Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXVI

[Carl]

Tbh, I would be surprised if he'd been going arse forwards :P

Haha, yeah it's a weird turn of phrase to be fair.

[Max_Killjoy]

While I'm finding this a fascinating read, I feel that I should remind people of the board rules (specifically the religion and politics clauses) before a mod comes and nukes the thread like Mk-23 Katie shell.

I've been silently thinking the same thing for a while now.

[Storm Bringer]

The Wikipedia page "Infantry in the American Civil War" states without citation,

Does anyone know if this number is accurate or close to accurate? Whether the fighting is happening in 1800 or 1860, the concept is mind-boggling. If we're firing muzzle-loading muskets at a rate of a shot every 15 seconds, this implies that a soldier spent, on average, 62.5 to 75 minutes loading and firing for every casualty inflicted (and in fact, more often, because those casualties might well include combatants killed or wounded by artillery fire and melee combat). Even with gun smoke obscuring the battlefield, I can't imagine firing a gun, no matter how inaccurate, at a mass of people for an hour without hitting anybody.

it sounds pretty accurate.

There is a huge difference between shooting on a range, in pleasant conditions, with time and room to aim properly, to shooting in a battle, where your packed in literally shoulder to should (i.e your shoulders are physically touching the guys next to you), you've been marching for weeks on meagre rations, and you cant even see the target though all the smoke beyond a occasional dull flash when they volley. this scene form The Last Sumuari captures the fear and how difficult it is to perform the complex drills to load aim and fire a musket while your body is full of adrenaline (the clip doesn't show it, but the man being asked to shoot just scored a bullseye before the clip started).


as others said, after the first volley, you were basically firing blind into a mass of smoke, often rushing to increase the volume of fire, and in a formation much to tight to comfortably aim. Add to that the fact that a flintlock is fired by having a small explosion go off right beside your ear, its not surprising that many people flinched when shooting. Another factor is that regular line infantry were trained to Load, not to shoot, so they just kinda levelled it at the direction they thought the enemy was and pulled the trigger.

also, muskets, even on a good day, were really inaccurate. Anyone who got hit at 100m was considered to be a act of god level stroke of bad luck.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's accurate.

Look at it like this. Most men weren't aiming at an enemy. They were pointing the muzzle in the general direction of the enemy. And you need to account for missfires, poorly loaded weapons, wet powder, the fact that smoke builds up very quickly with black powder weapons and obscures a lot of the battlefield, then add the negative effect of stress of being shot at to fine motor activity like aiming, the fact that the trajectory of the 19th century musket ball was pretty arced, so if you though the enemy was 100 yards away and aimed with that elevation but he was really 150 yards away, your ball would drop and hit the ground before it got to him, all that adds up.

This gets odd when one considers the casualty rates for ACW battles... 10s of 1000s dead in some one-day battles.

My guess is that ACW-era artillery was really nasty against men marching across open ground. I do know that the Parrott gun battery from my hometown successfully held the end of a Union line more than once, against repeated TtMS Confederate attacks.

[VoxRationis]

it sounds pretty accurate.

There is a huge difference between shooting on a range, in pleasant conditions, with time and room to aim properly, to shooting in a battle, where your packed in literally shoulder to should (i.e your shoulders are physically touching the guys next to you), you've been marching for weeks on meagre rations, and you cant even see the target though all the smoke beyond a occasional dull flash when they volley. this scene form The Last Sumuari captures the fear and how difficult it is to perform the complex drills to load aim and fire a musket while your body is full of adrenaline (the clip doesn't show it, but the man being asked to shoot just scored a bullseye before the clip started).


as others said, after the first volley, you were basically firing blind into a mass of smoke, often rushing to increase the volume of fire, and in a formation much to tight to comfortably aim. Add to that the fact that a flintlock is fired by having a small explosion go off right beside your ear, its not surprising that many people flinched when shooting.

also, muskets, even on a good day, were really inaccurate. Anyone who got hit at 100m was considered to be a act of god level stroke of bad luck.

But the enemy is also packed shoulder to shoulder. If you miss your direct target, you could hit the person to his left or right. If you overshoot, there's the company in reserve behind him. Sure, there's a lot of smoke around their position, but that smoke is still filled with several graduating classes' worth of people. When the battlefield has tens of thousands of enemies on it, not hitting somebody means you miss a target significantly larger than the broad side of a barn, and I find that difficult to fathom.

I do know that the Parrott gun battery from my hometown successfully held the end of a Union line more than once, against repeated TtMS Confederate attacks.

TtMS?

[Max_Killjoy]

But the enemy is also packed shoulder to shoulder. If you miss your direct target, you could hit the person to his left or right. If you overshoot, there's the company in reserve behind him. Sure, there's a lot of smoke around their position, but that smoke is still filled with several graduating classes' worth of people. When the battlefield has tens of thousands of enemies on it, not hitting somebody means you miss a target significantly larger than the broad side of a barn, and I find that difficult to fathom.

From what I've read, those ACW formations open up pretty quickly in many of the battles, they don't stay pressed together, and there's a lot of not-target space for a bullet to pass through.

TtMS?

Spoiler: Don't read this if you're a Lost Cause true believer.

Show

Treason to Maintain Slavery.

I'm very unforgiving of all the different garbage revisionist notions that have popped up about the ACW over the last ~150 years. The people who instigated and lead the Confederate movement should all have hung. It was treason, and it was about slavery.

