From: dargan@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Re: Aiming.
Date: 30 Aug 92 22:57:54 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <Btt8zC.5tB@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes) writes:
> 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
> 
I'm skeptical about significant numbers of either side carrying smoothbores or
flintlocks after the winter of '61.  

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
> 
Actually, projectiles *never* rise above a line formed parallel to the bore of
the musket.  What you are talking about is a *perceived* rise that is the
result of parallax which results from having the rear sight elevated somewhat
so that the gun is *actually* aimed in high so that the projectile will cross
the sight line at least twice.  A small point perhaps, but one that often
confuses.
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa