Were Americans good shots?

I think that regardless of how good of shots they are at the range or after game, the majority of people can't point a gun at an individual and shoot him. (See also S.L.A. Marshall's WWII study) and tend to aim over the enemy's head or blindly into the mass. Hence why good snipers are difficult to come by, though it must have been easier then not having to see your "mark" to closely. Also why firing squads use a combination of blank and loaded rounds.

SLA Marshall's methodology in the ETO and Korea was less than rigorous, and his findings have been appropriately criticized because of that for a long time.

One of the issues with "operational research" in terms of ground combat is nobody has the time during the fighting (and the other side is shooting at you), and afterwards, resources are spread thin and/or unavailable because the focus is on the next operation, and the evidence is rapidly turning to mush (mentally, emotionally, and physically). Trying to quantify battlefield results is not a fool's errand, but it is not hard science, either. After action reports are useful, but are of astronomically varied levels of usefulness, detail, depth, etc.

And that's present day - trying to make judgements of combat effectiveness in the Nineteenth Century based on anything more than the macro-scale of the historical record of casualties and which side remained in possession of the field and gained their objective in a given campaign is angels on pins, frankly; so little information was recorded and so little of what was in an era of pencil and paper is actually reconcilable with what the people on the other side of the hill remember and what the ground may or may not have looked like 15 decades ago, it gets subjective pretty quickly as to what happened at a given location much below "they were here and now we are and they are gone."

There's a sort of grognerd war gamer perspective that mass lethal collective action can be distilled into arithmetic, but combat is - at best - organized chaos, and the idea that some sort of pretense at crime scene investigation on a battlefield, or even worse, umpteen decades later of the paper trail, is going to yield eternal verities is fantasy.

Best,
 
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Being a good shot should be distinguished from being able to kill your fellow human being. David Grossman's book, On Killing, addresses this issue.

We shouldn't forget that there was a huge influx of European immigrants who had no experience with firearms. In the major cities were factory workers and clerks who had little if any experience with firearms.

County people/farmers tend to have greater access and need for firearms. Besides killing varmints that threatened livestock and crops, it also meant meat for the table.
 
I shoot a modern black powder weapon and had been using Pyrodex (Powder) and switched to "777" powder. Even tho most people say that 777 is "cleaner", this is, IMSC, suppose to be smokeless powder. Yet, when I fire a round I cannot see anything (still wind, summer, high humidity) for a good 20 seconds. If u had 100 men or more in line shooting black powder, Im not sure that aim would have ment a hill of beans.

If u were a sniper, I think that plume of smoke would have given away your location in no time.
 
51% of the reb soldiers were listed as farmers, 50% for the yanks. Crack shots, i dunno. Competent around fire arms, probably.
Not necessarily true. Accurate statistics point that:

Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent.

Farmers comprised 69 percent of the civilian occupations in the Confederacy. Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent.
 
Not to be trite but ask the Brits if Yankee Doodle was a good shot back in the Rev. War.

Good enough to force British armies to retreat from Boston, surrender at Saratoga, and - along with the French expeditionary force and fleet - surrender at Yorktown after retreating from the south.

And of course, a few decades later, to defeat the best the British had at Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and New Orleans, as Ross, Prevost, Pakenham, and Gibbs found out...

So, not bad. :wink:

Best,
 
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I doubt that the majority of soldiers purposely missed their target or refused to pull the trigger, most primary sources just don't support that, but there's no doubt that many still didn't like the thought of killing. I believe most troops just loaded and fired away into the smoke, not always even able to take proper aim at a particular individual, whether they intended to or not. Two opposing battle lines were often so obscured by smoke (sometimes heavily wooded terrain and brush as well) that almost only the muzzle flashes could be seen. Add to that lack of proper marksmanship training, the shock of being in combat, fatigue, etc., and you get hundreds of rounds expended for every hit.