[Storm Bringer]

But the enemy is also packed shoulder to shoulder. If you miss your direct target, you could hit the person to his left or right. If you overshoot, there's the company in reserve behind him. Sure, there's a lot of smoke around their position, but that smoke is still filled with several graduating classes' worth of people. When the battlefield has tens of thousands of enemies on it, not hitting somebody means you miss a target significantly larger than the broad side of a barn, and I find that difficult to fathom.

I see what your getting at, buts its not every single solider on the other side was a potential target, just those in the line of fire for any given musket. Anyone more than 100-150 meters from the front line was out of musket range, and wouldn't get hit in a million shots, so the number of people a single bullet along its flight path could reach was only in the dozens at best, more likely four or five, and those in a very tight area. if you pulled the trigger early, or aimed high (apparently a significant problem at the time, with leaders sometimes telling the troops to aim at the knees in order to avoid it), it would sail over the target, or if you aimed low, then the shot would bury itself into the earth and that was that.

And since your effectively shooting blind into a wall of smoke 3 feet in front of you, with no reference marker to aim at, let alone a clear target, its quite easy to do. A trooper loading his musket had to break his aim and look away form the enemy for 20-30 seconds, so keeping a consistent point of aim was very difficult.

as for overshooting at hitting the next line, it could happen, but normally the lines were quite far apart, so they had room to manoeuvre, or if in column they were tight up behind the front line, and a shot that overshot the man in front would sail over there heads as well.


if you have time and a friend (or a spray can and a wall), try pacing out 100 meters, and seeing how large or small a human sized target is at that range. you'll find is not that much of a difference between aiming below their feet and aiming over their heads.



It might be hard to fathom, and it was noted incredulously at the time, but the bullets to death ratios were based on rounds expended and casualties sustained reported in the various supply and medical reports, and ive seen numbers like that repeated for several battles, all saying that 200-300 bullets were shot for every soldier wounded or killed.

edit: re reading this, I realise Ive come across much more arrogant than I was intending, so for that I apologise. what I meant by that last paragraph in particular is that this mismatch between shot and kills was remarked on at the time, but know one could explain it then either, only that armies would shoot hundreds of thousands of bullets at each other, but only a few thousand soldiers were recorded as being killed or wounded.

[rrgg]

The Wikipedia page "Infantry in the American Civil War" states without citation,

Does anyone know if this number is accurate or close to accurate? Whether the fighting is happening in 1800 or 1860, the concept is mind-boggling. If we're firing muzzle-loading muskets at a rate of a shot every 15 seconds, this implies that a soldier spent, on average, 62.5 to 75 minutes loading and firing for every casualty inflicted (and in fact, more often, because those casualties might well include combatants killed or wounded by artillery fire and melee combat). Even with gun smoke obscuring the battlefield, I can't imagine firing a gun, no matter how inaccurate, at a mass of people for an hour without hitting anybody.

If anything that seems to be a high-end estimate. Period sources counting up the total amount of ammunition consumed over the course of a campaign often reckoned an even lower casualty rate per bullet fired.

This is a pretty good essay on the subject if you scroll down to the first Appendix, "A Memorandum on Infantry Fire", though the Author was primarily talking about infantry with rifled breach-loaders, not muzzle-loaders: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7294/...tm#link2H_APPE

6. Fire at Will—Its Efficacy

Thus fire at command, to-day as in the past, is impractical and consequently not actually used in battle. The only means employed are fire at will and the fire of skirmishers. Let us look into their efficacy.

Competent authorities have compiled statistics on this point.

Guibert thinks that not over two thousand men are killed or wounded by each million cartridges used in battle.

Gassendi assures us that of three thousand shots only one is a hit.

Piobert says that the estimate, based on the result of long wars, is that three to ten thousand cartridges are expended for each man hit.

To-day, with accurate and long range weapons, have things changed much? We do not think so. The number of bullets fired must be compared with the number of men dropped, with a deduction made for the action of artillery, which must be considered.

A German author has advanced the opinion that with the Prussian needle rifle the hits are 60% of the shots fired. But then how explain the disappointment of M. Dreyse, the happy inventor of the needle rifle, when he compared Prussian and Austrian losses. This good old gentleman was disagreeably astonished at seeing that his rifle had not come up to his expectations.

In ranks, fire at will is the only possible one for our officers and men. But with the excitement, the smoke, the annoying incidents, one is lucky to get even horizontal fire, to say nothing of aimed fire.

In fire at will, without taking count of any trembling, men interfere with each other. Whoever advances or who gives way to the recoil of his weapon deranges the shot of his neighbor. With full pack, the second rank has no loophole; it fires in the air. On the range, spacing men to the extremity of the limits of formation, firing very slowly, men are found who are cool and not too much bothered by the crack of discharge in their ears, who let the smoke pass and seize a loophole of pretty good visibility, who try, in a word, not to lose their shots. And the percentage results show much more regularity than with fire at command.

But in front of the enemy fire at will becomes in an instant haphazard fire. Each man fires as much as possible, that is to say, as badly as possible. There are physical and mental reasons why this is so.

Even at close range, in battle, the cannon can fire well. The gunner, protected in part by his piece, has an instant of coolness in which to lay accurately. That his pulse is racing does not derange his line of sight, if he has will power. The eye trembles little, and the piece once laid, remains so until fired.

