"Making sense of musket hit rates" Topic

How much of the ammo usage was from skirmishing as opposed to volleys, and how good or bad was the casualty ratio from that firing?

What descriptions?

Any?
On the top of my head Mockern at Leipzig. Several instances in Poland 1807.

Another thing to keep in mind with sustained firing is the misfire rate. For flintlocks I've seen anything from one tenth to one sixth postulated. And it's cumulative, so even at 1/10, by volley six, only 53% of the muskets are firing. At 1/6, it's down to 33%.

But is this standard or is it taken from several battles. I mean misfires would be a lot higher in rain or snow then sunny weather.
And I don't think misfires had that much to do with it. The hit rate during the American civil war wasn't much higher and here your can't use inaccurate weapons or misfires as an excuse.

But remember all this is averages.

Given the theory of the day was muskety was only effective below 75 yards. It's perfectly possible that at between 50 and 75 yards the effect was higher. Not super high but let's say 1:200 or 1:150(just made up numbers) it's not super efftive but 1:150 would seen like a Holocaust if 1:500 was your average.

But that most firefights happend at 100++

It's very hard to know this. We have number of hits per shot based on casualties vs ammo expended.
But officers doesn't say "we fired at 80 yards and killed 8 enemies. "
They say stuff like "we engaged the enemy in a brisk muskety duel. We left many enemies dead and wounded.
What is "brisk" or "hotly engaged" what are "many dead and wounded"

just some thoughts.

at the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Indians took 200 casualties if Custer men fired fired 50 rounds each that is a hit rate of 30,000 rounds vs 200 or .7 percent

Rorke's Drift
the Drift was a supply point with 100,000 rounds of ammo and in it's defense 99000 rounds where fired off to give 850 casualties.

depending on how you poke the numbers 1% hit rate (about:))

This Rabbit hole is just awesome.

Mike the A said

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I am thinking of using a rule mechanism where losses due to artillery and firefights are not determined until a shock or assault takes place. This means you record the "weight of shot" that a unit has received but you do not determine the casualties or moral effect until a close assault is made or received.

If the attack succeeds then the defender with a heavy level of artillery loss will rout with little chance of recovery.

If the attack stalls then you end up in a firefight with more weight of shot applied to both sides.

If the attack is beaten off then the halt will occur nearer to the start line if the weight of shot is high.

This concept is simple enough but I am still calibrating it.

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Some years ago I had a v similar idea and scribbled some notes on it. End the end I didn't like the book keeping of noting what had happened to a unit before computing it at only the crisis moment.

I think there is a lot to like in the DBx systems where counting casualties is not done and combat rolls represent a combination of casualties and troops' reaction to it.

If you can show that a historical unit suffering a dribble of casualties, perhaps even mounting up over a long time, doesn't react at the crisis moment any differently than a unit that did not suffer such casualties there is no reason to compute or record the dribble.

Regards

David F Brown

at the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Indians took 200 casualties if Custer men fired fired 50 rounds each that is a hit rate of 30,000 rounds vs 200 or .7 percent

Rorke's Drift
the Drift was a supply point with 100,000 rounds of ammo and in it's defense 99000 rounds where fired off to give 850 casualties.

depending on how you poke the numbers 1% hit rate (about:))

Quite possible. Keep in mind that contemporaries themselves debated the effectiveness of volleys and veterans had a range of conclusions in an "effort" to make sense of hit rates. [Remember he changes to the 1824 Kiegsspiel in 1828…and after]

They had more information available to them than we do in a number of ways and still had significant differences of opinions. Just in 'the effective range' of smoothbores were stated from between 80 to 200 yards by veterans. The 1805 text book for officer education at the Ecole Polytechnic, vetted by a group of marshals has 150 yards at the effective range.

Point being, if they couldn't come to some uniform conclusions after 20+ years of the Napoleonic Wars, why do we think we can?

Oh, wait. Perhaps with some statistical analysis of many events?

Yes yes we can use Statistical Analysis. he stated with manic glee.