Discussion Repeaters Versus Muzzleloaders

Honestly I wouldn't be entirely surprised if age was a factor; he was born in 1794 and as such was 68 years old upon his firing. But it's not impossible for Lincoln to have made decisions based on judgements that were incorrect.

For example, if Ripley was fired for not supporting the purchase of breech loaders, that would be an incorrect reflection of his department's policies because (as we've seen) it ordered large numbers of breech loaders... but that wouldn't prevent Lincoln forming that incorrect impression.

You are, no doubt, aware that Lincoln fired Ripley the month after the President personally tested the Spencer.

It was also only two months after Union soldiers scavenged 24,000 loaded muskets from the Gettysburg battlefield. Three fourths of them had two or more loads thereby rendering them useless in the heat of battle. Breechloaders, whether repeater or single-shot, were nearly immune to the problem.

Finally, Lincoln wanted to replace Ripley with Dyer, a known breechloading advocate.
 
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Really? I tried to calculate it once and got closer to a 5% to 10% hit rate.

Though there is actually a difference which would result in a better accuracy performance from a muzzle loading rifle than a breech loading rifle given otherwise identical performance, and that's that the weapon takes much longer to reload and so there's more of a reason to take time to aim - for a breech loader spending six seconds reloading and three aiming means you're cutting your shots-per-minute down to 66% of what it would be, but for a muzzle loader spending thirty seconds reloading and three aiming is not much of an impediment.

The actual numbers from the Crimea are indicative. At Inkerman about 12,000 casualties were inflicted by 200,000 shots from small arms and about 2,000 artillery fires; unless the smoothbore non-explosive-shell British artillery was inflicting more than 2-3 casualties per fire you're looking at ca. 20 small arms rounds per hit.

Those aren't necessarily "actual numbers" as they come from Kinglake, who began with poetry and ended up with "Sacks of Crimean notes, labelled through some fantastic whim with female Christian names—the Helen bag, the Adelaide bag, etc.—were ranged round his room. His working library was very small in bulk, his habit being to cut out from any book the pages which would be serviceable, and to fling the rest away..."

His works were regarded as a good read but not taken entirely well at the time. Engels, with access to German translations of the Russian returns, tore apart his romance of the Alma. "Todleben, who knew and loved Kinglake well, pronounced the book a charming romance, not a history of the war." (Quotes from Tuckwell's biography)

And of course, you leave out the French again. Plus, are you really claiming the Royal Artillery forgot to take alone shell, spherical case, and case shot? Shame on them, I suppose...

Moreover, the idea that one fires more accurately with a muzzleloader than a breechloader is risible -- belied by both military analysts and soldiers around at the time armies made the transition from one to the other. The feeling -- and testimony -- was that the rush to reload with the muzzleloader meant that men hurried their shots more.

Leave alone the idea that for your claim to have any validity an entire generation of soldiers, manufacturers, and ordnance were not only mistaken about the superiority of breechloaders but uselessly expended all that time and money to equip their armies with inferior weapons and never, alas, realized the errors of their ways.

If only they had consulted you... :smile:
 
Really? I tried to calculate it once and got closer to a 5% to 10% hit rate.
I don't doubt you managed that feat of mathematics. At Rorke's Drift the garrison expended about 20,000 rounds. This article estimates 4-500 Zulu dead, but that has to be modified by the fact that only 351 bodies were discovered on the field, and that a good many of those were merely wounded. Well, merely, until the soldiers of the Queen murdered them. There were, I believe, no prisoners taken. 20,000 rounds for 500 casualties (not counting the extra hundred or two fired at point blank the following morning) gives about 40 shots per hit. More likely than not the soldiers at Inkerman themselves fired at least a hundred rounds for each of their scores. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol046fm.html
 
And of course, you leave out the French again. Plus, are you really claiming the Royal Artillery forgot to take alone shell, spherical case, and case shot? Shame on them, I suppose...

Well, yes, I'm leaving out the French because they turned up pretty late and weren't involved in most of the firing. As for shell/spherical case/case, how many hits per artillery fire are you expecting?
I've seen numbers in the past that explicitly break down "minie rounds fired" and "minie wounds caused" (excluding dead), but can't find them at the moment; sorry about that.


Moreover, the idea that one fires more accurately with a muzzleloader than a breechloader is risible -- belied by both military analysts and soldiers around at the time armies made the transition from one to the other. The feeling -- and testimony -- was that the rush to reload with the muzzleloader meant that men hurried their shots more.
The idea that one should take one's time with the slow-loading muzzle loader is essentially the philosophy of Hythe. It may not be wholly accurate, but it's not so much risible as plausible. (If there are statistics comparing the P1853 Enfield with the Snider conversions thereof, we could be sure as the only difference would be the ML versus BL).