The rifleman, like the gunner, only by will-power keeps his ability to aim. But the excitement in the blood, of the nervous system, opposes the immobility of the weapon in his hands. No matter how supported, a part of the weapon always shares the agitation of the man. He is instinctively in haste to fire his shot, which may stop the departure of the bullet destined for him. However lively the fire is, this vague reasoning, unformed as it is in his mind, controls with all the force of the instinct of self preservation. Even the bravest and most reliable soldiers then fire madly.

The greater number fire from the hip.

The theory of the range is that with continual pressure on the trigger the shot surprises the firer. But who practices it under fire?

However, the tendency in France to-day is to seek only accuracy. What good will it do when smoke, fog, darkness, long range, excitement, the lack of coolness, forbid clear sight?

It is hard to say, after the feats of fire at Sebastopol, in Italy, that accurate weapons have given us no more valuable service than a simple rifle. Just the same, to one who has seen, facts are facts. But—see how history is written. It has been set down that the Russians were beaten at Inkermann by the range and accuracy of weapons of the French troops. But the battle was fought in thickets and wooded country, in a dense fog. And when the weather cleared, our soldiers, our chasseurs were out of ammunition and borrowed from the Russian cartridge boxes, amply provided with cartridges for round, small calibered bullets. In either case there could have been no accurate fire. The facts are that the Russians were beaten by superior morale; that unaimed fire, at random, there perhaps more than elsewhere, had the only material effect.

When one fires and can only fire at random, who fires most hits most. Or perhaps it is better said that who fires least expects to be hit most.

Frederick was impressed with this, for he did not believe in the Potsdam maneuvers. The wily Fritz looked on fire as a means to quiet and occupy the undependable soldiers and it proved his ability that he could put into practice that which might have been a mistake on the part of any other general officer. He knew very well how to count on the effect of his fire, how many thousand cartridges it took to kill or wound an enemy. At first his soldiers had only thirty cartridges. He found the number insufficient, and after Mollwitz gave them sixty.

He does conclude that small groups of loose skirmishers or a single concealed sharpshooter could usually shoot a bit more accurately, but if they had to fight in small numbers they couldn't really do that much damage on their own. This seems to suggest to me that the improving rate of fire for the rifle (first the minie ball, then breachloading, bolt action, etc.), not it's accuracy alone, was the key to putting an end to dense formations.

The fire of skirmishers is then the most deadly used in war, because the few men who remain cool enough to aim are not otherwise annoyed while employed as skirmishers. They will perform better as they are better hidden, and better trained in firing.

The accuracy of fire giving advantages only in isolated fire, we may consider that accurate weapons will tend to make fighting by skirmishers more frequent and more decisive.

For the rest, experience authorizes the statement that the use of skirmishers is compulsory in war. To-day all troops seriously engaged become in an instant groups of skirmishers and the only possible precise fire is from hidden snipers.

However, let us not have illusions as to the efficacy of the fire of skirmishers. In spite of the use of accurate and long range weapons, in spite of all training that can be given the soldier, this fire never has more than a relative effect, which should not be exaggerated.

The fire of skirmishers is generally against skirmishers. A body of troops indeed does not let itself be fired on by skirmishers without returning a similar fire. And it is absurd to expect skirmishers to direct their fire on a body protected by skirmishers. To demand of troops firing individually, almost abandoned to themselves, that they do not answer the shots directed at them, by near skirmishers, but aim at a distant body, which is not harming them, is to ask an impossible unselfishness.

As skirmishers men are very scattered. To watch the adjustment of ranges is difficult. Men are practically left alone. Those who remain cool may try to adjust their range, but it is first necessary to see where your shots fall, then, if the terrain permits this and it will rarely do so, to distinguish them from shots fired at the same time by your neighbors. Also these men will be more disturbed, will fire faster and less accurately, as the fight is more bitter, the enemy stauncher; and perturbation is more contagious than coolness.

The target is a line of skirmishers, a target offering so little breadth and above all depth, that outside of point blank fire, an exact knowledge of the range is necessary to secure effect. This is impossible, for the range varies at each instant with the movements of the skirmishers.

Thus, with skirmishers against skirmishers, there are scattered shots at scattered targets. Our fire of skirmishers, marching, on the target range, proves this, although each man knows exactly the range and has time and the coolness to set his sights. It is impossible for skirmishers in movement to set sights beyond four hundred meters, and this is pretty extreme, even though the weapon is actually accurate beyond this.

Also, a shot is born. There are men, above all in officer instructors at firing schools, who from poor shots become excellent shots after years of practice. But it is impossible to give all the soldiers such an education without an enormous consumption of ammunition and without abandoning all other work. And then there would be no results with half of them.

To sum up, we find that fire is effective only at point blank. Even in our last wars there have been very few circumstances in which men who were favored with coolness and under able leadership have furnished exceptions. With these exceptions noted, we can say that accurate and long range weapons have not given any real effect at a range greater than point blank.

[rrgg]

This gets odd when one considers the casualty rates for ACW battles... 10s of 1000s dead in some one-day battles.

My guess is that ACW-era artillery was really nasty against men marching across open ground. I do know that the Parrott gun battery from my hometown successfully held the end of a Union line more than once, against repeated TtMS Confederate attacks.

1 or 2 shots per minute with a musket can lead to a lot of bullets fired over the course of a day. USCW artillery likely did more damage than in earlier wars, but in pitched battles especially the large majority of casualties would still be caused by small arms just because you could have far more bullets flying through the air at any given point than cannon balls.

