3 rounds a minute

[MikeyB]

So if a good soldier can fire 3 rounds a minute with a standard muzzle loading rifle.. And ammunition is typically 60 rounds a man? Does this imply that a heavily engaged regiment can typically stay in action for no longer than 20-30 mins?

Would it be pretty customary for regiments in all of the big battles we hear about to fight, withdraw, rearm and get back on the line? Or when you are out, are you typically done for the day?

What is the process for dispensing ammunition? Does each company send a man to the quartermaster who brings back a box of rounds? Do companies fall out one by one and make a line by the ammunition wagon?

Regards,
mike

 

[Cpl. Smith]

typically a lot of the time it varies. they would probably do all those things or none of them...

 

[UCVRelics]

Most regiments had ammo bearers that would run ammo up to the line. One thing to remember is just cause they could shoot that fast doesn't mean they did.

 

[Seduzal]

Most regiments had ammo bearers that would run ammo up to the line. One thing to remember is just cause they could shoot that fast doesn't mean they did.

Also you got to remember is the the other side is shooting at you!

 

[Pima]

Most regiments had ammo bearers that would run ammo up to the line. One thing to remember is just cause they could shoot that fast doesn't mean they did.

Oh, very interesting ! How the bearers were organised ?

They arrived in the front line only when it was needed and they were called or after a specific amount of time (20-30 minutes) ?

 

[gary]

Lest we forget, fouling accumulated and slowed down the rate of fire.

 

[67th Tigers]

Fouling was a major issue, and pre-war tests showed the rifle musket needed cleaning at least every 12 shots. Hence the issue of a cleaning ball in every 10 round wrap (which the troops threw away).

The average engaged soldier fired ca. 20 rounds in a battle. For example, Berdan's sharpshooters at Gettysburg, who fired far more than normal with their breachloading Sharps, expended 34 rounds per man at Gettysburg.

Troops were issued 40 rounds, and their equipment only carried 40 rounds. Any extras issued were carried in the pack, and hence usually disappeared.

 

[JOHN42768]

Another source for replacement ammo would have been the wounded or killed

 

[Saphroneth]

At the time the British focused heavily on training in accuracy and did not control fire under normal circumstances because of the way that it took a long time to fire the carried ammunition. When breechloaders came in they switched to controlling fire because the amount of time it took to expend carried ammunition dropped radically, by a factor of ca. 3-5.

 

[Saphroneth]

As I now have a bit more time to explain that:


The worst-case scenario that a soldier wants to resist is an enemy shock attack.
With the low rate of fire of a rifle-musket (2 rounds per minute was fairly normal as the planning figure) and the number of rounds available, the British decided that the best thing to do was to look into optimizing for accuracy.

The thinking was that if your skirmish elements can take the enemy under fire for ten minutes of approach march they can attrit the enemy considerably before they actually come to handstrokes. Firing a volley at close range is always the most efficient way to do damage, but if you only have one volley in the time it takes the enemy to charge then it will take a certain number of troops to stop the enemy (because that's how many men you need to do the damage that will stop the enemy). If you can also attrit the enemy gradually for several minutes before they charge then you can make do with fewer troops, or possibly even prevent the enemy getting close at all.

Since everyone is trained in accuracy then it is all right in this situation (indeed preferable) to allow the soldiers to control their own fire; self-controlled fire is more accurate at long-range sharpshooting.

If on the other hand you have a rate of fire of ten rounds per minute (for the Snider or the Westley-Richards) then ammunition is a major concern as you'll burn through the ammo carried by a soldier in only a very few minutes. This also meant however that it was possible to stop a charge with a burst of short range rapid fire with fewer troops than it took to do the same with the rifle-musket, and since close range fire is more efficient than long range fire by the same troops this was the better way to avoid running out of ammunition.
Accordingly fire was centrally coordinated. You didn't want to accidentally run out of ammunition.


This actually meant that the "appropriate number of troops" to stop a charge of a certain size was smaller with the Snider than with the P1853 Enfield, because the morale impact was all concentrated at once.

 

[thomas aagaard]

Sure Hardee's tell us that a soldier should be able to do 3 a minute when loading and firing in his own time. And at close range that is doable with a clean gun.

All danish manuals from the 1850ties say to expect two shots a minute. Because if you expect the soldier to actually judge the distance, set the sights at the correct range and make a good aimed shot it will take time.
And getting two aimed shots is much better than just shooting the 3 with no proper aiming.
(even at just 100 yards, you do need to aim well to hit... because a man at that range is not that big.)