Leave alone the idea that for your claim to have any validity an entire generation of soldiers, manufacturers, and ordnance were not only mistaken about the superiority of breechloaders but uselessly expended all that time and money to equip their armies with inferior weapons and never, alas, realized the errors of their ways.

Well, not really, no. The BL fires considerably faster and most of what matters is the ability to either (1) generate casualties in a short space of time or (2) cause morale damage, and the BL would be better at both even if it were half as accurate. However I think that a well trained soldier with a ML who was then handed a BL would be no less accurate with it (as he'd be in the habit of properly aiming).

I don't doubt you managed that feat of mathematics. At Rorke's Drift the garrison expended about 20,000 rounds. This article estimates 4-500 Zulu dead, but that has to be modified by the fact that only 351 bodies were discovered on the field, and that a good many of those were merely wounded. Well, merely, until the soldiers of the Queen murdered them. There were, I believe, no prisoners taken. 20,000 rounds for 500 casualties (not counting the extra hundred or two fired at point blank the following morning) gives about 40 shots per hit. More likely than not the soldiers at Inkerman themselves fired at least a hundred rounds for each of their scores. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol046fm.html

What about the walking wounded? I'll admit I was using a higher total casualties number than the one you've used (I estimated about 1:1 walking wounded:dead or severely wounded), but from memory I was using an article which cited a 5%-10% hit rate as typical for the British in the battles in Africa as my sanity check.

As for the Inkerman numbers, you're suggesting a 1:100 hit rate, so that out of the ~200,000 small arms rounds fired at Inkerman there were ~2,000 casualties generated. So the other 10,000 casualties were generated by ~2,000 artillery fires.
This would imply five casualties per shot for the artillery, and by comparison with e.g. the battle of Gettysburg the 1st New York Light Artillery (Battery L) expended 1290 rounds over the course of the Gettysburg battle which would imply that it caused 25% of the Confederate casualties at Gettysburg by itself.

Either that or it really was foolish of everyone to abandon smoothbore artillery!
 
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...aha, here we are. 91% of Russians wounded at Inkerman were wounded by minie balls, irrespective of those killed. (The nature of the wounds was recorded.) That would mean about 7,900 minie wounds as a low estimate.
With 176,670 minie rounds issued (roughly approximating the number fired) then the estimated hit rate for the minie ball is 1 in 22 if every single soldier hit by a minie survived.

For the hit rate to be ~1 in 16 we'd need the odds of surviving a minie ball to be about 70%, which seems broadly reasonable but has implications for Rorke's Drift (i.e. that the hit rate there was better than ~1 in 40).
 
And I've found the article I used as a previous source, and it states that their rough estimates on effectiveness of fire were:


• From 300 to 600 yards, British fire will be 5% effective*
• From 50 yards to 300 yards British fire will be 10% effective*

(* Howard Whitehouse " Battle in Africa ")

Naturally the implication from this is that the 19100 rounds expended would result in ca. 1,000 casualties, maybe a bit more; if we assume that the survival rate is unchanged from the above number for Inkerman (70%) then there'd be about 300 "dead or dying" and 700 "wounded but able to leave the field". This concords fairly well with the observed number of Zulu soldiers left on the field, assuming the overall hit rate for the whole engagement was closer to 5% than 10%.
 
One in twenty would be pretty good given that it was at least one in forty at Rorke's Drift with better weapons in a prepared position against a foe largely armed with short spears and compelled to attack... :wink:

The Zulus were armed with Enfield rifles. They weren't good with them as they believed that setting the sights to maximum made the rifle more powerful (as the bullet went further), and had a lot of bad home-made ammunition. However Rorke's Drift, after the initial failed charge, essentially was a 11.5 hour firefight, at night time, with the Zulu riflemen using a stone wall as cover and firing from the prone, and the British their grain stores as improvised barricade.

The film "Zulu" is extremely inaccurate.

The garrison had 34 boxes of 600 rounds, and ended the action with 6 boxes; thus they expended ca. 16,800 rounds.

The 351 dead figure was only those found in the immediate vicinity of the mission station and buried in a mass grave. Patrols found several hundred more a distance from the station, and the best estimate of Zulu KIA is 650. This probably includes those killed by the Native Troops after the battle, as only 3 wounded prisoners were taken before the NNC could kill them. The Zulus carried off at least 500 wounded.

The hit rate was thus > 1 in 15, and the typical estimate is 1 in 13.
 
