Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Pauly]

One issue is that soldiers have always taken non-soldiers looting battlefields very badly.
1) If you kill an enemy soldier he us one of ”them” and it’s OK to take his gear. However a civilian looting a battlefield casualty is looting on of “us” i.e. another soldier.
2) Looters who came across a wounded soldier would either strip his body bare and leave him to die, or put a knife across his throat. Soldiers seeing that think “there but for the grace of god go I” and object.
3) The looters don't discriminate between good guys and bad guys, they’re all loot bags waiting to be emptied.
4) It goes against the long held custom of treating the dead with respect, which is a near universal human trait.

Any professional looting bands would attract the attention of the people best equipped and most motivated to do them harm.

[Catullus64]

This is only a guess, but I'd think that the best stuff (with either a very favourable weight-to-value ratio or immediate military use, such as money or good weapons) would be looted by the soldiers of the winning side after the battle unless they are prevented from this by direct orders (for example to retreat or pursue the fleeing enemy).

I daresay that our scavenging band would probably keep their eyes sharp for circumstances where the army is ordered to move on swiftly without looting; although perhaps rare, that could be a potential goldmine.

The next best stuff that the soldiers can't or won't take would be looted by the persons in the baggage train of the army, which may contain traders specialized in such "second hand" stuff. These are often children or spouses of the soldiers and might do this on their behalf.

I do like the idea of the scavengers being an acknowledged, if disliked part of the baggage train. People know, but can't prove, that they're mainly there to look the dead, so it's just a matter of picking the right time to move in.

If the army buries the dead before moving on, everything not taken would be buried with them. In this case, your hypothetical looters would be graverobbers and not tolerated in most cultures, so they would have to work in secret for scant pickings while risking hefty punishments if caught.

If the army doesn't bury the dead, they (and the leftover loot) will be left to rot unless they are buried (and likely robbed of the last useable things) by the local populace. During this time, I think they could be looted with relatively few repercussions.

Another possibility is that they establish themselves as part of the local populace, who are usually responsible for disposing of the defeated dead. They can use the locals as a "screen" for their own looting (of second-order loot like clothing, pins, cookware, food), while carrying arms to discourage the locals themselves from protesting. (In case it wasn't clear, my heroes here are not very nice people.)

Pretty much all references to looting I have read of in the ancient world referred to the fighters or the polity they belonged to. A big example are the Greeks looting the Persian camp after Plataea, or the Germani taking Roman eagles and sacrificing soldiers (people were booty). And there's that famous poem by Archilochus: "A warrior of the Saians now adorns himself with my costly shield..."

In Homeric epic, there is clearly an expectation that all loot will be collected after the battle and then divided among the fighters, based on their worth and power. In Roman times, some loot would be put on display: rostra, the extremely valuable bronze rams found on enemy ships, were salvaged and placed near the stage from which politicians addressed the people.

I think that the presence of many helpers meant that not much would be left for others. For example, a Spartan soldier had 7 Helot servants following him during the campaign. Roman legionaries were more autonomous, so who knows. But I think that locals preferred if an army just plundered the enemy camp and got all the cattle and horses held in there, compared to having to forage on the territory, so there were good reasons not to be.

I definitely intend for the story to include a great deal of ironic parallel between the "morally upright" looting of a victorious army (the sort of looting that elites of a society love to put in their literary records), and the the "dishonorable" looting of opportunistic civilians, who in this case have been displaced from their ordinary lives by the war itself. One of the looters is a poet, who is well aware of the idioms and formulas for classical, heroic spoils, and probably takes an ironic delight in applying them to his own disreputable business.

When a chain mail shirt or a bronze curiassis the mark of a rich man and increases you're likelihood of living greatly, you don't leave it there for a random barber-surgeon to snatch up. Lesser valuables like clothes and boots, you might pick those over - I think there's a Napoleonic account of a field of literally naked bodies after some battle where the soldiers and camp followers had literally picked the corpses (and in some cases the still wounded) clean.

On top of which, big battles were not the norm for the period of muscled powered warfare. Lots of marching, disease, bad food, and maybe smaller raids and skirmishes, but big decisive fights leaving enough dead and wounded on the ground indiscriminately enough to loot as a camp followers would be uncommon.

So, limited opportunities to take second Crack at whatever the warriors left behind. Not great odds for the professional looter.

However, separating soldiers from their pay and loot after the fact is a time honored tradition.

That Napoleonic account, true or not, is good imagery. I'll definitely be thinking about that when writing; an expert, maybe an ex-tailor or something, in quickly stripping the clothes off of corpses without damaging them, sounds like a fun side character.

By funny coincidence, one of my planned main characters is (or was) a literal barber-surgeon.

It's the case as you say, I think, that just battlefield looting by itself probably doesn't have a profit-risk ratio that would entice anyone to do it. I'll definitely portray my protagonists as multi-purpose camp followers; its just that the main action of the story itself takes place in the aftermath of the battle, when they spy a good opportunity for loot.

The late 15th c. English word riffraff (and the Old French rif et raf that it derives from), meaning "persons of disreputable character or low degree", originally referred to scavengers in battlefields, and specifically those who plundered "every little thing". High value loot was normally claimed by the victors, so these people picked the leftovers after all the soldiers had gone. The sources treat these scavengers with great contempt, considering them nothing short of human refuse picking up refuse, and the word was derogatory from the start.

But they were just trying to scrape (literally!) a living in war-torn lands. Remember that wherever armies passed, they "lived off the land", i.e. plundered the locals for food and resources. For the civilian population, that was often the worst part of war, as it could get very brutal and/or destroy their livelihood. Taking a little something from the dead seems to me less of a transgression in comparison, especially if the scavengers were locals, who were just taking a little something back.

Sometimes they weren't locals, though, they were camp-followers. From what I understand, scavenging was not their primary occupation, it was complementary to doing errands for the army, or whatever else sustained camp-followers normally. [EDIT: as KineticDiplomat describes above.] Another class of scavengers is vagrants, especially after the Black Death. War, disease, famine, and enclosures uprooted many many people, and on the road options were limited: you could beg, do odd jobs, steal, or scavenge, and if you had the opportunity to do any of that, you would. How else would you survive?

I'm not sure we could call any of these people "professional" looters. Usually it was opportunistic. And I don't think anyone put too much energy in stopping them from scavenging: again, they weren't taking valuable loot, they were only picking leftovers, belts and shoes and anything that got overlooked.

If you want to write about a believable band of professional looters, I can think of two suggestions:

1) Have them operate in a limited geographic region, which happens to be ravaged by war in a prolonged conflict. This gives them lots of battlefields to plunder, lots of reasons to resort to plundering, and you can choose to make them as sympathetic or unsympathetic as you please.

2) Make them almost bandits. Give them arms and horses, and have them raid battlefields immediately post-battle, during the (official) plundering stage. This will allow them to take stuff more valuable than belts and shoes, but also now they're an enemy that the army would keep an eye out for, and fight. This isn't historical, AFAIK, but I wouldn't have any trouble suspending my disbelief for it. Bandits were everywhere, opportunistic raiders were everywhere, official armies operated much like bandits and opportunistic raiders themselves, so you're just mixing the timing here, it's fine.

This is all tremendously useful info/insight, and much of it aligns with my own thinking. My heroes are definitely people displaced by war, though still rather unscrupulous for all that. They're "professional" only in the sense that 1) Camp-following and looting are their main occupation, since their sedentary occupations have been destroyed, and 2) They've gotten really good at it.

As for your numbered suggestions, I think there will be elements of both. There's a particular war that I've thought up in the backdrop, with particular geography and combatants. Even with prolonged warfare, the protagonists have a creeping sense that a big battle is a sign that the war isn't going to last much longer, and this is one of their last chances to actually get their hands on some big spoils, so there's pressure to take risks on this one. While I don't think I'l go so far as to make them a fully armed gang of bandits, there will definitely be some military-like organization in their ranks, with with officers, guards, looting teams, and specialists.

One issue is that soldiers have always taken non-soldiers looting battlefields very badly.
1) If you kill an enemy soldier he us one of ”them” and it’s OK to take his gear. However a civilian looting a battlefield casualty is looting on of “us” i.e. another soldier.
2) Looters who came across a wounded soldier would either strip his body bare and leave him to die, or put a knife across his throat. Soldiers seeing that think “there but for the grace of god go I” and object.
3) The looters don't discriminate between good guys and bad guys, they’re all loot bags waiting to be emptied.
4) It goes against the long held custom of treating the dead with respect, which is a near universal human trait.

Any professional looting bands would attract the attention of the people best equipped and most motivated to do them harm.

