"Rifled Muskets" Topic

Here is an example of why I am skeptical of the arguments that ACW infantry combat was carried out at smoothbore ranges.

Private Thomas Jefferson Newberry, of the 29th
Mississippi Infantry Regiment, Walthall's Brigade, which would later become part of Liddell's Division at the Battle of Chickamauga, recalled in letters home:

We have had very good luck to stay here at this place as long as we have (Shelbyville) .. . the first knight [sic] we got here we did not think it was hardly worth while to streach [sic] our tents … it will soon be six months since we got here we went out yesterday and worked on our breastworks [sic] we cut down timber in front we have exelent [sic]ditches to fight in we have bin [sic] having shooting matches our Company shot day before yesterday we had four shoots [sic] apiece … we shot at a board with a man printed on it … the first shoot [sic] we had we shot two hundred yards … the next was three hundred and the next lot was four and the last was six hundred … Sometimes we struck the board … I hit it twice the first time and last … Some of them hit it every time and some of them missed it every time … Do wish you could of bin [sic] to see us drill for the prise [sic] … three Companys in our Regiment was drilled to see which was the best to drill against the Brigade and our Company beat the other two and then our Company had to drill for it … We drill in skirmish drills and in every other drill … a Company in 27 Mips[issippi] got the prize … the prize was something like a hundred dollars and ninety days rest … Our Company can go through the manuel [sic]of arms as nice as you ever saw and we can ourder [sic] arms so near together you can hardly tell but one gun hit the ground.

B

I don't know that this example supports long engagement ranges. I'm very skeptical that many hit the target at 600 yards. I'm even more skeptical that they actually fired at a target set up at 600 yards. Have you ever seen how far away 600 yards is?

It doesn't change my mind at all. Officers of bored troops on garrison duty are keeping their troops busy by organizing shooting competitions. I think there are more than enough first hand combat accounts to show that long range fire was not the norm.

Paddy Griffith seems to think that ACW ranges averaged about 25-35 yards farther than smooth bore battles had ranged or about 100-125 yards, if I remember correctly. I have also heard that WWII infantry combat was probably about that. Ranges above that without a scope and ability to concentrate on your target appear to be difficult to see properly and hit consistently in a battle situation. It makes sense to me, in my humble opinion. I have never fired a shot beyond 25 yards and only with a Pennsylvania rifle reproduction.

On the other hand the 29th Miss are probably a good example of why long range target practice was a waste of time.

With the exception of making a charge across an open field and later being repulsed doing an another as far as I know Walthall's Brigade spent most of its time at Chickamauga fighting in woods, as did both sides.

Visibility was as "good" as 200 yards in places. Not much of threat with a smoothbore – providing you didn't close the range of course. On the other hand not a lot of use for a rifle if you didn't close either.

100 yards is roughly a football field. Think how small someone looks at that distance and that is the target you are shooting at, in good circumstances. Granted in the Civil War you were shooting at a line but if there is any drop to the shot the height would be more important.

I, for one, say thanks for posting this excellent first hand account. A real insight in the emotional and psychological aspect of war.

Why waste time shooting at targets 600 yards away when you probably won't do that in an actual battle? Because if we can do that then those Yanks don't stand a chance when I see them emerge from the smoke at a closer range. It's about confidence building. Can you not hear the pride and Esprit in his words? Sounds like they had an excellent commander to me.

rustymusket,

Well remembered, his averages if you exclude the distortion of really close terrain are between 104 and 141 yards. Easily within smoothbore range. Not the general engagement distance, the weapon's performance range.

Now the key thing for me is that we tend to view the actual ranges used, which if things are to be believed is more in the region of 75 – 100 yards – in Napoleonic times at any rate.

Thing thing I take from Griffith is that given the theoretical performance of the rifle, firefights (and this was pre war experts view too) really ought to have been happening at a hell of a lot more than around the general maximum engagement distance of the Napoleonic period !

Where is the evidence of firefights in the ACW taking place at 250 – 350 yards on a constant basis, let alone longer distances.

I would stress the word "firefight" – out in the open stand up, kill and be killed, idiocy. Not one side or the other throwing themselves at field works of any kind.

This is the thing I would really like to know both about Griffith and those who question him – counterfactual evidence would be a necessity – what circumstances prevail in the sample.

Including those that fall well below 100 yards Griffith had 113 samples, I would dearly love to know what ones he used.

In fairness he did point out that more research should be done on this matter and Hess is the last person to try it that I own a copy of. Coming as he did to a conclusion in line with Grifith but not IRC making that all important "firefight", or not, distinction.

One could spend the rest of a long period of time trawling the OR for this information – anybody know someone doing a Masters or a PhD who might be looking for a task? :o)

At Pendelton the range targets were 25, 50 and 100 meters. With an M16 you were trained to fire at 25 meter targets standing, 50 meter targets kneeling and anything over 50 meters prone. A man-size target at 100 meters is really small and if he is moving almost impossible to hit consistently.

Also, factor the terrain, which was radically different from Europe. Broad open fields of fire were rare, and when they did occur the results were devastating.

StomeMtnMinis, we had pretty much the same in Canada but using FN's. Ours went every 50 yards to 350, which is a small dot.

Battle ranges are more often dictated by visibility than weapon capability (especially theoretical capability). You can't shoot what you can't see.

There is also the range estimation problem. The average estimation error for an untrained human is plus or minus 20% of the range. Not too much of a problem with a high velocity, flat trajectory weapon like an M-1 or a Mauser. Very bad for a low velocity weapon like a black powder rile-musket.

Wargamers usually don't get to guess distances above 4 feet.

Here's some shots of artillery firing at 1,000 yards

YouTube link

Here's some artillery shooting canister shot. It's about 400 yards to the tree line:

YouTube link

This will help you judge distances.

In the Marine Corps we fired at 500 yards at a man sized target on a regular basis. And hit consitantly.

Yep, 500 yards when ah was in with an M14. You were expected to hit every time. Think they dropped it a bit for the 16 (a weapon I serously hate).

rmaker,

You can't shoot what you can't see.

A point I always end up making in these discussions and the flat trajectory one is sound too!

Stonemountain,

Good points on Pendleton and the difference in US terrain.

Given counter insurgent urban warfare, getting first time hits at 100 yards or less has swung things right into the kind of ranges we were originally discussing or less – if indeed they ever left!

Check out the drill manuals (Napoleonic era)each nation fired at longer ranges than us arm chairs warriors realised. I fired on a little while back, (ok yes I was a military marksman) but I hit the target on a 300 mtrs range, I was gob smacked to say the least. A volley of 500 a large % are going to hit 'something'.

Here are some calculations I did on the brown bess musket which shows information on the range, MV, drop of the ball with range and "thumbs". The purpose of the chart was to demonstrate that to hit a line of troops at longer ranges, the main error was how much the barrel was elevated (moreso than left-right aiming at a 150 yard line of battle). Without graduated sights or even a barleycord at the end of the barrel, there wasn't much hope of doing damage.

If you look up popular astronomy sites, they give you information about how to find different stars and planets by reference to easier to find ones in the sky. Anyway, approximately your thumb held at arms length covers a degree of arc of about 2 degrees. In the chart below, note how small (fraction of a thumb) a six foot man is at distance.

range in yards	0	50	100	150	200	250	300	350	400	450	500
drop in inches	0.2	0.5	-5.7	-22.9	-55.6	-108.3	-185.5	-291.7	-431.4	-609.1	-829.3
drop in yards	0.0	0.0	-0.2	-0.6	-1.5	-3.0	-5.2	-8.1	-12.0	-16.9	-23.0
degree angle of drop	 0.02	-0.09	-0.24	-0.44	0.69	-0.98	-1.33	-1.72	-2.15	-2.64
"thumbs" of drop	 0.01	-0.05	-0.12	 	-0.34	-0.49	-0.66	-0.86	-1.08	-1.32
YARDS	
6 foot man is this degrees tall	
number of 2 degree "thumbs" you must be accurate to	
0	50	100	150	200	250	300	350	400	450	500
        2.29	1.15	0.76	0.57	0.46	0.38	0.33	0.29	0.25	0.23
        1.1	0.6	0.38	0.29	0.23	0.19	0.16	0.14	0.13	0.11

Yep, 500 yards when ah was in with an M14. You were expected to hit every time. Think they dropped it a bit for the 16 (a weapon I serously hate).

Nope, it was still 500 yards with an M-16A2 when I was in.

Same here, 500 yards with the M-16A2.

"and some of them missed it every time"

So your not going to engage with volley fire until say 60-75% can hit. Remember you only have 50 rounds and oh, the other guys are shooting back. That should affect your accuracy quite a bit.

Combat effectiveness of small arms degrades roughly 90% between range and exercises, and then a further 90% when in actual combat. See e.g Rowlands "The Stress of Battle"

Which is why in the age of rifles there is so much shooting, to so little effect, apart from suppression.

Crew served weapons degrade less.

"So your not going to engage with volley fire until say 60-75% can hit. Remember you only have 50 rounds and oh, the other guys are shooting back. That should affect your accuracy quite a bit."

I don't think that's the case at all. For example, at Gettysburg the US issued 4.5 million rounds of small arms ammo and inflicted 26,000 casualties. The CS issued 3 million rounds and inflicted 22,000 casualties. And some of those were inflicted by artillery.