The hit rate was thus > 1 in 15, and the typical estimate is 1 in 13.
Might be a bit more (i.e. a bit lower hit rate) than that if there were no rounds in the pockets of the dead (as they would represent rounds fired but not replaced). But from these numbers it looks like a lot of the casualties were at close range in the initial charge by the iNdluyengwe regiment (where we'd expect to see a higher hit rate as it's a group making a mass charge).
 
Any thoughts about General Joseph Hawley's opinion, which seems to suggest that supplying breechloaders and repeaters in the field was not such a big problem?
It is as easy to bring along ammunition wagons as wagons with rations, and as easy to have a detail bring up cartridges as one to carry stretchers.​
Our army has . . . thrown away an advantage equal to half of its force in not arming every man with a breechloader and, if possible, a magazine rifle with metallic cartridges.*​

Hawley had outfitted his entire Seventh Connecticut regiment with Spencers in the autumn of 1863 when he was a colonel. He became a division commander during the siege of Petersburg. Finally, it should be noted that, unlike paper cartridges, metallic ones were immune to spoilage from rain.

*Hawley quoted in William Edwards, Civil War Guns, 150
 
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Any thoughts about General Joseph Hawley's opinion, which seems to suggest that supplying breechloaders and repeaters in the field was not such a big problem?
It is pretty cleat that he never commanded an army.

The speed of your army is not a matter of how fast a soldier can move his feet. The issue is how long your formation is.
If men walk 5km pr hour and need to march 25km and we have a formation that is 10km long then the last men will have to wait for two hours before they even begin to move. The result is that the march in total will take 7 hours.

And every single wagon you bring take up a lot of space and as such make your army slower.
This is one of the reasons why the CSA armies was generally faster than federal armies. They had fewer wagons.
And there are a number of times during the war where Army commanders issue orders to limit the number of wagons.

And if the men could fire faster, the army would be needing to bring more wagons with ammo.
 
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The thing is that the repeater or BL issue should be seen I think in terms of "what improvements can we make to the Union army that will make it much better?"

Now, giving everyone repeaters would indeed make it better, if they could be supplied - but even that is not unambiguous, see below.


Let's imagine that we have the following tactical situation.

A regiment is caught out of position and is under attack by an enemy brigade. The regiment is holding a position vital to the outcome of the battle - let's say it's a bridge? - and the nearest friendly support is about a mile away. It will take ~20 minutes moving fast for the support to arrive.
The regiment is armed with Enfields.
They are repeatedly pressured, so are firing as fast as possible, and burn through a lot of ammunition fending off enemy attacks. They are relieved after taking substantial casualties but holding the bridge.

Now let's convert that to the regiment being armed with Spencers.
They are again repeatedly pressured and fire as fast as possible, but each time the Confederates attack they burn through seven cartridges per man in the initial burst of fire. The Spencer in particular exacerbates this problem because it's so easy to just fire off a whole magazine at once; each Confederate attack is repulsed until the ammunition runs low, at which point the regiment has to fire much more carefully - and then they run out, and get overrun.


To avoid this would mean every deployment (large or small) would have to carry along their own supply of reserve ammunition.

How realistic is this? Hard to tell, but schnellfeuer was a real feature of the Franco-Prussian War engagements and it cannot be ruled out.


Now, to return to the original point I was making, which is about upgrades. The upgrade from the Enfield/Springfield to the Spencer would carry advantages, but it would also carry disadvantages in the area of supply and other tactical features... and there's another possible upgrade which would raise effectiveness by a similar or greater scale and be both cheaper and without disadvantages.


Cost of providing one man with Spencer rifle: $40 in 1861 prices

Cost of providing one man with Enfield rifle-musket, plus all supplies for training at musketry:
Enfield $19 (war dept.)
Percussion caps are 90 cents per 1,000 (Jan 1861 price book for retail)
Cartridges are $16 per 1,000 (ditto)

Training requirement (from the British 1865 equipment of infantry):
110 rounds ball, 20 rounds blank, 163 percussion caps for a recruit
= 130 cartridges and 163 caps
= $2.08 for cartridges and 15c for caps

Total cost including rifle $21.23

Much cheaper! And it's also a lot easier to get hold of cartridges and percussion caps and Springfields in the first place - the War Department had 100 million percussion caps remaining in stock 30 June 1862 (surplus to issued) plus 58 million cartridges (ditto). That's enough to train the entire Union army as of that date, while on the same date the War Department had, I would estimate, not more than 2,500 Spencers.