Artillery was still very slow to reload. It could do a ton of damage at a distance if the enemy stood still out in the open for a very long period of time, or at close range with cannister shot if fired at exactly the right moment, but estimating the correct range and elevation on unfamiliar terrain against a moving target was still extremely difficult to do. One of the biggest reasons that you see high-velocity smoothbore cannons used for so long alongside rifled cannons and howitzers is that on flat ground the round ball would skip back up and keep traveling for quite a ways below man-hight, meaning that you didn't have to be quite so exact when it came to estimating the range just right. The artillery certainly caused a lot of terror though either way.

One odd thing about the usefulness of artillery noted at least as far back as the 16th century is that it was often far more effective at stopping soldiers who attacked in very loose, skirmisher formations than in very dense, well-ordered blocks. When the men are packed shoulder to shoulder and have additional ranks behind them they feel as though they have no room to turn around or stop and can only be rushed forward. If they are spread far apart however they would be more likely to slow down or stop to shoot or else dive out of the way or duck for cover when the artillery starts firing, leading to those around them doing the same and bogging down the attack.

[Gnoman]

Well, right now I'm trying to compare shotguns.

Default rules lists a 12 guage buckshot as 8 damage.
Given trends in the default rules, this could use changing. Issue is, shotgun balistics are a nightmare. Buckshot's never measured and velocity seems to drop off very quickly.

I am not familiar with gurps, but I've had a look.
Gurps rules have both suggested x9 burst, 1d+1 (making burst rules would be alright were it not for already slow combat/automatic shotguns) other rules have suggested 4d for 12 gauge and 5d for 10 gauge... which would give me a 25% increase... if only I knew where my starting point was.

I know: Buckshot's an entirely different kind of wound, I don't know if they can be equaled to slugs, which are still very different from rifles

but for a simple game system, is a 12 gauge more comparable to
7.62x39 (7 die)
.308 (10 die)
30-06- (12 die)

at, say, 20 meters.

Answering this requires a disgression into GURPS mechanics, because this is the basis for comparison.

The reason shotgun damage is listed as it is in GURPS is because it quite literally models individual pellets. In GURPS, it doesn't matter how many bullets you fire in a single attack, you always get exactly one to hit roll (but a damage roll for each hit). A sufficient number of rounds fired gives you a bonus to effective skill, and the number of hits you land is based solely on how much you beat the target's defense roll by. A 12 Gauge shogun firing buckshot does 1d+1 pi- (pi-, or small piercing, halves damage after penetration). Slugs have 4x the pellet damage, and damage type changes to pi++ (Large piercing, doubles damage after penetration), so a 12 gauge shotgun in this system does 4d6+4 damage with slugs, and any damage that gets through armor is doubled. With shot, it does up to 9 hits of 1d6+1, half damage after penetration. Because you get a to-hit bonus when firing shot, there is a very good chance of getting multiple hits, but that's a little deeper than we need to go. Just think of it as (1d6+1)*1d9 for now.


By comparison, here are the GURPS values for the calibers in question:

7.62x39 5d+1 pi (no wounding modifier)
.308 7d pi
30-06 7d+1 pi

In other words, a shotgun firing slugs has lower base damage than any of the rifles, but a far better damage modifier (this is done to reflect that the rifle rounds will penetrate armor much better, while the shotgun slug will do better against flesh), while the shot has the potential for higher base damage than any of them but has a terrible wounding modifier (and is also terrible against armor, because each pellet has a seperate damage roll and is affected individually by armor or other damage reduction).

[Epimethee]

I see my question got drowned out in the discussion so I figure I should bump it a little...

Saw it, wanted to answer and failed. So on the top of my head, you want the most protection you can have, even more on a horse. (As an aside Fashion tended to follow military practices). You have even the «*soleret «* a special armored shoe.

Later, around XVI -XVII century would you find armors with boots, like the famous Richelieu in La Rochelle here: http://www.musee-armee.fr/ExpoMousqu...richelieu.html

( the illustrations below show the armors of Louis XIII and the Cardinal)

[VoxRationis]

edit: re reading this, I realise Ive come across much more arrogant than I was intending, so for that I apologise. what I meant by that last paragraph in particular is that this mismatch between shot and kills was remarked on at the time, but know one could explain it then either, only that armies would shoot hundreds of thousands of bullets at each other, but only a few thousand soldiers were recorded as being killed or wounded.

No offense was taken. I said explicitly that I found the concept difficult to come to grips with.

If anything that seems to be a high-end estimate. Period sources counting up the total amount of ammunition consumed over the course of a campaign often reckoned an even lower casualty rate per bullet fired.

This is a pretty good essay on the subject if you scroll down to the first Appendix, "A Memorandum on Infantry Fire", though the Author was primarily talking about infantry with rifled breach-loaders, not muzzle-loaders: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7294/...tm#link2H_APPE

He does conclude that small groups of loose skirmishers or a single concealed sharpshooter could usually shoot a bit more accurately, but if they had to fight in small numbers they couldn't really do that much damage on their own. This seems to suggest to me that the improving rate of fire for the rifle (first the minie ball, then breachloading, bolt action, etc.), not it's accuracy alone, was the key to putting an end to dense formations.

Why does he say that firing on command wouldn't work? I thought that was standard practice.

Artillery was still very slow to reload. It could do a ton of damage at a distance if the enemy stood still out in the open for a very long period of time, or at close range with cannister shot if fired at exactly the right moment, but estimating the correct range and elevation on unfamiliar terrain against a moving target was still extremely difficult to do. One of the biggest reasons that you see high-velocity smoothbore cannons used for so long alongside rifled cannons and howitzers is that on flat ground the round ball would skip back up and keep traveling for quite a ways below man-hight, meaning that you didn't have to be quite so exact when it came to estimating the range just right. The artillery certainly caused a lot of terror though either way.

