Fuses

[pjengo]

How could a commander of an army not know that his artillery fuses were inferior and led to inaccurate canon fire? Was Lee that great or was it a case of inferior Union leaders, until Grant and Meade?

 

[JOHN42768]

Welcome, enjoy. I'll leave your cannon question to the experts

 

[TallTallMan]

A little of both, but Lee was a great general, yes.

 

[Lampasas Bill]

Every Confederate gunner that fired a round and every US soldier on the receiving end knew that many Confederate fuses were defective. All the Confederate commanders knew so too. Given the nature of Southern technology, there wasn't much they could do about it, so the Confederates did the best they could with what they had.

 

[gc45]

I checked neither box but the fact of bad fuses was real for sure. Had Lee had good ones the battle might have turned out different. Where Gen. Lee is concerned, and if one reads or studies about Gen. Lee, how can they come away with his leadership not being superior to most if not all CW Generals? As for inferior union Generals, one only needs to research the handling of troops on Cemetery Ridge to see generals like Greene, Wadsworth, Gibbons, Handcock and others who masterfully lead their men, their artillery ,to hold back the boys in gray who almost pulled it off regardless of bad fuses. The leadership of most every CW general, who being a Core Commander did their job pretty well with what they had, inferior fuses, sub par logistics due to horses and their difficulty to perform against so much confusion, cannon fire, getting food to their troops etc..That the union had much more to expend in manpower, guns, food supplies I feel the boys in gray and their leadership performed at very high levels, enough so the war that was said to be over at 1st Bull Run lasted four years. Discovery channel is like most things on TV, inaccurate and misleading to all and to get attention and listeners mostly who are uninformed as to the real events taking place. I'll close be saying, read about Gen. Lee and the retreat from Gettysburg written by Mr. Wittenberg and if doing so, one gets a real sense of abilities of Gen. Lee and all his Core Command Generals; someone should make an accurate movie of that! History tells us Lee made an error in calling for Pickets charge, should have listened to Longstreet they say, however, when in command you command! Lee felt he had his best opportunity to crush Gen. Meade then and now, he was wrong of course just as gen. Grant was much of the time trying to defeat Lee and take Richmond. I suggest looking at all Lee's victories over four years, not just his one big failure. There were of course sub-par Generals on both sides but only a few were Core Commanders but for a short time, plus the politics of war is very hard on Generals, even today.