All this, really, is just reasons why I think it makes a good story. Natural antagonism between civilian looters and soldiers means conflict, and a sense of real danger. The danger that the soldiers present, and their advantages over the scavengers, mean that our heroes need to be clever and bold to pull off their plans.

[Martin Greywolf]

What can people tell me about the practices of looting and scavenging in the ancient and medieval worlds?

I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.

If such people existed, do you think they're likely to be regarded as criminals, or merely disreputable tradesmen? Would a battlefield even be ripe for looting, or would the actual victorious army mostly pick it clean? Would they need to evade the notice of the armies in question, or could they openly follow them?

I know this is a lot like asking "What color did people wear in the past?", where just about every answer under the sun is true in some time and place. Nevertheless I appreciate any good examples to draw upon, or educated guesses rendered.

Nature of pre-modern warfare

I and others have written on this extensively, in this thread as well as in books, so short version is - battles are incredibly rare, large battles even more so. Most of the warfare of the period is conducted by small skirmishes (about a hundred people total, so not unlike what you see in reenactments) between groups looking for supplies, and sieges.

Taking 100 years war as an example, it has maybe a dozen big battles, with three being notably large, for a war that lasted for over a century. As you can imagine, majority of supplies such as food came from scavanging expeditions, and majority of valuable loot came from sieges.

This has a notable consequence that, were someone to make a business model of looting after battles, he would soon starve, and looting after a siege is done by the victorious army.

Nature of pre-modern war gear

The gulf between combat capabilities of a civilian and those of a soldier was increased in staggering amount since the industrial revolution. A medieval farmer can put on several shirts, grab a pitfork and go into war as an equivalent of medium infantry. Modern civilian has no hope in hell of matching a mortar team, let alone attack helicopters.

What this means for any looters and pillagers is that the people they are looting from, even if they are simple farmers, are an actual, notable threat. While you don't need overwhelming force to intimidate them, you can't be outnumbered five to one and expect things to go smoothly.

Therefore, even if there is an otherwise open season on loot, you will have to have enough military force to intimidate the locals at a minimum, at which point the two armies may well be looking at you suspiciously, because you posses a level of force that is a concern to them, if not a threat.

Medieval ethics

We can't discuss politics and religions here, so let's generalize - if there is any sort of a code of conduct between two sides, whatever it is based on, it may well be upheld by both belligerents.

To put it simply, if the two sides get even marginally along, and you decide to loot from the loosers of a battle, the winners may well arrest you and either punish you or hand you over. This has happened fairly regularly during the Outremer crusades, often enough that Kingdom of Heaven movie actually had a scene about it.

Customs of looting already in place

I'm only well-versed in high and late medieval customs, but the general ideas were in place in ancient and renaissance armies as well.

Most of the soldiers in place are there with the understanding of being paid partially in loot. This is a major motivation behind them being there, in fact, since regular pay, if present, isn't all that much, and more winning means more loot. This did cause problems were frequently - mostly of the "soldiers run to loot before the battle is over and get ambushed" kind, but it was so ingrained into the ethos of the times you saw it even in the written contracts.

Those written contracts often mandated that a soldier brings loot back to the people in charge, where it will be amassed and shares will be given out - this is not unlike the pirate charters.

As an example:

Spoiler: Jan Zizka 1423 charter, excrept

Show

[this was all one paragraph in the original charter, I separated it for my sanity]
Ale jestliže by kde Pán Buoh dal nepřátely přemoci a porazili, města, tvrze, hradu dobyti, táhnouce polem nebo polem ležíce, kterých kořistí dobyti: aby ten vzatek a ty kořisti sneseny, svedeny, svezeny a na hromadu skladeny byly, kdež by bylo tomu místo ukázáno a jmenováno od starších, buďto mnoho nebo málo. A k tomu aby byli vydáni a voleni starší ze všech obcí, los panských, rytířských, městčích i robotěncuov, aby věrně způsobili ty věci chudým i bohatým, a spravedlivě, jakž na koho sluší, rozdány a rozděleny byly, aby nižádný sám sobě nebral, ani co kdo zachoval.

Jestli pak že by co kto vzal neboli zachoval, a to bylo usvědčeno dobrejm, svědomím, k tomu takovému chtěli by popraviti, k jeho hrdlu i k statku, buď kdož buď, žádných osob nevynímajíce, jakožto k zloději Božímu a obecnému, jakož se jest stalo Achanovi pro čepici dcer královských a pro plášť, neboli jinou smrtí, buďto kníže, pán, rytíř nebo panoše, měštěnín, řemeslník nebo sedlák, i žádného nevymlouvajíce ani k vosobám hledíce a zříce, s pomocí Boží takovým činiti nad nimi pomstu.

