or less before the initial volley, but not always (Picket's charge for example). However, when was enemy cavalry or artillery allowed to close to anywhere near that distance without a response. Therefore, the defender's line is not "softened" with grapeshot or horsemen in preparation for an assault. At best they receive a pathetic shower of shrapnel or shell. The attacking infantry are on their own and must advance through a 200 yard danger zone where a certain amount of rifle fire will be hitting, even if by accident. Add to that the greater number of heavy caliber artillery in ACW battles, and you create a foretaste of WW1. You can no longer march up to the enemy, exchange volleys and expect to succeed. The Napoleonic tools to make a frontal assault work (close assault by cavalry and or artillery) are no longer viable in part because of that 200 yard danger zone created by the rifled musket.

Just the cavalry bit, it was the terrain not the guns.

Try charing 300 cavalry into a wooded hill top…

You can se the same thing in the AWI, very little use of cav. And there they still used muskets(and old style rifles)

The efficiency of the tool (i.e., the weapon) is always at the mercy of the inefficiency of the user (the soldier). Individual marksmanship was confined, at best, to fire by skirmishers and sharpshooters. Fire by close order infantry was zone fire. And it was in the sense of zone fire that the superior accuracy attributes of rifled small arms displayed a meaningful range superiority over the smoothbore. This has nothing to do with angle of fall or danger space; it had everything to do with the delivery of a denser sheaf or cone of fire into the beaten zone. Field artillery was forced to keep a more respectful distance after the introduction of rifles because an effective zone fire could now be delivered at a longer range.

It is an interesting exercise to analyze the layout of a field artillery battery in action. A battery deployed for action unlimbered its guns in a single line with fourteen yards interval between guns plus two yards allowed for each gun, making a frontage of about eighty yards for a deployed six gun battery. Allowing for the prescribed intervals of six yards between the gun line and the limber line plus a further interval of eleven yards between the limber line and the caisson line, the total depth of an artillery battery with its caissons at hand was about fifty yards. This assumes that the service and supply echelon and any reserve caissons remained out of sight sheltered to the rear. Within this eighty by fifty yard patch of ground would be concentrated six guns, six caissons, twelve limbers, seventy-two horses, and upwards of eighty men. It was a big deep target full of living humans and horses.

Experience indicated that in action about five horses were lost for every three men hit. A loss of fifteen men would imply the loss of about one-third of the battery's horses; a loss of twenty-five men probably meant the loss of nearly two-thirds of the battery's horses. In the first case, the battery is arguably crippled and can only withdraw or otherwise move with difficulty. In the second case, the battery is effectively destroyed, as it can no longer move as a fighting unit.

My opinion, FWIW.

B

Panzerfaust wrote:

In a Napoleonic battle if you coordinate your forces you could do something like this: Your cavalry charges the enemy line, forcing them to form into squares for self defense. Meanwhile you have brought your artillery within grapeshot range of those enemy squares and you blast them once your cavalry is out of the way, annihilating them. Why does this never happen in an ACW battle?

The one instance I know of this happening is at Olustee, in Florida. Federal cavalry forced Confederate infantry into squares, and artillery was brought up behind, masked by the cavalry. It unlimber and forced the squares to deploy into line. Exactly as you indicated.

BUT, as Blutarski wrote above, it wasn't a lack of training that caused problems for cavalry. It was the terrain. US Cavalry was trained in tactics against squares, just as infantry of both sides trained in forming them. European ideas strongly influenced US thinking, especially those of the French. French Napoleonic (and later) ideas on tactics, as well as uniforms and equipment were the model influence for US Military thinking, up until the Franco-Prussian war, when the US switched from French to Prussian ideas.

But in the Americas, there simply wasn't the space for grand batteries, massive cavalry charges and infantry squares, etc. Certainly there are exceptions, as in everything, but on the whole, American terrain just didn't allow for the sorts of tactics and deployments that Europe did. US forces on both sides were well acquainted with, and trained their forces to European tactics and standards, but they simply didn't have the space to use them in said manner.

As regards cavalry charging infantry if I remember correctly Union cavalry successfully charged Confederate infantry, (the infantry occupying somewhat delapated works I think), at Opequon Creek (SIC?), in 1864. I believe the cavalry involved were at least division in strength. This incident seems to be seldom discussed and flies in the face of conventional wisdom as regards the realities of cavalry operations in the ACW. There may have been mitigating circumstances of course, the shakiness of Confederate infantry at that time being mentioned as one, etc. It is also my impression that in the first two years of the war, in the Army of the Potomac at least, the cavalry were so parceled out that operations of this nature would not have been possible. I seem to recall a couple of instances where regiments of cavalry would charge opposing infantry brigades in colums of fours. I wonder if any of you guys would like to render any opinions or insights on this. Thanks, John Miller

All Hands: The posting I made above was worded very poorly, sorry for that! The question I meant to pose was that it seems to me that when conditions allowed, (relatively open terrain, large enough formations, etc.), and the cavalry were launched against infantry in the conventional, "European" manner, they could be successful. That the rifle musket, in and of itself, did not necessarily spell the end of mounted operations against infantry. I am of the same opinion as TKindred expressed above. Would anyone else have any opinions they would like to render on that? Thanks in advance. John Miller

Also Squares were almost wholy a Napoleonic thing.

Yes soldiers knew how to use it from the late 1600s, and a few times the next 100 years it was used. But The massive use of squares excited only during the napoleonic period(and mabye following wars in Latin America and Carlist wars?)

American civil war soldiers were trained to use it(to some degree) and it did happen a few times.

But in world history of horse and musket period I would think 95% of all use of squares happend 1792-1815

So saying squares wasn't much used during the ACW has no bearing on the effectiveness of rifled muskets.

So saying squares wasn't much used during the ACW has no bearing on the effectiveness of rifled muskets.

The argument is that rifles kept the cavalry at bay, so that squares were not needed.

I think Panzerfaust's questions are cogent. If it wasn't the rifle that caused these differences, what did?

As me mentioned sevral times, the terrain. Wasn't much cav during the awi either, the awi and American civil war has many similarities, and they all stem from the terrain.