Of course, it would require a lot more note taking and book keeping and discipline, but often the most potent improvements do simply require going not for the flashiest most modern technology but for something one step down that's simple, reliable and abundant and then training to make it absolutely perfect.
 
The 351 dead figure was only those found in the immediate vicinity of the mission station and buried in a mass grave. Patrols found several hundred more a distance from the station, and the best estimate of Zulu KIA is 650. This probably includes those killed by the Native Troops after the battle, as only 3 wounded prisoners were taken before the NNC could kill them. The Zulus carried off at least 500 wounded.

The hit rate was thus > 1 in 15, and the typical estimate is 1 in 13.
Let's see, there were 4,000 Zulus to start, and at least 850 casualties, of which the 3,150 survivors carried off "at least" 500 for several days or more of marching back to wherever they started.

Imaginary history may not be more accurate, but it's certainly more fun to read... :smile:
 
Let's see, there were 4,000 Zulus to start, and at least 850 casualties, of which the 3,150 survivors carried off "at least" 500 for several days or more of marching back to wherever they started.
I'm not sure why this seems particularly unlikely. It's possible for someone to be struck badly enough by a bullet to be wounded but not badly enough that they have to be left on the field; for example, a not insignificant fraction of the human body is arm and a wound to the arm may render someone both (1) combat ineffective and (2) still able to walk at nearly the normal speed. Or someone might end up with a damaged leg (for the leg is also a not insignificant fraction of the human body) but be able to move with acceptable speed if helped.

You seem to be instead implying that the Zulus just abandoned all their wounded on the field.
 
What about the walking wounded? I'll admit I was using a higher total casualties number than the one you've used (I estimated about 1:1 walking wounded:dead or severely wounded), but from memory I was using an article which cited a 5%-10% hit rate as typical for the British in the battles in Africa as my sanity check.

As for the Inkerman numbers, you're suggesting a 1:100 hit rate, so that out of the ~200,000 small arms rounds fired at Inkerman there were ~2,000 casualties generated. So the other 10,000 casualties were generated by ~2,000 artillery fires.
This would imply five casualties per shot for the artillery, and by comparison with e.g. the battle of Gettysburg the 1st New York Light Artillery (Battery L) expended 1290 rounds over the course of the Gettysburg battle which would imply that it caused 25% of the Confederate casualties at Gettysburg by itself.

Either that or it really was foolish of everyone to abandon smoothbore artillery!

I don't doubt that the source is hard to find.

As far as "walking wounded" we'd have to consider the distribution of wounds. I'm looking at McParlin's report on the Overland Campaign and see a ratio of about four to one wounded to dead initially, with about 2/3 of the wounds incurred in the extremities, with no reason to assume more in the upper than lower. That means a third of the wounds in the lower, leaving the fellow on the ground and assuming those who'd merely had an arm blown away could walk home happy. So percentage wise that means about a quarter of those hit can get off unassisted. Put it all together and you have about 500 total casualties, not dead as stated in the South African Military History Journal, which takes us back to 40 shots to a hit.

There are two problems with your Inkerman calculations, one is basing the estimate of Russian casualties on the florid prose of Kinglake. The other is assuming that the number of rounds fired by the allies averaged out to 15 per man for an all day fight in which most of the time they were heavily engaged.

I'm sure this all war games out differently, though... :smile:
 
I'm not sure why this seems particularly unlikely. It's possible for someone to be struck badly enough by a bullet to be wounded but not badly enough that they have to be left on the field; for example, a not insignificant fraction of the human body is arm and a wound to the arm may render someone both (1) combat ineffective and (2) still able to walk at nearly the normal speed. Or someone might end up with a damaged leg (for the leg is also a not insignificant fraction of the human body) but be able to move with acceptable speed if helped.

You seem to be instead implying that the Zulus just abandoned all their wounded on the field.

Imagination is a wonderful thing... :smile:
 
As far as "walking wounded" we'd have to consider the distribution of wounds. I'm looking at McParlin's report on the Overland Campaign and see a ratio of about four to one wounded to dead initially, with about 2/3 of the wounds incurred in the extremities, with no reason to assume more in the upper than lower. That means a third of the wounds in the lower, leaving the fellow on the ground and assuming those who'd merely had an arm blown away could walk home happy. So percentage wise that means about a quarter of those hit can get off unassisted. Put it all together and you have about 500 total casualties, not dead as stated in the South African Military History Journal, which takes us back to 40 shots to a hit.
I'm not sure I follow. If we take 500 hits then that would mean (per your numbers)
100 dead
400 wounded of which
166 wounded in the chest and head
166 wounded in the legs
166 wounded in the arms

But you then go from that to assuming that everyone wounded in the chest, head and legs would be unable to move unassisted, and go from there to the claim that none of the wounded were assisted off - and yet you claim that the idea of the Zulus carrying away their wounded would be risible.