So what does cause the enormous death rates that we do see, then?

[wolflance]

Saw it, wanted to answer and failed. So on the top of my head, you want the most protection you can have, even more on a horse. (As an aside Fashion tended to follow military practices). You have even the «*soleret «* a special armored shoe.

Later, around XVI -XVII century would you find armors with boots, like the famous Richelieu in La Rochelle here: http://www.musee-armee.fr/ExpoMousqu...richelieu.html

( the illustrations below show the armors of Louis XIII and the Cardinal)

Ah, I was meant to ask whether plate leg armor (greaves + sabatons) was worn "over" boots. To illustrate my point further, here's a picture of a knight before he put on his armor:




Notice that he is wearing shoes, not boots. Given that knights ride often, I find this quite unusual (shoes aren't the safest option to ride with).

[Carl]

Answering this requires a disgression into GURPS mechanics, because this is the basis for comparison.

The reason shotgun damage is listed as it is in GURPS is because it quite literally models individual pellets. In GURPS, it doesn't matter how many bullets you fire in a single attack, you always get exactly one to hit roll (but a damage roll for each hit). A sufficient number of rounds fired gives you a bonus to effective skill, and the number of hits you land is based solely on how much you beat the target's defense roll by. A 12 Gauge shogun firing buckshot does 1d+1 pi- (pi-, or small piercing, halves damage after penetration). Slugs have 4x the pellet damage, and damage type changes to pi++ (Large piercing, doubles damage after penetration), so a 12 gauge shotgun in this system does 4d6+4 damage with slugs, and any damage that gets through armor is doubled. With shot, it does up to 9 hits of 1d6+1, half damage after penetration. Because you get a to-hit bonus when firing shot, there is a very good chance of getting multiple hits, but that's a little deeper than we need to go. Just think of it as (1d6+1)*1d9 for now.


By comparison, here are the GURPS values for the calibers in question:

7.62x39 5d+1 pi (no wounding modifier)
.308 7d pi
30-06 7d+1 pi

In other words, a shotgun firing slugs has lower base damage than any of the rifles, but a far better damage modifier (this is done to reflect that the rifle rounds will penetrate armor much better, while the shotgun slug will do better against flesh), while the shot has the potential for higher base damage than any of them but has a terrible wounding modifier (and is also terrible against armor, because each pellet has a seperate damage roll and is affected individually by armor or other damage reduction).

Also bear in mind those values will be for standard shot and slug, there exist a wide variety of variant ammo's on both concepts and potentially there's room for a lot more, (there's a lot of ammo types that would be possibble that are functionally illegal to own as a civilian and that the military has little interest in due to their low usage of shotguns and high usage of alternatives).

[jayem]

So what does cause the enormous death rates that we do see, then?

Lots of people?
Over both sides the mode&median number of combatants killed by a soldier is always going to be less than the mean. The mean is never going to be more than 1 (and at small skirmishes like the BullRuns it's about 2%).
So that's at least 44 people achieving 'nothing', four causing injuries and one person achieving one 'kill' despite being busy doing stuff.

[Epimethee]

Ah, I was meant to ask whether plate leg armor (greaves + sabatons) was worn "over" boots. To illustrate my point further, here's a picture of a knight before he put on his armor:




Notice that he is wearing shoes, not boots. Given that knights ride often, I find this quite unusual (shoes aren't the safest option to ride with).

I can’t see the picture and i am currently abroad so my books are not with me but i think you may be Talking about this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hose_(clothing)

[Carl]

There dosen;t appear to be a picture there, looks like he forgot to paste the link.

[wolflance]

Hmm, odd, because I did post the picture. I will repost it here in link format though.


https://i.imgur.com/G8X9pGg.jpg

[snowblizz]

In the mean time, I have several other questions:

1) What is the typical caliber and range of swivel gun during 16 and 17th century ? Both breechloading and muzzleloading variety.
2) Does swivel gun outrange heavy musket (the kind that requires musket rest) of the time?

and

3) If musket outrange swivel gun, did warships of the period employ musketeers to "snipe" at enemy swivel gunner, or simply shoot at one another? or simply equip something like "swivel musket"?

I think it's hard to say much about typical in a time anf about things that had absolutely no standardisation. Most swivel guns I've seen were short ranged ( and shortbarrelled), essenitally close defence weapons, very much like a shotgun. Which is how they'd be used, as deckclearers for short range. You can't really aim with them like with a musket.

Any musket would likely outrange a swivel gun in aimed fire. Ships did employ snipers, it is what famously killed Nelson at Trafalgar. I'm not sure they'd particulalry target swivelgunners, any such snipers, and there'd be few, firing from the rigging and places such as the crowsnest, would look for targets of opportunity. Like ship's officers.

A quick question: Are medieval greaves and sabatons (of transitional armor ～ 16th century full plate) designed to be worn over boots? In particular riding boots.

Most artworks of knights in under-armor as well as "how to wear plate armor" demo videos depicts the knights wearing shoes instead of boots (as well as rather form-fitting pants/hoses), so I presume that it can't, but I asked anyway just to be extra sure.

Notice that he is wearing shoes, not boots. Given that knights ride often, I find this quite unusual (shoes aren't the safest option to ride with).