And if there was a soldier sitting there on the battle line refusing to fire when he should be I think the other troops, file closers or closest officer would probably chew him out for it. Something like that would be seen as cowardice and was usually frowned upon. Through many accounts you often read of incidents where a particular soldier was refusing to fight or running in the opposite direction and is mocked and berated by his fellow troops or commanding officer. Even when many soldiers openly resented seeing thousands of men killed and wounded on either side they still felt as though it was every man's duty to stay in the fight.

I strongly disagree with your statement. I take offense to you particularly on "And if there was a soldier sitting there on the battle line refusing to fire when he should be I think the other troops, file closers or closest officer would probably chew him out for it."

If you have ever done the slightest research at the battle of Gettysburg, you would've found that :

"
Along with the numerous corpses littered about the battlefield, at least 27,574 rifles (I’ve also seen 37,574 listed) were recovered. Of the recovered weapons, a staggering 24,000 were found to be loaded, either 87% or 63%, depending on which number you accept for the total number of rifles. Of the loaded rifles, 12,000 were loaded more than once and half of these (6,000 total) had been loaded between three and ten times. One poor guy had reloaded his weapon twenty-three times without firing a single shot. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever."

Also, you should watch this great video:
 
I strongly disagree with your statement. I take offense to you particularly on "And if there was a soldier sitting there on the battle line refusing to fire when he should be I think the other troops, file closers or closest officer would probably chew him out for it."

If you have ever done the slightest research at the battle of Gettysburg, you would've found that :

"
Along with the numerous corpses littered about the battlefield, at least 27,574 rifles (I’ve also seen 37,574 listed) were recovered. Of the recovered weapons, a staggering 24,000 were found to be loaded, either 87% or 63%, depending on which number you accept for the total number of rifles. Of the loaded rifles, 12,000 were loaded more than once and half of these (6,000 total) had been loaded between three and ten times. One poor guy had reloaded his weapon twenty-three times without firing a single shot. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever."
Yes, those often-quoted statistics on rifles picked up off the field of Gettysburg are thrown around a lot, but there's not much basis for them. There was a thread on that a while ago here: http://civilwartalk.com/threads/loaded-muskets-picked-up-after-the-battle-of-gettysburg.121524/

Whether truly that many or not, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of rifles found loaded with multiple rounds after a battle; however, that still doesn't prove that most soldiers refused to fire at the enemy or intentionally missed their target. What it would indicate, if true, is that amidst the chaos, shock and confusion of battle many troops somehow accidentally loaded two or more rounds while trying to load and fire under pressure - doesn't mean they weren't actively trying to fire at their enemy though.

But back to the point, its not necessarily that I disagree that there were soldiers who couldn't bring themselves to kill the enemy, but as I stated in my last post, I believe that many just fired in the general direction of the enemy, into the smoke and brush. Combat in the ACW, with a few exceptions, didn't often allow for soldiers to personally pick out their target and see him fall. With the battlefield choked up with black powder smoke, men just blazed away on the firing line while hardly able to see who they were firing at. In that situation someone could easily intentionally miss if they wanted to, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the majority were doing so.

Here's a good excerpt from Major Samuel H. M. Byers' account of the battle of Champion Hill:
I could not see far to left or right, the smoke of battle was covering everything. I saw bodies of our men lying near me without knowing who they were, though some of them were my messmates in the morning. The Rebels in front we could not see at all. We simply fired at their lines by guess, and occasionally the blaze of their guns showed exactly where they stood. They kept their line like a wall of fire. When I fired my first shot I had resolved to aim at somebody or something as long as I could see, and a dozen times I tired to bring down an officer I dimly saw on a gray horse before me.
http://www.battleofchampionhill.org/byers.htm
 
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Great link and post - the reality of a smoke-filled battlefield is repeated again and again in eyewitness descriptions of actions in the Civil War, which makes the realities of marksmanship in intense infantry combat (as opposed to sniping before or after an action) pretty clear - the idea that special training in marksmanship would have been some sort of war winner, or even have much of an effect, in conventional warfare between peer enemies in this black powder era (as opposed to Western regular forces with percussion rifles beating up non-Western irregulars armed with flintlock muskets or worse) is ridiculous.