At the same time 67th has given the number of ~650 dead (or left on the field) which is greater than your total number of hits; clearly there is a conflict in sources here.


There are two problems with your Inkerman calculations, one is basing the estimate of Russian casualties on the florid prose of Kinglake. The other is assuming that the number of rounds fired by the allies averaged out to 15 per man for an all day fight in which most of the time they were heavily engaged.

By "florid prose", one assumes you mean "official Russian returns". That was Kinglake's source.

And as to the second, well, it is the average. Some units would fire off almost all their ammunition, while later arriving units would fire less.
Look at the amount of rounds fired per man at Gettysburg - it's about 20, and that was a three day battle.
It seems odd to me that you're attacking the number of rounds fired at Inkerman, and not the number of rounds fired at Rorke's Drift, despite the two methodologies being essentially identical.
 
By "florid prose", one assumes you mean "official Russian returns". That was Kinglake's source.

Indeed, they were hardly state secrets.

It's worth remembering that simultaneously with Inkerman, two other Russian movements were launched. Timofeev sortied out of the Quarantine Battery and overran the French position on Mount Rodolph. This was a terrible French defeat and not talked about much in the Bulletin, which moved the casualties from that over to Inkerman. It involved three out of the 4 French divisions. Monet's brigade (Napoleon's Division) had been ordered to reinforce Bosquet, but when the Russians hit Mt Rodoloph he reversed the brigade.

The third movement was supposed to be Gorchakov against Bosquet's division on the Sapun Heights. Gorchakov really contented himself with on cannonading (his corps taking only 15 casualties), and Bosquet slowly started detaching forces. First the 1st Bn, 7e Legere (Bourbaki's Bde), then the 2nd Bn, 6 Ligne (both from Bourbaki's bde) and then the bulk of d'Autemarre's Bde. Only the first two bns were engaged at Inkerman.

Hence some weirdness on wikipedia, as the French have their casualties from Mount Rodolph included, but not their strength. The bulk of French casualties came far away from Inkerman, where de Lourmel charged his brigade after Timofeev (falling back in the face of 2.5 French divisions after seizing Mount Rodolph and spiking the batteries) and walked it into a kesselschlacht which required two French divisions to extract him from. A feet far more foolish than Cardigans's charge.

It would be generally useful to disambiguate the three actions, and especially to include the Mount Rodolph fighting.
 
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I'm not sure I follow. If we take 500 hits then that would mean (per your numbers)
100 dead
400 wounded of which
166 wounded in the chest and head
166 wounded in the legs
166 wounded in the arms

But you then go from that to assuming that everyone wounded in the chest, head and legs would be unable to move unassisted, and go from there to the claim that none of the wounded were assisted off - and yet you claim that the idea of the Zulus carrying away their wounded would be risible.

At the same time 67th has given the number of ~650 dead (or left on the field) which is greater than your total number of hits; clearly there is a conflict in sources here.




By "florid prose", one assumes you mean "official Russian returns". That was Kinglake's source.

And as to the second, well, it is the average. Some units would fire off almost all their ammunition, while later arriving units would fire less.
Look at the amount of rounds fired per man at Gettysburg - it's about 20, and that was a three day battle.
It seems odd to me that you're attacking the number of rounds fired at Inkerman, and not the number of rounds fired at Rorke's Drift, despite the two methodologies being essentially identical.

You're perfectly free to give us your own interpretation of how many Zulus hit in the head, chest, and abdomen with a .577/450 round would be capable of walking away any distance.

As for the number of casualties, 351 men were buried on the spot. How many others were hit is a matter of speculation. Anyone who read American newspaper accounts of actions in Vietnam is well aware of casualty estimates based on "blood trails." Anyone who reads accounts of the battles today knows how accurate they were.

I mentioned in my earlier response that Kinglake's interpretation of Russian numbers was subject to criticism at the time, not just by Engels but by Todleben, who presumably knew what the reports were, having had a hand in preparing them.

But I don't want to get too far away from the original point of the thread. Breechloaders caught on because they were far more effective than muzzleloaders. The idea that Enfields in combat with similarly armed troops were four times as effective, twice as effective, or even as effective as breechloaders used against troops with far inferior weapons is, as I said, risible. Anyone who thinks their research has led to that conclusion needs to crack a few more books -- and ideally more of the analyses done at the time that led all major powers to transition away from muzzleloaders nearly as soon as the smoke settled in 1865. :wink:
 
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