On Little round top Chamberlin had a little over 400 men with full cartridge boxes, or about 16,000 rounds, which they emptied. Oates took about 120 casualties in his command, some of which were inflicted by the sharpshooters that joined the 20th Maine.

The difference between rifle range shooting and actual combat in small arms effectiveness is one of the issues. Another one is how the weapons are used regardless of their technical range or practice accuracy. Here is a heavy firefight:

One Union veteran recalled the Iron Brigade's fight at Brawner's Farm, 1862,[just before 2nd Manassas] against the Stonewall Brigade and Trimble's brigade [6 regiments against 13]:

"The two crowds, they could hardly be called lines, were within, it seemed to me, fifty yards of each other, and were pouring musketry into each other as rapidly as men could load and shoot." Still, neither side would yield the ground they had held so preciously over the course of the last two bloody hours. Soon, however, the rifle fire gradually slackened and faded, only to be replaced by the pathetic cries of the wounded. Each side now ventured forward with lamps held high, collecting the dead and wounded."

The losses on both sides were significant. Gibbon's brigade lost almost 800 killed or wounded. The 2nd Wisconsin lost 276 men out of the 430 who went into the line and 21 of their wounded were hit at least twice. On the other side, in addition to Lawton and Trimble's horrific losses, the Stonewall brigade had lost 340 men out of 800, a 40 percent casualty rate. In fact, so fierce was the fighting in those two hours along the Warrenton Pike, that one in every three men engaged was hit at least once.

The 2nd Wisconsin and Stonewall brigade fought for @twenty minutes. Assuming 2 to 3 shots a minute from both sides [using up their sixty rounds], together that was between 49,280 to 73,920 shots fired. The 2nd Wisconsin lost 276 men and the Stonewall Brigade lost 340, or 616 casualties all together. A little division gets you between 1:80 to 1:120 hit/shot ratio, and this is within 100 yards of each other. That is better than the 1:133 ratio Dn Jackson provided for Chamberlin's fight above.
link

Now, that firefight and overall combat for the entire battle was fought in far closer quarters than even 250 yards. [Some combatants didn't know how close they were to the enemy until both sides stopped shooting and the smoke cleared.]

If troops constantly met the enemy at under 300 yards, it doesn't matter what the weapon's accuracy is at 400 or 600 yards.

Today's weapons have an effective range of 900 or more yards [or miles…?], yet firefights over the last several decades have averaged 400 yards or less between opponents.

Bill, if I recall correctly, most of the Iron Brigade were using an Austrian made very heavy smoothbore musket and inflicted that many casualties.

It was the Lorenz Rifle

link

Kim

Don't recall any "Austrian made very heavy smoothbore musket".

Are you sure you don't mean the Lorenz Rifle Musket? That's the only Austrian import I've ever heard of. Besides one thing neither side had was a shortage of smoothbores!

weaponsman.com/?p=18348

A weapon that had a mixed press during the war, some good, quite a few bad. Mostly due to variable production, depending on who the actual manufactures were.

Not really any heavier than the Enfield or Springfield all of them coming in at around 9lbs and change.

I think some Lorenz were a little heavier than others depending on the wood used but certainly not in the "very heavy" category compared to the other two.

wrgmr1:

I was under the impression [didn't check] that both sides carried rifled muskets, though I have read that some of the Iron Brigade regiments had smoothbors.. That would say something about smoothbore vs rifle if what you say was true.

At least two units of the Iron Brigade (2nd and 7th Wisconsin) were armed with Lorenz rifles at the time of the battle. Does anyone know for certain what the other units had?

Are there any records that show what the Confederates engaged at Brawner's Farm were armed with? I would have thought that 1862 is quite early in the war to assume that they all had rifle muskets.

The CSA had shortages of all sorts of arms at the beginning of the war, including military smoothbore muskets. Many men went on campaign carrying family flintlocks, odd fowling pieces and even shotguns.

B

Would anyone care to comment on Col. Willard's advocacy of arming infantry regiments with smooth bore muskets, (except for one or two companies who would be used as skirmishers). I believe he felt smoothbore would be superior, (buck & ball loads), at the ranges most shooting would occur. I bring this up because on another topic here on TMP it was mentioned that General Meagher of the Irish Brigade advocated their use for his troops and it appears that he was not alone in that belief. Modern historians usually scoff at the idea but I wonder if it is not as silly as it appears to us now. As usual, (for me), I will not have access to a computer for a few days so thanks in advance for any comments rendered. Thanks, John Miller

John, should discussion not also be entertained with respect to those regiments who happily traded their smoothbores for rifle muskets?