Spoiler: Translation by me

Show

And were the Lord to give us victory over an enemy, were it a city, fortress, castle, field battle or field encampment, and should we acquire loot: this taking and this loot is to be taken and put in a pile in a place that was pointed out and named by the commanders[1], were the amount fo this loot great or small. And to this loot will be elected elders from all villages, a random selection[2] from lordly, knightly, citizenry and working class[3], so that they faithfully divide this loot to rich and poor, and fairly by merit divide and distribute; so that not one can take loot by himself or keep it from them.

Were someone to take or keep the loot for himself, and this was proven in good conscience, this one will we want to execute by throat and by property[4] no matter his station[5], without exception to any person; for he is a thief from God and from people, as happened to Achan for the hat of king's daughters and for the cloak; with any death, were it a duke, lord, knight, squire, burgher, craftsman or paesant[6], for no one of any rank will be excused; with the aid of God will we over these persons carry out a vengeance.

[1] the word starsich literally means 'elders', but this charter uses it to denote commanders of various ranks
[2] 'los' means that they were drawing straws or names from a hat or some such
[3] this means hign nobility, ordinary knights, burghers from cities with imperial charters and the rest
[4] this means loss of life and of your property, the translation from archaic Czech doesn't roll well in English
[5] literally 'whoever he happens to be'
[6] the English words for these titles aren't exactly 1:1, but close enough for our purposes

Spoiler: Translation into normal, modern sentences

Show

If we win any sort of battle and acquire loot, we will put it in one spot, pre-determined by the commanders, no matter how much loot there is. We will then randomly select from among our commanders a commitee that will see to it that this loot is divided by merit.

If anyone keeps stuff for himself, he dead, no matter how important he is, and we will take his stuff and divide it as well.

You can imagine that people who wrote this into their charters would be... displeased over someone else taking spoils from under them.

Non-belligeernt looters

They happened. Sometimes.

As you could see above, the armies of the time had entire systems dedicated to plundering the goodies. Moreover, they often didn't loot a conquered city or a village to the bone, since they wanted to either conquer it, or to loot it the next year, which means said city or village was capable of resisting any subsequent lootings by small forces.

When this happened most often was in cases when the victorious army couldn't take it all, for reasons of time or carrying capacity. Then, the locals happily helped themselves, and remember, these locals are both farmers and local lords and militias, so you can't intimidate them that easily.

Is your idea possible?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. It's not economically viable to make a living this way in the first place, and everyone would try to stab you.

So how do we make your story work?

I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.

Good news: it's not impossible. Consider a mercenary company whose leader gains reputation for being very effective at the distribution of loot, and is therefore hired by armies to handle this for them. Basically, take the Zizka charter and replace random distribution by a professional with good reputation.

If you want this guy to work for both sides, have him cleverly negotiate contracts with both of them at the same time, or simply switch sides. This was hardly an uncommon thing among the various mercenaries, were they Swiss, Landsknechts, Condotierri or others - Fiore de'i Liberi, author of a famous fencing manual, was himself an artillery captain who was hired all over Italy and HRE.

[Catullus64]

Nature of pre-modern warfare

I and others have written on this extensively, in this thread as well as in books, so short version is - battles are incredibly rare, large battles even more so. Most of the warfare of the period is conducted by small skirmishes (about a hundred people total, so not unlike what you see in reenactments) between groups looking for supplies, and sieges.

Taking 100 years war as an example, it has maybe a dozen big battles, with three being notably large, for a war that lasted for over a century. As you can imagine, majority of supplies such as food came from scavanging expeditions, and majority of valuable loot came from sieges.

This has a notable consequence that, were someone to make a business model of looting after battles, he would soon starve, and looting after a siege is done by the victorious army.

I used the word "battles" rather loosely. Sacks, raids, and skirmishes were definitely included in my vision, even if the aftermath of a proper battle is the centerpiece of the story.

The gulf between combat capabilities of a civilian and those of a soldier was increased in staggering amount since the industrial revolution. A medieval farmer can put on several shirts, grab a pitfork and go into war as an equivalent of medium infantry. Modern civilian has no hope in hell of matching a mortar team, let alone attack helicopters.