Unless the "special training" included the development, production, and use of infrared sniperscopes in the Nineteenth Century, of course. :wink:

Best,
 
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Yes, those often-quoted statistics on rifles picked up off the field of Gettysburg are thrown around a lot, but there's not much basis for them. There was a thread on that a while ago here: http://civilwartalk.com/threads/loaded-muskets-picked-up-after-the-battle-of-gettysburg.121524/

Whether truly that many or not, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of rifles found loaded with multiple rounds after a battle; however, that still doesn't prove that most soldiers refused to fire at the enemy or intentionally missed their target. What it would indicate is that amidst the chaos, shock and confusion of battle many troops accidentally loaded two or more rounds while trying to load and fire under pressure.

But back to the point, its not necessarily that I disagree that there were soldiers who couldn't bring themselves to kill the enemy, but as I stated in my last post, I believe that many just fired in the general direction of the enemy, into the smoke and brush. Combat in the ACW, with a few exceptions, often didn't allow for soldiers to personally pick out their target and see him fall. With the battlefield choked up with black powder smoke, men just blazed away on the firing line while hardly able to see the enemy. In that situation someone could easily intentionally miss if they wanted to, but I wouldn't go as far to say that the majority were doing so.

Here's a good excerpt from Major Samuel H. M. Byers' account of the battle of Champion Hill:
I could not see far to left or right, the smoke of battle was covering everything. I saw bodies of our men lying near me without knowing who they were, though some of them were my messmates in the morning. The Rebels in front we could not see at all. We simply fired at their lines by guess, and occasionally the blaze of their guns showed exactly where they stood. They kept their line like a wall of fire. When I fired my first shot I had resolved to aim at somebody or something as long as I could see, and a dozen times I tired to bring down an officer I dimly saw on a gray horse before me.
http://www.battleofchampionhill.org/byers.htm
Yes I agree with that as well, but I'm talking close quarter. It's the same reason the vast majority of hand to hand fatalities were with the rifle butt versus the bayonet.
 
Not necessarily true. Accurate statistics point that:

Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent.

Farmers comprised 69 percent of the civilian occupations in the Confederacy. Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent.
I stand by my statement.
 
In Joseph Plumb Martin's account of his time in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, he mentions that there was only one time where he took deliberate aim at a man with the intent of killing him, and he was in several battles. He was writing about a different war of course, but like the Civil War it featured black powder weapons that would foul the air with smoke.

It's likely that most of the time soldiers in the black powder era of warfare were usually firing in the general direction of an indistinct mass of men obscured by smoke.
 
I have read the book too. What comes to mind is the retreat of the brits back from Concord. or Breed's Hill. Or King's Mountain. btw, there are a few real good books out that cover the period before the brits left boston. Many more colonials engaged than i thought and much more organized.
 
During WWI, the Germans at Belleau Wood were astounded when the Marine Riflemen started hitting them from 800 yards away; the Marines were well trained and marksmanship had been stressed to them. The mantra : Every Marine is a rifleman still holds-you train people right and they will do what they are supposed to do. That said, I have also read that it was estimated that during the Civil War it took a man's weight in lead to kill him- massed fire, inexperience and fear took their toll.
 
NO!!!! As illustrated by the following factual account.