Then add fouling, confusion, stress and the fact that the enemy is shooting back...

 

[Saphroneth]

Because if you expect the soldier to actually judge the distance, set the sights at the correct range and make a good aimed shot it will take time.

If you expect the soldier to do that in an American army, generally speaking, you won't have much luck.


One of the things about the slow-firing pace I mentioned above with the British was that they were doing this in open order, usually in skirmish order (that is, you would have pairs of men as skirmish elements, with each element firing one shot every fifteen seconds) and the spacing was pretty wide - during one manoeuvre in the period a British battalion of ca. 800 men spread out over a whole mile, which is about four lateral metres between skirmish elements.


Compare that to a standard firing line (which was two-deep and 6,000 men for a mile wide) and you can see that the standard firing line is putting out about seven to eight times as much smoke per minute. It's thus quite easy to see why the British felt that their skirmish elements could put out accurate fire without worrying too much about smoke.

 

[MikeyB]

So let's say 2 round per minute is more realistic. If standard issue is 40 rounds per man, that still implies that in a heavy sustained firefight, you could be out of ammunition within a half hour. Certainly within an hour. Goes to my original thought that these guys must be running out of ammunition all the time.

But in reality, is it simply the case that soldiers are very rarely in a fight where you are just constantly firing as fast as you can for 40 rounds straight?

 

[MikeyB]

Fouling was a major issue, and pre-war tests showed the rifle musket needed cleaning at least every 12 shots. Hence the issue of a cleaning ball in every 10 round wrap (which the troops threw away).

The average engaged soldier fired ca. 20 rounds in a battle. For example, Berdan's sharpshooters at Gettysburg, who fired far more than normal with their breachloading Sharps, expended 34 rounds per man at Gettysburg.

Troops were issued 40 rounds, and their equipment only carried 40 rounds. Any extras issued were carried in the pack, and hence usually disappeared.

Didn't know about the cleaning round. What are the consequences of going through 40 rounds without using a cleaning round? What is a cleaning around? Does it just dissolve when fired? Is it a low caliber shot that doesn't go very far?

After engagements, was it standard practice to clean rifles, or were most soldiers lazy about it? Or was this something mandated down with disciplinary action from your lieutenant if you didn't do so?

 

[Saphroneth]

But in reality, is it simply the case that soldiers are very rarely in a fight where you are just constantly firing as fast as you can for 40 rounds straight?

Basically there are two kinds of Civil War firefight.

One of them is at very close range (circa 100 yards, which is smoothbore range) where the two sides engage and soak up casualties - this is the typical situation - until one side breaks. In general the hit rate was so low that if both sides expended all their ammunition even at typical firefight range the result would be about one casualty per 2-5 men, but usually the formation broke before then.


The second one is where it's at longer range, where one unit goes to ground and refuses to get closer (psychologically speaking) but it tries to look like it's doing something by firing. In this situation a unit would run out of ammunition and use this as a reason to fall back.
Note that I'm not talking about a deliberate "I'll look like I'm doing something" but a psychological one. It's less psychologically stressing to go into cover and shoot the enemy than it is to keep advancing, and it makes you feel like you're doing something so you don't feel shamed.

 

[Pima]

Sure Hardee's tell us that a soldier should be able to do 3 a minute when loading and firing in his own time. And at close range that is doable with a clean gun.

All danish manuals from the 1850ties say to expect two shots a minute. Because if you expect the soldier to actually judge the distance, set the sights at the correct range and make a good aimed shot it will take time.
And getting two aimed shots is much better than just shooting the 3 with no proper aiming.
(even at just 100 yards, you do need to aim well to hit... because a man at that range is not that big.)

Then add fouling, confusion, stress and the fact that the enemy is shooting back...

Trained Prussians could even get 4 volleys in a minute if they were lucky enough. I guess it was really rare in the struggle of the fight and 3 were the maximum. But those were trained troops.

The soldiers during the war were also volunteers, did they receive some kind of training somehow ?

At the first battle It would be good even if they manage to fire a single volley with the death of your mates, the wounded, the smoke and the distance. After some battles they were of course prepared anyway.

I quite love this topic becouse we are talking about the soldiers themselves, their psichology so I can't wait to see the answers. I hope not to be off-topic but I think that I'm still in it becouse the psichology may have some effects on the accuracy.

Maybe with discipline you could manage to do that. There would be plenty of examples, like the British at Rocker's Drift against an outstanding number of Zulus Warriors

Did the Federals and the Confederates have this kind of discipline ?