What this means for any looters and pillagers is that the people they are looting from, even if they are simple farmers, are an actual, notable threat. While you don't need overwhelming force to intimidate them, you can't be outnumbered five to one and expect things to go smoothly.

Therefore, even if there is an otherwise open season on loot, you will have to have enough military force to intimidate the locals at a minimum, at which point the two armies may well be looking at you suspiciously, because you posses a level of force that is a concern to them, if not a threat.

Again, I don't necessarily find this discouraging for my writing. If the sweet spot of "strong enough to intimidate farmers, not strong enough to draw the attention of soldiers" is historically non-existent, I'm comfortable using artistic license to stretch it to "existent, but narrow enough that the odds are strongly against the protagonists."

The theme that these scavengers occupy an ultimately unstable and unviable economic niche, one that they know can't last even if it doesn't get them killed, is deeply appealing to me. It shares a lot of thematic territory with the "Twilight of the Old West" tropes that are so popular in modern Westerns. In a way, your explanations of why this sort of occupation wouldn't work have helped me clarify how I want to tell the story, though I may need a few handwaves to do it.

[Martin Greywolf]

though I may need a few handwaves to do it.

You don't need handwaves, you need something that will cause a paradigm shift in pre-modern warfare. The base facts are that there are two groups already wanting to loot all they can: the winning soldiers and the armed locals. Neither of those wants armed looter organization around, and will need a damn good reason why they would allow it.

You could move the tech to such a place where locals don't have the means to resist (e.g. modern military situation), you could place some sort of cultural taboo on looting to the soldiers or so on. All of those are major changes that will completely change how war is fought when compared to ancient and medieval methods (e.g. with prohibition on looting, you will need supply lines that would shame the Roman empire and so on).

[Catullus64]

You don't need handwaves, you need something that will cause a paradigm shift in pre-modern warfare. The base facts are that there are two groups already wanting to loot all they can: the winning soldiers and the armed locals. Neither of those wants armed looter organization around, and will need a damn good reason why they would allow it.

I think the answer, which I had partly already come to, and have partly gleaned from people in the thread, is that they aren't tolerated; or rather, they need to pass as something other than corpse-robbers in order to be tolerated. I feel that by using the word "professional" I may have implied something more open and formal than I was imagining; it would certainly be wrong to say that any of them "profess" looting. These are camp followers whose main intention in following the army is to loot, and as such they're always watching for the opportunity, but they can still blend in with and function as the normal sort of camp followers who provide logistical support to the army. They are, functionally, thieves, but they still exist within a recognized, if disreputable, social role.

While your arguments about why both local populace and military forces are incentivized to prevent this sort of activity are convincing, that doesn't mean that there aren't gaps for opportunistic individuals to operate in. As has been pointed out, a commander might actively curtail looting amongst his own troops in order to maintain cohesion in his forces, or to move on quickly for operational reasons. Soldiers and civilian looters alike might just plain miss things. When I talk about hand waves, I'm not talking about ignoring social and logistical factors, but about narrative contrivances which allow these opportunities to line up.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread. One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, Guns & Gears is the Harmona, described as such:

A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.

The question is, how large a bore are we talking here? How big of projectiles? I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.

[tyckspoon]

Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread. One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, Guns & Gears is the Harmona, described as such:

A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.

The question is, how large a bore are we talking here? How big of projectiles? I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.

Not an area of expertise, so I will defer to any such who may frequent the thread, but it sounds like that's probably inspired by/meant to reference real-world 'elephant guns' meant to hunt very large game. The Wiki article about them may be a useful overview for you.

[Pauly]

Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread. One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, Guns & Gears is the Harmona, described as such:

A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.

The question is, how large a bore are we talking here? How big of projectiles? I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.

And lo, Gun Jesus did descend from the mountain carrying 4 bore stopping rifles (4 bore fires a round lead ball of 1/4 of a pound)

https://youtu.be/MDYtxxRU_cY

Then he turned and produced forth a 2 bore hunting rifle. (2 bore guns shoot a half pound round ball)


https://youtu.be/OYlDgwo52tI

There were larger rifles made, but 4 bore was the practical upper limit, with 2 bore being the overkill version. Anything larger would be impracticakmexcept maybe for shooting from the back of an elephant.

Stopping rifles, aka dangerous game rifles, are designed to stop charging animals such as Lions, Cape Buffalo or Rhinos. You can use much smaller rifles to kill such animals, but maybe not before they’ve taken you with them. They areoften misnomered as “elephant guns”.

