"ACW Frontages?" Topic

Is there any information on the approximate average or text book frontage of a deployed 6 gun battery?
Also the same for a 500 man infantry Regiment?

Officially 14 yards between guns, so about 80 yards for a six gun battery.

Infantry close order is about 2 feet per file, knock about 10% off for supernumeraries, gives about 450 feet/150 yards assuming all companies in the line. Of course regulations said to keep one or two companies in reserve our out skirmishing, so 20% less assuming the regiment is still fielding ten companies.

Cheer
David

Per Philip Katcher's "The Civil War Source Book", a mid-war company of 50 men would be formed in 2 ranks 13 inches apart. This would occupy about 16.5 yards. A regiment of 10 companies (500 men) would thus have a 165 yard frontage.

As a general rule of thumb, for a 2-rank line, divide the number of men by 3 to get the frontage in yards.

Artillery – each piece took up about 2 yards frontage with about 14 yards between pieces. So a six gun battery would take up 82 yards.

What would the depth of a 6 gun Artillery battery be with caissons and ammo wagons be?

Depth was prescribed at 47 yards to the caisson. I don't think there was a prescribed depth to the wagons as that would depend so much on the terrain.

On the route march, a six gun battery in double column would occupy approximately one hundred fifty to two hundred yards of road space, depending upon intervals between elements. A limbered gun and team was sixteen yards in length. Each attending caisson and team followed a few yards behind and occupied another eleven yards. Each wagon of the service and supply echelon counted an additional fifteen yards or so. According to standard doctrine, 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.

B

"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."

Sounds like a dense target to me.

Depends on how you look at it, Desert. That's 4,000 square yards. Those 500-man infantry regiments formed in line are taking up about 300 square yards.

I love the bit in Major Dundee--the book and not the movie. In that final clash with the French, Lt Graham is dropping howitzer rounds into densely packed French lancers to excellent effect. The French are firing roundshot into Dundee's skirmish line, and getting nowhere. After a while, Dundee says "those people surely need a good artillery officer. Do you suppose if we gave them Lt Graham, they'd let us go?"

Hi,

This is the reality of a ACW gun battery deployed in close order.

The picture is full up and does not show the ancillary stuff such as forges, wagons etc.

url=https://postimg.cc/145MG8vV]

Best wishes,

Chris

Chris,

Great find!

Don't discount the horses. Based upon the data given by Naisawald, three horses were on average lost as casualties for every two men lost. Without sufficient horses, the mobility of the battery became compromised or possibly could be lost altogether. Batteries were typically withdrawn from action before that point was reached.

If a horse was 1.5x more likely to be hit than an artillery crewman, then those 72 horses arguably represent the targeting equivalent of 108 humans. 108 + 80 = 188 equivalent human targets over 80 yards of frontage. That places the target density (per yard of frontage) at 188/80 = 2.35 equivalent human targets per yard.

FWIW.

B

Yes, the staying power of a battery was more often defined by its horses than its men. To lose a gun was the the ultimate disgrace to a battery commander (except for guns destroyed by enemy fire). As the limber horses were killed or wounded, they would be replaced by the horses drawing the caissons (no disgrace to lose one of those). But as this reserve of horses was used up, a battery commander would often pull out of the line and fall back--usually without orders or even informing his superior what he was doing.

I've been an ACW wargaming lurker for about 30 years at least, since I bought the first edition of Fire & Fury a the Compleat Strat in Manhattan, well before I actually moved to NYC from France. In the past week or so, I went on a kick reading or at least browsing a bunch of rule sets (RFF, BP, JRIII, AADF, R&F, BP, PC, TCHAE, Longstreet, and also for a different scale, AoF). In the process I've become a bit obsessed with frontage and depth.