I had a poke around some Osprey books and in short, when you wear armour you wear stuff under designed to be worn under armour. That does not include riding boots. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if the classic ridingboot was developed *after* the full armour period precisely because you are no longer armoured as much (at least in oue western knight-horseman-rider context). I'm not am expert of medieval clothing but the footwear of the middleages as far as I can tell from imagery is much closer to slipperlike shoes that can easily be covered by armoured plates. A knight starts armouring from the feet upwards, while we ar eused of thinking of ti the other way. That will impact the type of fotowear/armour used. I have no doubts you could conceivably create armour intop of boots, but the progression of armouring went the other way it seems.

Why wouldn't shoes be safe to ride with? Mankind has ridden without and with shoes far longer than riding boots. And I wager the latter people were far less successful than the former usually.

[Brother Oni]

Hmm, odd, because I did post the picture. I will repost it here in link format though.


https://i.imgur.com/G8X9pGg.jpg

Imgur has blocked all hotlinking. If you copy and paste the address into your browser, then it will display properly and since the image is now cached, the link and image will work.

Perversely, clicking the link above without manually copying and pasting the address first, will hit you with a 403 Forbidden error.

Sometimes computers can be as frustrating and esoteric as medieval texts...

[Storm Bringer]

No offense was taken. I said explicitly that I found the concept difficult to come to grips with.


Why does he say that firing on command wouldn't work? I thought that was standard practice.



So what does cause the enormous death rates that we do see, then?

it was standard practice, but, firing on command didn't work, mainly because the troops, in the heat of battle, didn't hold their fire once given permission to start shooting. "hat tended to happen was the officer would give the order to start shooting, then every man would just start loading and firing at his own best pace, rather than loading and waiting for the officer to order the next volley (ie it became fire at will).


its not hard to understand the reasons why a man, under fire, with a loaded weapon, would think it stupid to wait until the last man in his unit was loaded before he shot. the officers in the field didn't try to control this behaviour, partly because it wasn't really possible to stop it without breaking unit cohesion, but moreso because they wanted the unit to generate as much fire as possible, and volley fire was always as slow as the slowest loading man, so it made tactical sense to just let the troops fire at will.

[Brother Oni]

it was standard practice, but, firing on command didn't work, mainly because the troops, in the heat of battle, didn't hold their fire once given permission to start shooting. "hat tended to happen was the officer would give the order to start shooting, then every man would just start loading and firing at his own best pace, rather than loading and waiting for the officer to order the next volley (ie it became fire at will).


its not hard to understand the reasons why a man, under fire, with a loaded weapon, would think it stupid to wait until the last man in his unit was loaded before he shot. the officers in the field didn't try to control this behaviour, partly because it wasn't really possible to stop it without breaking unit cohesion, but moreso because they wanted the unit to generate as much fire as possible, and volley fire was always as slow as the slowest loading man, so it made tactical sense to just let the troops fire at will.

Out of curiosity, how does this mesh with the countermarch (ie the front rank retreats to reload) and firing by ranks? Did they result in a best of both worlds (ie rapid fire with fire discipline) or the worst (poor rate of fire and poor unit cohesion)?

[wolflance]

I think it's hard to say much about typical in a time anf about things that had absolutely no standardisation. Most swivel guns I've seen were short ranged ( and shortbarrelled), essenitally close defence weapons, very much like a shotgun. Which is how they'd be used, as deckclearers for short range. You can't really aim with them like with a musket.

Any musket would likely outrange a swivel gun in aimed fire. Ships did employ snipers, it is what famously killed Nelson at Trafalgar. I'm not sure they'd particulalry target swivelgunners, any such snipers, and there'd be few, firing from the rigging and places such as the crowsnest, would look for targets of opportunity. Like ship's officers.

I had a poke around some Osprey books and in short, when you wear armour you wear stuff under designed to be worn under armour. That does not include riding boots. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if the classic ridingboot was developed *after* the full armour period precisely because you are no longer armoured as much (at least in oue western knight-horseman-rider context). I'm not am expert of medieval clothing but the footwear of the middleages as far as I can tell from imagery is much closer to slipperlike shoes that can easily be covered by armoured plates. A knight starts armouring from the feet upwards, while we ar eused of thinking of ti the other way. That will impact the type of fotowear/armour used. I have no doubts you could conceivably create armour intop of boots, but the progression of armouring went the other way it seems.

This does seems very logical and agree with what I had in mind, although I think boots were used during the mail armor era.

Why wouldn't shoes be safe to ride with? Mankind has ridden without and with shoes far longer than riding boots. And I wager the latter people were far less successful than the former usually.

While riding naked on a naked horse is certainly doable, most riders still prefer better equipment for comfort and safety. A pair of good riding boots reduce the risk of getting one's foot stuck in the stirrup or slip away from it, protect the ankle if the rider accidentally fall from the horse, and protect one's foot if the horse happens to step on it.

Most of these wouldn't be an issue if the knight was armored (greaves and sabatons are very protective), although knights did ride unarmored quite often (peacetime, scouting etc). I wonder if they brought an extra pair of boots during campaign for unarmored riding...

Imgur has blocked all hotlinking. If you copy and paste the address into your browser, then it will display properly and since the image is now cached, the link and image will work.

Perversely, clicking the link above without manually copying and pasting the address first, will hit you with a 403 Forbidden error.

Sometimes computers can be as frustrating and esoteric as medieval texts...

Ahh, any suggestion on what image hosting site I should use?

[Max_Killjoy]

Image hosting sites in general are getting more onerous... they don't make their clicky eyeball money if people look at the images on other sites.