B

Blutarski: Of course your point is well taken. I believe I read in their regimental history that the 9th Mass. was armed with smoothbores until quite late in the war and that the primary reason they exchanged them then was because they had trouble getting resupplied with the 69 caliber smoothbore ammunition at that time, they and the three New York outfits of the Irish Brigade being among the few units still armed with them. I am not aware if there are a lot of primary sources that gives us the feelings of the soldiers using smoothbores one way or the other. Would not the enlisted men usually be happier with weapons they perceived as more up to date? I have always found this topic fascinating, perhaps because I own a original smoothbore which I used to fire frequently as a teenager, (long ago). Thanks, John Miller

Interesting article from The American Rifleman -
link

- from which I quote the following passage which deserves to be taken into serious consideration.

"Occasional attempts at long-range fire by line outfits at Gettysburg, including a volley aimed by the 56th Pennsylvania at the 55th North Carolina at an undetermined distance on July 1, proved ineffective. Brigadier General Hobart Ward, commanding a brigade on Houck's Ridge between the Wheatfield and Devil's Den on July 2, ordered his men to hold fire until the Rebels were 200 yards away, which, following modern verification by range-finder at various spots on the field, turns out to be the average infantry engagement range at Gettysburg."

The comment that modern laser measurement efforts on the Gettysburg battlefield have indicated average infantry engagement range as 200 yards is important and deserves close scrutiny. Whereas the article was published in 2013, I wonder if the laser measurement program was conducted by the National Park Service in connection with the 150th anniversary of the battle.

It is also noteworthy that General Ward felt obliged to order his brigade to hold its fire until the enemy had approached within 200 yards.

B

John Miller:

There were more than 40 federal units at Gettysburg armed with muskets, primarily the M1842. The units may be located in Thomas' "Ready…Aim…Fire; Small Arms Ammunition atthe Battle of Gettysburg".

It's worth noting that Lee's army had a higher percentage of rifle armed troops than Meade's.

It was Grant who ensured that the entire AoP was armed with rifled weapons by the start of the Overland Campaign in1864. All muskets were relegated to VRC units or returned to the arsenals by this time.

Thomas, in the book referenced above, also recounts period comments that the Irish brigade units armed with muskets broke open their reserve ammunition packets from their cartridge boxes, and had them resting on the stone wall for better access. Their first round was actually made up of a double charge of buck and ball, made by loading a normal round and then breaking off the powder tube from another cartridge, and loading that on top.

I highly recommend Dean Thomas' book if you can find it. He lists every federal regiment by type of weapon carried, and does a similar table for all CS units where known.

Otherwise, CS arms are listed by divisions.

While of the subject of percentages of rifled versus smoothbore shoulder arms, the following statement is worthy of note -

"As the war started the U.S. Government had no more than 40,000 .58 caliber rifles and rifled muskets out of only 437,000 weapons."

link

(Well done paper, BTW, for anyone interested in a quick overview of Union and Confederate ordnance activities.)

In other words, the Union Army at the beginning of the war might have been as much as 90+ percent smoothbore-armed. The Confederacy was certainly in no better situation at the start of the war.

Another thought for consideration – Not all rifled muskets were necessarily created equal. Modern minie rifles were superior in performance to "converted muskets". The converted (rifled ex-smoothbore) musket was better than the smoothbore, but by no means the equal of the Springfield or Enfield.

Such factors as these need to be taken into account when presenting engagement ranges (especially from the first 12-18 months of the war) as an argument against minie rifle effectiveness.

FWIW.

B

Such factors as these need to be taken into account when presenting engagement ranges (especially from the first 12-18 months of the war) as an argument against minie rifle effectiveness.

Blutarski:

To actually 'take that into account' there would have to be some historical indications that such differences in technical weapon ranges actually influenced the battlefield use of the weapons.

McLaddie – What in your view would constitute meaningful historical indications worthy of being taken into account?

B

Blutarski:

Somebody noting that because of the weapons, they were or were planning/training to open fire at particular/longer ranges, differentiating between smoothbore, 2nd rate rifles and Springfields and Enfields when engaged.

McLaddie –
What then do you make of the range-finder measurements taken at Gettysburg battlefield? What do you consider that 200 yard average engagement range implies?

Would you not also consider it important to(a) confirm that the engagement range references cited by Griffith included a significant sampling of fights involving rifle muskets, and (b) provide some validation that those cited engagement ranges were not simply a function of confined visibility?

B

A lot of this seems academic anyway. The Civil War still used Black Powder that produced a lot of smoke, obscuring a lot of targets anyway.

The use of repeaters was far more impactful. The ACW probably saw the beginning of covering fire and area fire. The impact of the rifled musket is over-rated IMHO.

There are SO many unanswered questions in Griffith's argument. For example -

What was the customary open fire range of rifle musket armed defenders when receiving an attack?

How many attacks stalled in the face of rifle musket fire and went to ground before ever closing to decisive range? Did Griffith look into that aspect to validate his argument?