Edit: gave a wrong info about the Old Guard, misinterpreting a sentence that I read.

 

[Saphroneth]

Did the Federals and the Confederates have this kind of discipline ?

No, and people like Lee knew it - he once said about "give me Prussian troops and Prussian discipline".

This is because it basically takes a lot of drill, ideally with an experienced drillmaster as an NCO, to instill the discipline we're talking about. The Union army and the Confederate army both expanded far too fast to have enough cadre to do this.

Napoleon's Old Guard of Veterans that sacrificed itslef to the last man to protect the reatreat of the Grande Arméé

This actually didn't happen. They broke under pressure, though they were the last.

 

[Pima]

No, and people like Lee knew it - he once said about "give me Prussian troops and Prussian discipline".

This is because it basically takes a lot of drill, ideally with an experienced drillmaster as an NCO, to instill the discipline we're talking about. The Union army and the Confederate army both expanded far too fast to have enough cadre to do this.

Thanks for the informations; I will profit of your knowledge to ask if like that they would be more easy to break and if the volleys were on average 2 before they got the experience from the battlefield ?

This actually didn't happen. They broke under pressure, though they were the last.

A part of it is inside your message

Thank you for your correction, I modified n.n

 

[67th Tigers]

Didn't know about the cleaning round. What are the consequences of going through 40 rounds without using a cleaning round? What is a cleaning around? Does it just dissolve when fired? Is it a low caliber shot that doesn't go very far?

After engagements, was it standard practice to clean rifles, or were most soldiers lazy about it? Or was this something mandated down with disciplinary action from your lieutenant if you didn't do so?

The round had a series of washers that was supposed to scrape out the barrel when fired. The ballistics were of course terrible. Here -
Admin was dealt with by sergeants. The best way of cleaning a rifle was pouring boiling water down it and then scrubbing it out.

The British had already dropped the ball size of their bullets - the issue round for .577 in 1861 was actually .55 instead of the original .568. This allowed heavily fouled muskets to still be loaded, and experiments showed no degradation in precision. By late ACW, it was common to issue .57 (i.e. Enfield sized) rounds to .58 (Springfield) armed units, and the CS started issuing .54 as standard. I believe there was manufacturing tolerance problems with US rounds early in the war, leading to approximately 5% of issued rounds being so oversized they'd jam even in a clean barrel.

 

[Saphroneth]

A part of it is inside your message

Thank you for your correction, I modified n.n

I was actually talking more generally with regard to discipline.
We certainly know that both sides were actually really quite bad at following the manual of drill even at Gettysburg (which was where the quality of the armies was said to have peaked) because of all the thousands of rifles that were found abandoned on the field with more than one cartridge loaded into them, indicating that their users either forgot a step of the loading process (I'd guess the percussion cap) or forgot to fire.
The culprit here is that they didn't have enough practice, and in November 1864 Warren said:
'The command... consisted, first, of the First Division... 4,707 strong, of which 1,247 were ignorant of the manual, and 2,803 had never fired off a musket. Second, of the Second Division... 4,704 strong, of which 104 were ignorant of the manual, and 812 had never fired off a musket. Third, of two brigades of the Third Division... of which 298 were ignorant of the manual and 298 had never fired off a musket.'

Consider that. November 1864 is after all of the major battles in the East, and Warren is reporting that his command (5th Corps) has nearly 4,000 men who have never fired a round.

This is also attested to elsewhere:


'Circular, Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, April 19 1864
To familiarize the men in the use of their arms an additional expenditure of 10 rounds of small-arm ammunition per man is hereby authorized... Every man should be made to load and fire his musket under the personal supervision of a company officer. It is believed there are men in this army who have been in numerous actions without ever firing their guns, and it is known that muskets taken on the battle-fields have been found filled nearly to the muzzle with cartridges...
By order of Major-General Meade
Chas. E. Pease,
Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General'




But the armies in general could stand fire but not really manoeuvre under it, and they were bad at keeping their formation in the advance or under fire (at least by European standards). There's a reason why armies drill a lot.

They also had a real tendency to slow down, go to ground and fire back rather than pressing attacks - the typical attack is an attack by fire rather than a shock action, and when shock actually took place it did break into the position regardless of whether or not it had works.

The examples of shock action working in European armies are many, but I'd say the Battle of Solferino is a good example - the French charged at a run and actually took less casualties than the defenders, because their discipline worked.