[Aneurin]

No offense was taken. I said explicitly that I found the concept difficult to come to grips with.


Why does he say that firing on command wouldn't work? I thought that was standard practice.

At a guess it means that volley fire doesn't increase the number of hits per shot? However, being on the receiving end of a volley must be terrifying. The psychological impact of frequent, disciplined bursts of fire has got to be significant as well as the impact of watching your enemy maintain discipline.

However, the article in question is talking about breach-loading weapons (and I'm more familiar with the muzzle-loading ones of the Napoleonic Wars). It could well be that massed fire was coming to an end by the US Civil War - maybe rattle off a few volleys for the shock of it, and go to individual fire so as to maintain a high stress situation for an opposing formation. The improved reload speed of the breach would make that more viable than it would have been for the slow muzzle loaders.

So what does cause the enormous death rates that we do see, then?

Melees? Infantry and cavalry charges and, of course, cavalry running down broken formations. There's also self-inflicted casualties, when a formation panics and routs and tramples its own while trying to flee - especially in a confined space.

I'm not sure how these figures are being calculated. They could be adding death by disease and wounds gone bad to the fatalities, though I doubt that.

[Galloglaich]

I see my question got drowned out in the discussion so I figure I should bump it a little...

A quick question: Are medieval greaves and sabatons (of transitional armor ～ 16th century full plate) designed to be worn over boots? In particular riding boots.

Most artworks of knights in under-armor as well as "how to wear plate armor" demo videos depicts the knights wearing shoes instead of boots (as well as rather form-fitting pants/hoses), so I presume that it can't, but I asked anyway just to be extra sure.

Not sure of the answer of this one so I'll pass to those who know more about armor. I know that later 17th Century armor was indeed worn with riding boots.

In the mean time, I have several other questions:

1) What is the typical caliber and range of swivel gun during 16 and 17th century ? Both breechloading and muzzleloading variety.

Caliber tended to be 'medium', anywhere from around 40mm up to maybe 100mm, with 50-75mm probably being typical. 2" to 3".

Range depended on the type of ammunition and barrel length. Shot, like buckshot used in a modern shotgun, had a limited range of roughly 50-100 meters depending on the size of the cannon, with an enhanced 'to-hit' potential as the shot expands out in a cone shape. They could also shoot stone or iron balls which had a much longer actual range, but limited accuracy. Say up to 500 -700 meters depending on the length of the gun barrel.

The length does make a big difference, so for example the bronze gun on the top in this pic



would have a much better range potential than the iron gun in this pic



A lot of time the tradeoff would be between power or impact vs. accuracy and range. A lot of times the more accurate ones would be of relatively smaller caliber (possibly at a higher velocity). Note how slim this 19th Century one is for example:



The caliber on that one is only 30mm. But it would probably be accurate enough for a skilled gunner to pick off human sized targets (like the crew of other guns) from 400 meters away or more.

2) Does swivel gun outrange heavy musket (the kind that requires musket rest) of the time?

The longer barreled ones would, yes.

and

3) If musket outrange swivel gun, did warships of the period employ musketeers to "snipe" at enemy swivel gunner, or simply shoot at one another? or simply equip something like "swivel musket"?

All of the above.

G

[rrgg]

No offense was taken. I said explicitly that I found the concept difficult to come to grips with.


Why does he say that firing on command wouldn't work? I thought that was standard practice.

It's perhaps a bit of an exaggeration to say it was completely impossible, but it would require the soldiers to have extremely good discipline and extremely good morale to wait for their commander to say 'fire' when their finger is already on the trigger and as du Picq says: "He is instinctively in haste to fire his shot, which may stop the departure of the bullet destined for him. However lively the fire is, this vague reasoning, unformed as it is in his mind, controls with all the force of the instinct of self preservation."

As Storm Bringer points out there are potential disadvantages to volley fire and you actually do see quite a bit of back and forth debate on the best ways to conduct infantry fire throughout the early modern period. In favor of fire-at-will it allowed for a higher overall rate of fire if the fastest shooters didn't have to wait for the slowest shooters to finish reloading, it potentially allowed each shooter to aim and pull the trigger at his own pace for more accuracy, and it demanded far less of the soldiers overall. In favor of volley fire it could produce a far greater psycological effect, and many argued that, when the soldiers instinct was to load and shoot as fast as possible, forcing them to slow down a bit was a good thing so that they made fewer mistakes while reloading and would be more likely to at least level their weapon all the way before pulling the trigger.

In either case the officers usually didn't have a choice, and most troops would be capable of just one or two massed volleys before devolving into fire at will. This is one of the reasons that it was often preferred to get as close as possible to the enemy before firing the first volley, in addition to the fact that the soldiers' first bullet would be the only one loaded at leisure and thus the least likely to misfire.

As an aside, I sort of suspect that volley fire was more feasible in the 16th-17th centuries when musketeers frequently used formations 6, 10, or even more ranks deep and each rank had to physically march to the very rear before reloading. Though this was relatively inefficient and a very tiring way to fight, Thomas Styward in 1581 suggested that the shot actually preferred to fight this way since it meant they only had to endure danger in the front very briefly at any one time before retreating to the relative safety of the rear. By the end of the 17th century though when rate of fire improved to the point where it was much quicker to have just 3 or so ranks fire and reload in place, this system was no longer any use however.