Why, if the rifle was functionally no better than the smoothbore, did the ordnance organizations of both sides persist in procuring and manufacturing much more expensive rifle muskets instead of smoothbores?

Where is the record of any groundswell of contemporary critical opinion regarding shortcomings of the rifle musket on the battlefield or are we to believe that no one noticed enough to comment?

What happened to the offensive employment of field artillery?

Smoke? If smoke was such a common and persistent battlefield problem, why were more rapid-firing breechloaders and repeating rifles able to find and take effect upon targets despite producing 3-5x more discharge smoke in the same amount of time?

One of the problems I perceive is a serious lack of ACW-oriented "operational research" (to borrow a phrase) scholarship along the lines of, say, Balck's "Infantry Tactics". I do not know of any. Griffith, by his own admission, worked from anecdotal evidence and IMO he has yet made a convincing case.

My opinion.

YMMV, but at least ponder the above questions.

B

Why, if the rifle was functionally no better than the smoothbore, did the ordnance organizations of both sides persist in procuring and manufacturing much more expensive rifle muskets instead of smoothbores?

That's a fair question. First you have to consider the age and quality of a lot of the smoothbores available and compare that with the manufacture of say, Springfields and those Enfields that were not backstreet knock offs sold by unprincipled arms dealers.

These gave more opportunities for standardised production and supply of both guns and ammo as well as reliability.

The other thing is it's too easy in these discussions to get bogged down in the actual weaponology. It's the use that matters.

Look at the artillery. Rifiled peices were far more accurate than Napoleons and easily out ranged them but the maximisation of that "functionality" was lost because the hitting power was not any better and terrain, communications and a lack of accurate observation, all conspired to make what we would consider fire control, a joke.

We are unlikely to be able to ask Griffith all those tantalising details you mention , unless one has access to a wigi board and a whole lot of time. As I noted on another thread, as far as I know there is not even common definition of the term "Firefight" in his work, or any other. However, the door swings both ways and all the doubts about Griffith's distances are just as true for the ranges some hold to be far greater, in terms of absolute proof.

I note the range finder comments on Gettysburg. Well that's fine by me, if I had a beer for everyone who has stated in books or on TMP that 350 – 400 yards was the working average, I'd never be dry! The published views that everyone had a Rifle Musket and that changed the face of battle! Only they didn't and it didn't.

If people were actually shooting it out at 200 yards, as per the range finder, we also know via detailed records that some had rifles and some didn't and the permutations are simple – Rifle v Rifle, Rifle v Smoothbore, Smoothbore v Smoothbore. An attempt might be made to tabulate every action. In the end, taken across three days of fighting, it doesn't matter.

Tactics and bad decisions decided the outcome. The key is that the battle was up close and nasty and the result was not dependent on one side or the other, leveling the opposition with well aimed infantry fire from nearly a quarter mile away!

Picking holes in Griffith will not change that. As Hess points out his contribution was to question the then accepted fact of Infantry fire combat at 350 – 400 yards, put around by lazy historians, as being the Civil War norm.

Hess doubted Griffith and then came to a view that he was more likely to be right that wrong, on the bases of what he himself had done and that in a world where there's computer access to the OR and a breadth of info on line that never existed in 1987 when Griffith was published.

One final point. Part of the definition of "anecdotal" is that matters are based on personal accounts not detailed research. Given that the whole 128 Volumes of the OR is pretty much made up of this, are we to dismiss this as a reliable source regarding combat? If we do, there's a heck of a lot more unanswered questions than those raised by Griffith and a lot of others, come to think of it.

Blutarski & Trajanus; Thanks for getting back to me. I have Dean Thomas's book and find it very helpful. One notable item, IMHO, is the number of AOP regiments at Gettysburg with both smooth bore and rifle muskets. To bad we can't determine the number of each per regiment. Just found a quote from the book "Echos of Thunder: A guide to the Seven Days Battles", by Spurill & Spurill, (father & son), that I read years ago and was lucky enough to find again. ANV General Paul Semmes reported his Brigade engaged the enemy "at not above 40 yards" and that "their heavy comparative loss doubtless resulted from the greater efficiency of our smooth bore muskets with buck and ball ammunition at short range…..". (OR 11, p.2, pp. 220-21. I mention this because I am under the impression that it was not unusual for civil war infantry regiments to close and engage their opponents at these extremely close ranges, (the Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg, another one). I had always believed that Brawner's Farm, mentioned above, was a great example of this and the occasions where this occurred are almost too numerous to tabulate. With these events in mind Colonel Willard's ideas are not so far out as may seem to us in the 21st Century, it seems to me.

Thanks, John Miller

Blutarski

Your smoke comment misses the point regarding volume fire. Your not trying to hit targets. You are putting more lead in the air to keep heads down. The battle narratives later in the war as well as northern cavalry tactics using covering fire at the end of the war point to this.