[Gnoman]

I daresay that our scavenging band would probably keep their eyes sharp for circumstances where the army is ordered to move on swiftly without looting; although perhaps rare, that could be a potential goldmine.

Such situations wouldn't be "rare". They would be completely nonexistent. The only way combatants are leaving a battlefield (even a tiny one) "swiftly" is if they got crushed and were running for their lives. Sorting out the chaos after the engagement will take much longer than looting would.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

And lo, Gun Jesus did descend from the mountain carrying 4 bore stopping rifles (4 bore fires a round lead ball of 1/4 of a pound)

https://youtu.be/MDYtxxRU_cY

Then he turned and produced forth a 2 bore hunting rifle. (2 bore guns shoot a half pound round ball)


https://youtu.be/OYlDgwo52tI

There were larger rifles made, but 4 bore was the practical upper limit, with 2 bore being the overkill version. Anything larger would be impracticakmexcept maybe for shooting from the back of an elephant.

Stopping rifles, aka dangerous game rifles, are designed to stop charging animals such as Lions, Cape Buffalo or Rhinos. You can use much smaller rifles to kill such animals, but maybe not before they’ve taken you with them. They areoften misnomered as “elephant guns”.

This was really informative, thank you!

[Pauly]

This was really informative, thank you!

One little comment is that by ‘long rifle’ they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.

Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges.

The design requirement is for
- bring the rifle on target
- acquire a site picture
- adjust your aim
- fire
- *edit to add* have what you’re shooting at drop dead before it reaches you
to be done in the shortest possible time.

By ‘long rifle’ people may think if something like an Afghani jezail, which is designed to burn the most possible powder for high velocity bullets.

https://youtu.be/B-aEWZrTibE

[halfeye]

One little comment is that by ‘long rifle’ they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.

Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges.

The design requirement is for
- bring the rifle on target
- acquire a site picture
- adjust your aim
- fire
to be done in the shortest possible time.

By ‘long rifle’ people may think if something like an Afghani jezail, which is designed to burn the most possible powder for high velocity bullets.

https://youtu.be/B-aEWZrTibE

Another extreme gun was the punt gun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun

They were shotguns firing huge numbers of small shot, but the bores were immense.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

One little comment is that by ‘long rifle’ they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.

Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges.

The design requirement is for
- bring the rifle on target
- acquire a site picture
- adjust your aim
- fire
- *edit to add* have what you’re shooting at drop dead before it reaches you
to be done in the shortest possible time.

By ‘long rifle’ people may think if something like an Afghani jezail, which is designed to burn the most possible powder for high velocity bullets.

https://youtu.be/B-aEWZrTibE

True, but in-game the harmona is a separate gun type from jezails, which are statted up in Guns & Gears as well.

[Pauly]

True, but in-game the harmona is a separate gun type from jezails, which are statted up in Guns & Gears as well.

That’s good. The original description was unclear..

For reference this is a video of someone shooting Ernest Hemmingway’s .577 Nitro Express, which is the smokeless powder equivalent of a 4 bore rifle. This one shows the effect the round has on a target.

https://youtu.be/pZ2tWPKv3GU

[Martin Greywolf]

It probably bears mentioning that stopping rifles weren't firing projectiles that were all that slow for their time period. Sure, they were black powder ammunitions, and they are slow compared to modern ammo, but only some muskets were barely supersonic, and some earlier models had muzzle velocities as low as 150 m/s. The stopping rifles were pretty much in the same boat, usually in the 350-450 m/s muzzle velocity range, same as most of the later muskets.

As for distinctive sound of the projectile, just about the only thing that could realistically cause a noticeable difference is a specific shape, kind of like whistling sling bullets. I'm not sure how much that would impact accuracy, though. That said, different bullet sizes in flight do sound slightly different, but to a point where you'd make a special note of it?

[AdAstra]

The only guns I can remember that were attested to as having a distinctive sound as the projectile flew by were the Whitworth Rifles (mainly the breachloading cannons). They used polygonal rifling where the bore was hexagonal in cross section, with the cannon projectiles in particular having a very interesting shape, as they also had a hexagonal cross section that twisted along their length to match the rifling. They supposedly made a very eerie whistling sound when passing by.

[Pauly]

The ‘distinctive sound’ that should be associated with a stopping rifle equivalent is the earth shattering kaboom.
I haven’t been at a range when someone has shot a stopping rifle, but I have been there when people have fired reproduction rifled muskets. The boom is much lower (larger bore) and longer (black powder burns slower than cordite) than modern rifles.

There’s no way the user will hear the projectile, that is assuming they still have functioning ears after firing one of them without hearing protection. At the receiving end: you’re shooting at monsters not people; at the ranges you engage targets the bang will overwhelm and sound the projectile makes.

As for firing a slow projectile, it is slower than smokeless powder rounds. But black powder has a limit on how fast it can push a bullet, which is why 4 bores were invented in the first place. The only way to increase stopping power with black powder is to increase the mass of the projectile. So assuming a black powder world the ‘harmona’ wouldn’t fire a ‘slow’ round.

The idea of a ‘slower heavier’ round being desirable seems to come from a misunderstanding of what modern hunters call a “brush gun”.
https://lockedback.com/brush-gun-rifle-merit-myth/
Lower velocity heavy rounds with rounded noses stay on target through vegetation much better than higher velocity rounds with pointed noses.

[Martin Greywolf]

The only guns I can remember that were attested to as having a distinctive sound as the projectile flew by were the Whitworth Rifles (mainly the breachloading cannons). They used polygonal rifling where the bore was hexagonal in cross section, with the cannon projectiles in particular having a very interesting shape, as they also had a hexagonal cross section that twisted along their length to match the rifling. They supposedly made a very eerie whistling sound when passing by.

Artillery is a bit of a different matter, I recall a few accounts from WW1 where veteran soldiers were able to not only tell what caliber of guns was being shot at them, but also if they went long, short or to the side. I think it may also have been in All quiet on Western Front (which is pretty much an eyewitness account), but it's been decades since I read it.

[halfeye]

Artillery is a bit of a different matter, I recall a few accounts from WW1 where veteran soldiers were able to not only tell what caliber of guns was being shot at them, but also if they went long, short or to the side. I think it may also have been in All quiet on Western Front (which is pretty much an eyewitness account), but it's been decades since I read it.

It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.

[Khedrac]

It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.

In many ways that added to the "terror" factor of the V1. If you could hear it you were safe, it was when the engine cut out that you worried - was it about to land on you?
My father lived under the flight-path so for him, as a teenager, there wasn't any terror - they just watched them fly over or watched the air force engage them Apparently for those who lived in London though the "terror" effect of hearing the engine cut out was very real.

[Martin Greywolf]

It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.

A lot of WW1 guns would probably be supersonic at the muzzle, but fall under speed of sound at long enough ranges. IIRC modern artillery shells can loose about half of their muzzle velocity, and assuming this is true for cordite as well... artillery of the time has muzzle velocities of as low as 500 m/s.

This would be a massive problem with small arms, corssing sound barrier destabilizes your projectile to a point where your aim is wrecked, but field artillery of WW1 will likely not care that much.

[Saint-Just]

A lot of WW1 guns would probably be supersonic at the muzzle, but fall under speed of sound at long enough ranges. IIRC modern artillery shells can loose about half of their muzzle velocity, and assuming this is true for cordite as well... artillery of the time has muzzle velocities of as low as 500 m/s.

This would be a massive problem with small arms, corssing sound barrier destabilizes your projectile to a point where your aim is wrecked, but field artillery of WW1 will likely not care that much.

Spitzer loadings for 8mm Lebel, 8mm Mauser and .303 Mark VII supposedly stay supersonic for 1000 m. For round-nosed Carcano can only find info about 200m, still, extrapolating it pessimistically would give more than 600 m of supersonic range. Have no idea where to find anything on Russian Imperial 7.62 loadings.

Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.

[Pauly]

Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.

Early bolt action rifles, essentially WW1 and prior, were sighted out to 1500m or more. The expectation at 600m+ wasn’t to engage individual soldiers but to hit battalion sized targets. There are a lot of battles in 1914 where this type of fire was used to serious effect, not just Mons.

[Martin Greywolf]

Spitzer loadings for 8mm Lebel, 8mm Mauser and .303 Mark VII supposedly stay supersonic for 1000 m. For round-nosed Carcano can only find info about 200m, still, extrapolating it pessimistically would give more than 600 m of supersonic range. Have no idea where to find anything on Russian Imperial 7.62 loadings.

Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.

Well, yeah, small arms will be safely supersonic, you can go supersonic with black powder and a musket, smokless powder will give you enough speed to not have to worry about it. What I was talking about is artillery, where you don't use speed of projectile to do damage, only to get range - using a large shell and dealing with sound barrier inaccuracy isn't an unreasonable tradeoff in battery fire situation, but would be pretty bad if you added weight to your Carcano ammo to a point where it would drop from supersonic at 200 meters.

