From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Aiming.
Keywords: Aimed shots casualties
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 19:04:24 GMT

In article <1992Aug29.220134.4444@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> pdunn@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Patrick L Dunn) writes:
>In article <1992Aug27.235139.2348@bnlux1.bnl.gov> COWAN@ANL.GOV writes:
>>If every man was firing 60 aimed shots at a roughly
>>equal number of opponants, why wasn't everybody killed? With an assumption of
>>equal numbers on both sides, 25% casualties means only 1 of 4 soldiers (on
>>average) hit any thing with his 60 shots. That is 1 hit per 240 shots! You cal
>l
>>that aiming? And this totally ignores all the casualties due to artillery fire
>>and the fact that healthy prisoners were also included among the "casualties".
>>Even accounting for the fact that not all units saw heavy fighting even in the
>>biggest battles, and the fact that the armies stood far apart the accuracy rat
>e
>>seems amazingly low. After all they were shooting at errect targets standing i
>n
>>a (more or less) straight line. Do any re-enactors out there have a feel for
>>where all those other shots went?
>

I am not a reenactor, but I am a historical wargamer (and wargamers
spend endless amounts of time debating this sort of stuff). There are
many reasons why accuracy with infantry weapons is so low in battles. In
the ACW the reasons were:

POOR WEAPONS - Not all units went to war with the new En-/Spring-field
rifle musket. Many units carried flint-lock, smoothbore muskets which
were only accurate out to about 50 meters and only really effective en-masse
out to about 250 meters. Some units (esp. Confederate) still carried
smoothbores of some sort or another at the war's end. 

COMPLEX LOADING SEQUENCE - Men in battle are fearful and confused by the
incredible noise and lack of a sense of what is going on. A rifle musket
takes at least six seperate steps to load (tear catridge, pour powder
into muzzle, put ball and paper into muzzle, tamp charge with ram rod,
withdraw ram rod, lift hammer, place cap on nipple) in the heat of
battle many men performed this sequence incorrectly or more than once.
At best this means a wasted round or a wasted cap priming an empty
chamber, at worst it means you have to spend 5 minutes drilling out the
ball after you forgot to put powder in, having the gun blow up in your
face because you didn't tamp the charge right or double loaded it, or
shooting away your ram rod. Even if a unit in combat takes no
casualties, it will lose firepower as men make mistakes with their
weapons. This means that a lot of cartidges never got fired or were
wasted.

POOR VISIBILITY - ACW battlefields tended to have thick vegetation (by
European standards) and got smoky from all the gunfire (esp. cannon
fire) very quickly. The combined effect of all of these factors was that
many times an infantryman never got a good look at a live enemy. All he
saw was an enemy flag on the edge of a wood lot through a thick haze of
smoke. Firing blind greatly reduces accuracy.

LACK OF PRACTICE - ACW regiments tended to devote most of their training
to close order drill rather than rifle practice. This might have been
different for sharpshooter units, but most men (in spite of the myth
that every American boy of the period grew up with a gun in his hand and
could shoot the eyes out a squirrel at a mile) had very little concept
of how to shoot accurately. A rifle bullet in flight tends to rise and
then fall in a long arc. This means that a shot at a man 100 meters away
is likely to go over his head, rather than through his chest. Many
vicious looking firefights resulted in few casualties because of this
and other factors. (It also explains why officers told their men to
"shoot when you see the whites of their eyes" - point blank range, or to
"aim for their belt buckles", or to "aim low").

PANIC - A man in combat has very little sense of what is going on around
him. The noise of thousands of rifles going off at once is incredible.
People around him are killed and wounded in dozens of horrible ways.
Many men develop tunnel vision, breathing is quick and breathes are
shallow, many men shake with fear. All of these factors make aimed shots
virtually impossible. Men in modern combat shoot to supress the enemy,
move to cover and shoot again. Many soldiers just hide and don't fire
their guns at all. Others shoot in the air or in the general direction
of the enemy.  U.S. WWII after-action reports revealed that only 25% of
men in combat ever fired their weapons and that it took about 1000 shots
for each gunshot casualty inflicted. This was with the soldiers carrying
bolt-action, clip fed rifles. Imagine how much more difficult it would
be to hit something if you were carrying a smoothbore, flintlock
musket!

   In general though, accuracy didn't matter so much as shock effect,
especially when stopping charges. A regiment would generally start out
firing volleys and then go to "fire at will" trying to spit out as much
fire as possible. The effect was to make the enemy realize that he was
being shot at and demoralize him enough that he would retreat or could
be swept away by a charge or a threat of charge.

Tom \|/
     0

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