John,

I absolutely agree that smoothbores firing buck & ball within fifty yards had an advantage over rifle muskets and inside 100 yards probably close enough to a rifle musket in performance not to make a great difference. But your example (IMO) presents an incomplete picture … which is what I have been complaining about in connection with Griffith.

In what kind of terrain was the engagement fought? an open field, woods or a dense thicket. Standing crops?

Was it dawn, daylight, dusk?

Did the Union troops close to forty yards because they lacked faith in their weapons and weapon skills or because their officers, acting on training manuals and inculcated tactical expectations of the Napoleonic era, led them there?

The Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg got closer to the stone wall than any other Union regiment – 50 yards. Fine work indeed by one of the most heroic and iconic Union formations of the entire war. But to cite them alone is "cherry picking" the history IMO. What about all the other regiments in the several divisions that were sent in to attack that position – fourteen separate attacks were IIRC. What happened to all those many other regiments? The more sober accounts of Fredericksburg observe that every sheltering fold of ground between the Union front and the Confederate position was occupied by entire units gone to ground in the face of the Confederate fire. Those kinds of events very rarely find their way into the OR reports or the regimental histories.

The Sunken Road at Antietam? I've walked the ground from the Union start line. The Confederate position was on a reverse slope, located behind the crest of the ridge in order to shelter from McClellan's dominating massed artillery across Antietam Creek. An advancing Union element was unable to see the Confederate position until it had reached the ridge crest … thirty to fifty yards range. In Griffith's construct, this would qualify as a firefight at fifty yards.

It's easy to quantify things; it's hard to qualify things and impossible if one doesn't try. That is my problem with Griffith. His arguments on the rifle versus smoothbore issue impress me as a great deal of supposition, inference, theorization and speculation based upon thin amount of undifferentiated statistical data.

Hoping that this still sounds like a friendly and civil discussion from my side. If not, please do let me know.

B

dantheman wrote – "Your smoke comment misses the point regarding volume fire. Your not trying to hit targets. You are putting more lead in the air to keep heads down. The battle narratives later in the war as well as northern cavalry tactics using covering fire at the end of the war point to this."

Dan. You still have to get the fire near the enemy in order to suppress them. And, smoke or no smoke, Union repeater armed cavalry were able to do so. When you put fire upon the enemy (we are IMO really talking "zone fire" here, not as a rule individual marksmanship) the casualties increase according to the volume of fire. And the impact upon target morale of volume of fire (and casualties) per unit of time rises far more dramatically than a simple linearity.

In addition, do not discount the ability of the Spencers to inflict casualties. Look as the Confederate casualty returns in engagements versus Spencer armed Union units. Someone actually should do an analysis of the impact of the Spencer repeating rifle on the war

B

Another point to consider is that volley fire was the exception, not the norm, for civil war period fire combat.

The various manuals all teach the concept of volley fire, from the company to the battalion level. However, they also state that the preferred method of giving fire is that of "Fire by Files".

At the command to commence firing "By Files", the rightmost file of soldiers in each company of the battalion aims and fires their weapons. Then the next file, then the next, and so on down the line until the final file of soldiers gives fire. Meantime, the soldiers who have already fired then proceed to reload and fire "at will" without regard to their position in the company.

This pattern of firing continues until the command to "Cease Fire" is given.

The advantage of this method of fire is that it keeps up a continuous rate of fire upon the enemy, along the entire front, and the volume of smoke also dissipates more quickly, or at least isn't as massive along the front as that from a single volley.

Just thought I'd throw this into the mix…….

Hi TJ – Comments inserted per >>>>> below -

That's a fair question. First you have to consider the age and quality of a lot of the smoothbores available and compare that with the manufacture of say, Springfields and those Enfields that were not backstreet knock offs sold by unprincipled arms dealers.
These gave more opportunities for standardised production and supply of both guns and ammo as well as reliability.

>>>>> If Springfield Armory had chosen to manufacture smoothbores, they need only have omitted the rifling step to produce a very fine .58 caliber smoothbore musket with the same nicely interchangeable parts as the Springfield rifle musket.

- – -

The other thing is it's too easy in these discussions to get bogged down in the actual weaponology. It's the use that matters.

>>>>> Quite agree. And that is a complicated subject. See my post to John Miller.

- – -

Look at the artillery. Rifled pieces were far more accurate than Napoleons and easily out ranged them but the maximisation of that "functionality" was lost because the hitting power was not any better and terrain, communications and a lack of accurate observation, all conspired to make what we would consider fire control, a joke.