Even in the 16th century though you can find military theorists who were skeptical about using shot in massed formations and volley fire, and instead recommended that it would be better to divide large bodies of shot into many small squads who could march in front of the army, spread out, and then skirmish using any available cover. Once the skirmishers grew tired or ran out of ammo they could retreat to the rear to resupply while other squads of skirmishers took their place

Spoiler

Show

https://i.imgur.com/tHyrAgU.jpg

In either case the rule of thumb does seem to have been that even early arquebusiers were strongest in small skirmishes and weakest in large, pitched battles. A single arquebusier might more likely than not stop a single pikeman, but there was no way that 5000 arquebusiers could do enough damage to rout 5000 charging pikemen without help.

So what does cause the enormous death rates that we do see, then?

Mostly soldiers standing there, randomly shooting at each other for long periods of time.

Individual battles during the USCW weren't particularly more bloody than the Napoleonic wars. There's a whole school of thought which holds that the main reasons the Civil War turned into such a bloody slugfest have more to do with the lack of a very large, agressive cavalry corps and the lack of experienced/well-trained troops and officers in general on both sides. The total size of the US professional army was in the thousands before the war began and had to quickly increase to include millions. It took very disciplined troops and skilled officers to properly conduct an assault against fortified positions and cannon fire without losing their nerve during the approach. And even when victory was gained, the lack of sufficient cavalry to pursue or cut off their escape made it easy for the rest of the army to simply retreat and regroup.

Edit: it seems that I can still see the embedded imgur images on my laptop but not on my phone. I guess I'll be adding regular links as well for now.

[Tobtor]

So Back from hollyday. If I missed anything in a discussion directed at me I apologize for not answering.

This does seems very logical and agree with what I had in mind, although I think boots were used during the mail armor era.

Boots yes, "riding"-boots no. See below

While riding naked on a naked horse is certainly doable, most riders still prefer better equipment for comfort and safety. A pair of good riding boots reduce the risk of getting one's foot stuck in the stirrup or slip away from it, protect the ankle if the rider accidentally fall from the horse, and protect one's foot if the horse happens to step on it.

Note that while we do have boots in the medieval period, high heels was unknown/uncommon in medieval Europe (all sources I see says it was a eastern steppe thing or persian invention). Heeled boots and shoes was introduced to Europe during the 16th and 17th century as I understand it. So the boots would have the same flat sole as the shoes and thus not provide much in terms of better grip in the stirrup. Also medieval preserved boots have less ankle protection than modern riding boots.

Most of these wouldn't be an issue if the knight was armored (greaves and sabatons are very protective), although knights did ride unarmored quite often (peacetime, scouting etc). I wonder if they brought an extra pair of boots during campaign for unarmored riding...

I think knight would bring lots of stuff. However, as medieval clothing is quickly gets hot in summer, I think many would have preferred shoes in the summer, as the boots are typically not giving better grip nor much improved ankle support. Instead I think medieval boots are mainly for not getting you clothing dirty/wet when walking outside.

[Storm Bringer]

Out of curiosity, how does this mesh with the countermarch (ie the front rank retreats to reload) and firing by ranks? Did they result in a best of both worlds (ie rapid fire with fire discipline) or the worst (poor rate of fire and poor unit cohesion)?

as far as I know, they stopped countermarching before the time period I am more fammilar with. It was something done more with the older, slower matchlock guns, and one of the advantages of the flintlock system was that it sped up loading* to the point were the formation could change to a wider but thinner one that maximised the number of guns that could fire at once.

firing by ranks, fire by platoon (where the fire would "roll" down the line, each half-company making ready as the previous platoon fired) and other tactics were tried and taught, but they rapidly degenerated into a "running fire" or fire at will after the second or third shot, unless the troops had exceptional discipline. Apparently, some troops were taught to swap their empty muskets with loaded ones form the rear ranks, but every commentator I have read dismisses this as a pure fantasy In battle (no one would give up their loaded musket, and thus their own agency and ability to have some control over their own fate, in battle). however it did happen in some situations, notably sieges or when firing behind cover, where several men might load for a single sharpshooter, to give him a constant supply of loaded guns.


*to give you a quick idea, the loading drill in the English civil war had 32 separate words of command or steps, while the loading drill for a Napoleonic war musket was something like 12. by the American civil war, the use of precussion caps had brought it down to 9 steps. a lot of the problem with the matchlock was the fact that you were juggling a lit match in one hand and pouring loose gunpowder in the other, so a large degree of caution was in order.

[rrgg]

I see my question got drowned out in the discussion so I figure I should bump it a little...


In the mean time, I have several other questions:

1) What is the typical caliber and range of swivel gun during 16 and 17th century ? Both breechloading and muzzleloading variety.
2) Does swivel gun outrange heavy musket (the kind that requires musket rest) of the time?

and

3) If musket outrange swivel gun, did warships of the period employ musketeers to "snipe" at enemy swivel gunner, or simply shoot at one another? or simply equip something like "swivel musket"?

Galloglaich posted examples of some larger guns, but swivel guns or wall guns such as the "arquebus a croc" could go all the way down to musket size, in fact the earliest iteration of the "musket" was likely just a relatively small wall gun which someone decided to give to an infantryman along with a forked rest to help support the weight. The arquebus a crocs in Maximilian's army were supposedly bored to fire an 6-guage bullet, or 2.66 ounces.



https://imgur.com/a/HvmUM

In John Cruso's 1639 book The Art of War he includes the wagon-mounted arquebus a croc among the types of artillery, mentioning that it fired a 3 oz bullet with 2 oz of powder and could be fired 300 times per day or 25 times per hour.