[halfeye]

Howitzers (firing at over 45 degrees of elevation (where 0 degrees is flat and 90 degrees is vertical)) vs field guns (firing at less than 45 degrees elevation) is also a significant factor (though Wikipedia seems to have partially adopted a USAian useage that makes howitzer mean what used to be field guns?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_gun

Since about the start of World War II, the term has been applied to long-range artillery pieces that fire at a relatively low angle, as opposed to howitzers which can fire at higher angles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howitzer

A howitzer (/ˈhaʊ.ɪtsər/) is generally a large ranged weapon that stands between an artillery gun (also known as a cannon outside the US) – which has smaller, higher-velocity shells fired at flatter trajectories – and a mortar – which fires at higher angles of ascent and descent.

[KineticDiplomat]

Re: sighting.

This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.

[fusilier]

Re: sighting.

This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.

One officer explained to me that the point of those old "volley sights" wasn't to pick off individual soldiers at extreme ranges (some of those sights go up to over 2km!). Instead it was for suppression fire -- if, for example, there was a bridge at extreme range that you didn't want the enemy to cross. An officer would call out the range, and have his men fire on the target. I believe more modern tactics would call for the use of machine guns, but circa 1900, when many of these rifles were designed, machine gun use was quite limited.* Similarly, in WW1 you can find examples of anti-aircraft sights for bolt action rifles; they didn't have enough machine guns for AA work, at least at the start of the conflict.

*At the start of WW1, there might be a couple machine guns assigned to each battalion, not platoon, not even company, but battalion(!) -- and many nations were still lacking enough even for that.

[Martin Greywolf]

The real story of long range on rifles circa WW1 is a lot stupider - but only in hindsight, and hindsight is 20/20.

Remember that at the time, technology changed at a somewhat glacial pace, there were admirals in WW1 who were one step removed from Nelson. What most of the brass was thinking in terms of was Napoleonic formation warfare, with cavalry breakthroughs and so on. Every piece of gear was thought of in that context, and that... explains a lot. Sure, there were some more forward-thinking folks out there (French had, IIRC, something of an intermediate cartridge for their rifles), but majority of old generals...

In a battle like that, you absolutely want the long range, because if you can hit the enemy line from further away, you're gonna win. Target acquisition is dead easy, accuracy matters only to a point and so on. This was the primary purpose behind the ludicrous ranges you saw on infantryman's rifles, and why you didn't see scopes on them - scopes would only be needed for specialised skirmishers.

Machineguns were almost a brand new invantion, and, well, many thought they were of use in colonial engagements only. This was... pretty silly even at the time, actually, there were some recent wars that showcased their usefulness, but again - top brass wasn't used to rapid innovation, and many thought cavalry will beat machineguns the same way it could beat artillery.

Then WW1 break out and all goes to hell, and suddenly there is trench warfare (well, on the western front), and you have to make do with what you have. Sure, you can ramp up machinegun production, but in the meantime, you have to press rifles into MG roles, and those long range sights are pretty useful for suppressive fire at long ranges in a pinch. They aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun, but you don't necessarily have a machinegun - in many cases, it takes a while before people in charge even realize you need an LMG (that is, not just a man-portable MG, but one that can be used by one guy on the move) to make advances.

This is all very obvious to us, but again, hindsight.

[Saint-Just]

Then WW1 break out and all goes to hell, and suddenly there is trench warfare (well, on the western front), and you have to make do with what you have. Sure, you can ramp up machinegun production, but in the meantime, you have to press rifles into MG roles, and those long range sights are pretty useful for suppressive fire at long ranges in a pinch. They aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun, but you don't necessarily have a machinegun - in many cases, it takes a while before people in charge even realize you need an LMG (that is, not just a man-portable MG, but one that can be used by one guy on the move) to make advances.

Ok, I really need more info. My current understanding is that not merely they were "aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun", they were so much less effective that it required some extraordinary circumstances for the volley fire to be of any use, especially at ranges of more than 1 mile (which was not a big deal for the heavy machine guns once people developed proper procedures). Obviously better than nothing, still not a reasonable use case (especially if you consider that you need to burn many times more ammo to suppress an area with rifles than you'd need for a machine gun).

Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs? Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fire in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?