>>>>> I'm not sure I see how the functionality (for example) of a 3-inch ordnance rifle would be lost because it possessed approximately equivalent hitting power (excluding canister) to a smoothbore Napoleon with much better range and accuracy. On the subject of hitting power, one could make the argument that, based upon comparable gun weights, the rifle was actually superior. The 3-inch ordnance rifle weighed about 1700 lbs and fired a 9-10 lb projectile; the 6-lbr smoothbore (6 lb projectile, of course) weighed in at about 1800 lbs. That confers about a 50+ pct throw weight advantage to the rifle. The 1700 lb ordnance rifle with a 9-10 lb projectile was a great return on weapon weight, which also made it a much lighter and handier piece on the battlefield – especially compared to the 2350 lb 12-lbr Napoleon.

With respect to fire control, yes it was more difficult than in later times, on one hand due to mechanical (non-optical) sights, on another hand due to less than perfect fuzes, but mostly due to the lack of on-carriage recoil system technology; the gun had to run up and re-laid after every discharge. But artillerymen had binoculars and glasses and those big clouds of white smoke provided by bursting black powder filled shells were relatively easy to spot. In sum (IMO) no one left massed units visible in the open within 2,000 yards of a rifled artillery battery without paying a price. Lee's dispositions at Antietam were largely dictated by finding positions that were not visible to McClellan's massed batteries across Antietam Creek. And we all know what happened to Pickett, who suffered badly from flanking rifle cannon fire delivered at long range. A lot is made of the close countryside over which some of the ACW was fought, but open country saw plenty of fighting as well.

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We are unlikely to be able to ask Griffith all those tantalising details you mention , unless one has access to a wigi board and a whole lot of time. As I noted on another thread, as far as I know there is not even common definition of the term "Firefight" in his work, or any other. However, the door swings both ways and all the doubts about Griffith's distances are just as true for the ranges some hold to be far greater, in terms of absolute proof. I note the range finder comments on Gettysburg. Well that's fine by me, if I had a beer for everyone who has stated in books or on TMP that 350 – 400 yards was the working average, I'd never be dry!

>>>>> There is an important difference here. Griffith pulls an array of ranges from reports contained in the OR through the modern miracle of a key word search. But what do they really represent in terms of tactical context? No one knows. Are the ranges as stated in the reports accurate? No one knows. Was the fight in a thicket? At night? Were both sides armed with smoothbores? No one knows that either.

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The published views that everyone had a Rifle Musket and that changed the face of battle!

>>>>> Those published views would be wrong; we know that at the beginning of the war, smoothbores represented about 80 pct of the arsenals of both sides and that modern minie rifles were less than 10 pct. There were therefore undoubtedly numerous cases when both sides were armed with smoothbores or where the attacker was armed with rifle muskets and the defender was armed with smoothbores. And either of those situations would skew/discredit Griffith's argument. Did Griffith check to see who was carrying what arms or what combination of arms confronted each other in his cited ranges? No one knows.

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If people were actually shooting it out at 200 yards, as per the range finder, we also know via detailed records that some had rifles and some didn't and the permutations are simple – Rifle v Rifle, Rifle v Smoothbore, Smoothbore v Smoothbore. An attempt might be made to tabulate every action. In the end, taken across three days of fighting, it doesn't matter.

>>>>> Disagree mightily here. It does matter greatly. The Gettysburg range-finder results were reported as an <<<average>>> engagement range. Since we can be fairly confident that smoothbore armed regiments were not as a rule engaging at 200 yards, the logical conclusion is that rifled musket armed regiments were likely to have been engaging at 200 or 300 yards. I myself would like to learn more about this Gettysburg range-finding project and how it was conducted.

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Tactics and bad decisions decided the outcome. The key is that the battle was up close and nasty and the result was not dependent on one side or the other, leveling the opposition with well aimed infantry fire from nearly a quarter mile away!

>>>>> This is not a yes/no situation. We know that some fighting was "close and nasty" as you put it. We also know that a good deal of important fighting featured more open fields of fire – Fredericksburg, 2nd Manassas, Gettysburg, Cedar Mountain, the Valley. It is worth noting as well that no one is talking about "leveling the opposition with well aimed infantry fire from nearly a quarter mile away". What we are talking about is the ability to deliver an effective zone fire sufficient to cause an attacking unit to halt its advance and go to ground at ranges of several hundred yards. See my remarks to John Miller on this. You mentioned that Griffith never bothered to exactly define what he meant by the term "firefight"; if he omitted cases such as described above, what does that say about his assessment of the rifle musket's utility on the battlefield?

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Picking holes in Griffith will not change that. As Hess points out his contribution was to question the then accepted fact of Infantry fire combat at 350 – 400 yards, put around by lazy historians, as being the Civil War norm.

>>>>> There are a lot of lazy historians. And yes they are the ones who tout 500 yard "effective ranges" and 3 round per minute sustained rates of fire. They're pretty obvious to any student of the period. There are also historians with agendas and egos; sometimes they are harder to identify.