Depth is almost a lost cause. At a ratio of 1:20, the 2 figures we might use to represent each rank represents a frontage of 20 soldiers and yet only 2 ranks, so depth would be overstated by a facto fo 20 (?). To attenuate the distorsion (and perhaps save on the number of figures needed) many, but not all, rule sets use only 1 rank of figures to represent 2 ranks of soldiers, but while it may be mitigated by using a ragged rank I think that most players would prefer to see 2 ranks, at least for infantry, even if it accentuates the depth distorsion. For cavalry, 1 rank might be sufficient because the models are larger so it seems less… anemic, and furthermore it might be the realistic look since I think wartime manuals stated that charges should be performed with formations in one rank. Perhaps paradoxically, artillery bases introduce less depth distorsion… if you assume that they also include the limber, caisson and horse team at a safe distance from the cannons. Model the latter on the tabletop and your depth is way off again…

Frontage, however, should be addressable, and yet I found that many rule sets seem to lack consistency in how they address it.

I start from the assumption that one infantry file has a frontage of 2 feet and a cavalry file has a frontage of 3 feet. So if you have the same number of figures a rank, then a cavalry base should be 50% wider than an infantry base. Or if you want to use the same base width, there should 50% more infantry figures than cavalry figures. RFF does a credible job here with 3 foot and 2 horse on the same width (1") base. At a ground scale of 1" = 25 yards, it means that each 1" wide infantry or cavalry base has a 25 yards frontage in real life and that's where the RFF basing starts to break down as the rules say that the infantry stand represents 40 infantry, presumably in 2 ranks, and therefore 20 files which should have a frontage of 60 feet / 20 yards. What about the cavalry, though? It is also said to be representing 40 soldiers, but are they in one rank or two? To preserve the correct ratio of 2 cavalry to 3 infantry with same frontage, one has to assume that the cavalry is also in 2 ranks (if not, then the required frontage would be 120 feet / 40 yards, which would not work, given the 1"= 25 yards base). However, one should note that either way the figure ratios for infantry (1:13.3) and cavalry (1:20) are different — something that I can't quite rationalize…

What about artillery? As mentioned above, regulations required 14 yards between the cannons, which really means 16 yards of frontage per cannon, and therefore 32 yards of frontage for a 2-cannon section, 64 yards for a 4-cannon battery, and 96 yards for a 6-cannon battery. RFF calls for a one 1"= 25 yards artillery base with 1 cannon model to represent a 2-cannon section — that's a bit narrow, but then again it was likely that practice called for a narrower frontage than regulations mandated. 25 yards would be 12.5 yards per cannon, or about a 20% reduction, which seems reasonable. As a side note, RFF specifies 2-3 crew figures, but if one wants to keep a figure ratio consistent with that used for infantry (1:13.3), then 2 crew figures would be about it since a full-strength section had a lieutenant and 24 crew (including limber crew).

So RFF gets some things right and some other wrong in my book,

None of the other regimental rules that consulted get it really right either. Some (e.g., BP, GS, use artillery batteries with one model, but on bases that are way too narrow. Presuming regulation spacing, a 6-cannon battery (frontage of 96 yards) would require a base as wide as that (or those) needed to represent 108 infantry files. Depending on the figure ratio used, if you use only one cannon model, and even if you assume a practical frontage reasonably narrower than that mandated by regulations it's going to leave a lot of empty space on the sides , and most rules won't go for it. In fact, at 1:20 or below figure ratio it seems like 1 cannon model per section (as RFF did) works better. PC does use the same ratio, but suggests the same battery base width regardless of the number of sections, which seems bizarre. R&F's approach seems better in that the artillery bases represent sections and thus batteries are comprised of 2 or 3 stands, their frontage thus expanding with the number of cannons. An artillery section's base width (60mm) is 1.5 times an infantry base width (40mm). Considering that the latter represent 50 soldiers in 2 ranks (= 25 files), it corresponds to a frontage of 50 feet / 16.7 yards), implying that the artillery base corresponds to a frontage of 25 yards, which is a bit short of the regulations-mandated 32 yards, just like it was with RFF.