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Hess doubted Griffith and then came to a view that he was more likely to be right that wrong, on the bases of what he himself had done and that in a world where there's computer access to the OR and a breadth of info on line that never existed in 1987 when Griffith was published.
One final point. Part of the definition of "anecdotal" is that matters are based on personal accounts not detailed research. Given that the whole 128 Volumes of the OR is pretty much made up of this, are we to dismiss this as a reliable source regarding combat? If we do, there's a heck of a lot more unanswered questions than those raised by Griffith and a lot of others, come to think of it.

>>>>> Every officer's report reproduced in the OR is a personal account, whose contents depend upon a variety of underlying motives and desired on the author's part. Some are, I am sure, accurate, honest and complete in all respects. Others not so much. This is not to say that the ORs are not an immensely important, valuable and necessary reference work; I do however say that, like every historical document, it requires careful reading and cross-checking.

Good night, gentlemen. It's late.

B

If Springfield Armory had chosen to manufacture smoothbores, they need only have omitted the rifling step to produce a very fine .58 caliber smoothbore musket with the same nicely interchangeable parts as the Springfield rifle musket.

I'm sure that's true. However, no doubt trials had shown the Rifle's potential and arms manufactures are always keen to sell potential. Its up to the military to make it work in the field! ;o)

I'm not sure I see how the functionality (for example) of a 3-inch ordnance rifle would be lost because it possessed approximately equivalent hitting power (excluding canister) to a smoothbore Napoleon with much better range and accuracy.

I was using "functionality" here in the manner I thought you were, regarding Rifle Muskets. What you say above is true, as I noted. However:

With respect to fire control, yes it was more difficult than in later times, on one hand due to mechanical (non-optical) sights, on another hand due to less than perfect fuzes, but mostly due to the lack of on-carriage recoil system technology; the gun had to run up and re-laid after every discharge. But artillerymen had binoculars and glasses and those big clouds of white smoke provided by bursting black powder filled shells were relatively easy to spot. In sum (IMO) no one left massed units visible in the open within 2,000 yards of a rifled artillery battery without paying a price. Lee's dispositions at Antietam were largely dictated by finding positions that were not visible to McClellan's massed batteries across Antietam Creek. And we all know what happened to Pickett, who suffered badly from flanking rifle cannon fire delivered at long range. A lot is made of the close countryside over which some of the ACW was fought, but open country saw plenty of fighting as well.

Some of the factors listed above worked against this "functionality", which was my point.These themselves varied. For instance – Yes, people had Binoculars but it didn't stop the pre Pickett bombardment overshooting like mad did it? Of course commanders had to take account of their dispositions both in terms of placing their own guns and avoiding the enemy. The Confederates had a lot of problems placing their guns to be of use at Gettysburg for example. A lot of which was due purely due to the 'lie of the land'.

The main point here is the same as for Rifle Muskets – a position that the better weapons didn't consistently punch their weight, in a manner that might have been expected, when it came to battlefield use.

Griffith pulls an array of ranges from reports contained in the OR through the modern miracle of a key word search.

I don't think he did. Unless some University had it in computerised form. The CD version of it didn't come out until 1996 as far as I know. That was Hess's point -Griffith didn't have access to easy information and did his best with what he had. To be honest the word search on the CD is not that hot (by 2017 standards) and you still get bucket loads of hits you never actually wanted.

Disagree mightily here. It does matter greatly. The Gettysburg range-finder results were reported as an <<<average>>> engagement range. Since we can be fairly confident that smoothbore armed regiments were not as a rule engaging at 200 yards, the logical conclusion is that rifled musket armed regiments were likely to have been engaging at 200 or 300 yards. I myself would like to learn more about this Gettysburg range-finding project and how it was conducted.

I meant "doesn't matter" only in terms of who won and lost the battle. I too would love to know what "average" means in this context and how the project was conducted. Was it an average of 10 samples or 100 etc. Sure rifles could have engaged at 300 yards and smoothbores couldn't but they could have engaged just as easily at 100 against smoothbores as well! Its very frustrating not knowing!

Every officer's report reproduced in the OR is a personal account, whose contents depend upon a variety of underlying motives and desired on the author's part. Some are, I am sure, accurate, honest and complete in all respects. Others not so much. This is not to say that the ORs are not an immensely important, valuable and necessary reference work; I do however say that, like every historical document, it requires careful reading and cross-checking.

Totally agree, the problem is that for decades authors have been using it as a total primary source, or for cross checking there own sources. Most of which are from other personal accounts as well. There comes a point in historical writing and research where one disappears up one's own material! ;o)

Of course Field Study can play apart in informing matters but as no one can 'guarantee' a unit was exactly where observers say it was and many battlefields have been chopped about into the bargain, even that has its limits.