JRIII actually does a pretty good job. 7/8" wide infantry bases are described as corresponding to a frontage of about 44 yards (actually the rules provide a range of 37.5-50 yards) for 4 figures / 120 men in 2 ranks (=60 files), not far off the 40 yards that 2 feet per man would call for. Cavalry bases are 1" wide for 3 figures / 90 men, presumably also in 2 ranks, described as corresponding to a frontage of about 56 yards (the rules actually provide a range of 50-62.5 yards), not far off the 60 yards that 3 feet per horseman would call for. The alternative basing of 2 figures on a พ" wide base gets even closer. As for artillery, the chosen scale sadly precludes 2-cannon sections to be represented, so 1'' wide bases are used for 4-cannon batteries and 1"+ (!) wide bases are used for 6-cannon batteries — to be consistent the latter should really use 1.5" wide bases. These base widths, corresponding to a frontage of 56 yards or 84 yards, respectively, are — again — a little narrow compared to what regulation-mandated frontage would call for, but that seems pretty common across rule sets. Of note, JR III uses 2 crew figures for 4-cannon batteries and 3 crew figures for 6-gun batteries which does a decent job of not only almost preserving the figure ratio of infantry, but also differentiating the battery size despite both sizes being represented with only 1 cannon model.

Missing post-scriptum:

In the end, though, all of this may not matter so much if the rules don't do a good job of scaling power to the troops represented on the tabletop, miss on other some critical element (movement, range, morale, C&C…), or simply are not fun…

I realized that I messed up my RFF calcs in the post above (it was late and I had read too many rule sets). At 40 infantry in 2 ranks per 1"= 25 yards, that would grossly overstate the frontage of infantry which, for 20 files, should be 40 feet / 16.7 yards. I guess it is possible that the designer decided that these 40 men were neither in 1 rank (33 yard frontage), nor in 2 ranks (half as wide frontage), and so he went for the middle (~25 yards). Maybe I really am obsessed…

Rjvonline, I agree with you that both frontages and depth are problems in many rules. Ranks were formed with "elbows lightly touching" – two feet for each file is a good estimation for determining infantry frontage. RFF calculates each stand as 40 men in a single rank, regiments are formed with a depth of two stands. That would put 80 men in two ranks (40 files) with a frontage of 25 yards (1 inch), which is reasonably close to the proper frontage of 26.6 yards. (40 x 2 ๗ 3 = 26.6)

Depth is another issue altogether. A regiment in line would comprise the two primary ranks and a then third rank of file closers. The field music would form up to the rear of the Colour Guard. However, more significant to us gamers is a square stand, say 1 inch wide and 1 inch deep, also serves to maintain the proper spacing of a regiment marching by the flank (a road column) or in an open column of companies.

Cavalry could form in line either in one or two ranks, dependant on what drill book they were trained in. In the East most cavalry, both Union and Confederate, used Poinsett's Tactics and formed up in two ranks. In the West the Union cavalry used either Poinsett or Cooke, whereas for the most part the Confederates used a variation of Cooke. Cooke's Tactics called for the use of a single rank. How to depict these different frontages is going to be a question of what unit you are depicting and in what theatre it fought.

Thanks. I realized that my initial mistake was to assume that a stand was 2 ranks instead of 1. It does work well with 1 (as intended) for infantry, but if the same is true of cavalry (1 rank per stand), then shouldn't the cavalry base be 1.5 times as wide and also show 3 figures rather than 2 (given the same count of men as for infantry)?

Yes, cavalry is not consistent with the infantry. Forty cavalry in one rank would have a minimum frontage of 40 yards – probably more like 1 3/4 inch for RFF. And also with 3 figures per base. There also should be a second rank if the cavalry is using Poinsett.

But what then of dismounted cavalry. It usually fought in a extended line / skirmish order frontage in one rank. And for much of the war not all of a regiment would necessarily be armed with long arms so only part of a regiment would dismount.

Our gaming group was going to game an all cavalry action to see how RFF worked for such a scenario but the C19 shutdown put that on hold for now.