It has been widely assumed that Confederate troops were better shots than Federal troops. The evidence does not necessarily support that conclusion. Responding to an order from Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, Major General Patrick Cleburne directed the testing of .54 caliber Austrian rifles at 100, 150, 200, and 300 yards using ammunition manufactured in England and at the Confederate Atlanta Arsenal. The rifles -- probably Muster 1854, Type I's -- and ammunition were being issued to Army of Tennessee troops in quantity at that time. On 19 June 1863 Cleburne's ordnance officer reported on the resulting tests. He had been directed to use a company of average men from the 6th, 10th, and 15th Texas Consolidated Infantry from Cleburne’s Division. Although the troops from the consolidated regiment had been in service for a year and a half, the ordnance officer discovered during the 100-yard phase of his testing that three fourths of the men had never been instructed on how to load, aim, and fire military small arms. Contrary to the legend of Texican marksmanship in the American west, the troops’ accuracy of fire was extremely poor. The weather conditions during the 100-yard test on 18 June had been perfect; cloudy, dry, and windless. Each of the 20 men involved in the 100-yard test fired one shot using the Atlanta Arsenal ammunition at a 10-foot high by six foot wide target, achieving in aggregate 13 hits. None of the rounds hit the black painted six-inch bullseye at the center of the target. Prior to continuing with the tests, the ordnance officer had to instruct the men in basic marksmanship.

After training the soldiers in how to load and take aim, the testing was continued with five selected soldiers. The weather conditions remained the same; cloudy, dry, and with no wind. Firing 20 rounds of English manufactured ammunition at 150 yards, the troops achieved 18 hits. All of the hits were in a group considerably tighter than the hits from the Atlanta Arsenal ammunition used at 100 yards.

The tests were continued on 19 June 1863. At 200 yards 10 soldiers of “average ability as marksmen” were selected. Firing 10 rounds of Atlanta Arsenal ammunition and 13 rounds of English ammunition, they achieved 14 hits. Continuing with the 10 selected men at 300 yards the troops fired 27 rounds of Atlanta Arsenal ammunition and 16 rounds of English ammunition, achieving 12 hits. Again, the weather conditions were excellent; sunny with white clouds, dry, and with a light breeze from the front.

Ignoring the ordnance officer's lack of understanding of the scientific method, this is a powerful statement regarding the abysmal marksmanship skill set of a group of experienced Confederate troops: Texicans yet. Twelve hits out of 43 shots on a 10 foot high by 6 foot wide target at 300 yards. That is literally spitting distance for any half competent marksman who isn't being shot at at the time. Of course, the Confederate Army's quality ammunition produced by Atlanta Arsenal wasn't quite up to snuff either.

Major Bill: I had similar experiences. I taught marksmanship to active Army and Army Reserve troops for 28 years. In general, the reservists shot better than the active Army. I have the Distinguished Rifleman and Distinguished Pistol Shot Badges, and President's Hundred Tabs with service rifle and pistol, so I might have clue. The active Army's marksmanship skill set was so low at the beginning of the second war in the desert that it had to recruit knowledgeable, competent volunteers from the civilian marksmanship program to teach designated marksmanship courses to selected "marksmen" from deploying units. So, lack of marksmanship skills wasn't just a Civil War problem, or a World War I problem, or a World War II problem, or a Korean War problem, or a Vietnam War problem. He who learns nothing from history is domed to repeat it -- again and again and again and again. But teaching marksmanship requires functional ranges, time, skilled trainers, and ammunition. It takes time away from the truly important stuff, like shoe shinning, rock painting, grass mowing, and leaf raking.

“In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as the military.” General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur

Regards,
Don Dixon
Great post but you left out the all important task of hurry up and wait. You must always practice that. 10 years in Marine aviation maint. Not crew and i qualed 4 times including PI. I forgot so much by the second qual and now using the A2 i dropped from Expert to Marksman, how embarrassing. I did final get back to Expert but barely 2 more times. Takes time, money and the belief that it is still the basic mission of all Marines and not just a nice quote on a poster. Every Marine a Rifleman.

 
In Attack and Die Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamison attributed the frequent failure of the attack, and the almost unheard of casualty levels, in the Civil War to the improvement in range and accuracy provided by the mass introduction of rifled small arms. Paddy Griffith in Battle Tactics of the Civil War concluded that the vast majority of infantry firefights occurred well short of 200 yards, and generally at distances which were within the range of the smoothbore flintlock musket which was standard issue during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. I believe that Griffith’s assessment is correct because I can demonstrate that large numbers of soldiers armed with Austrian rifles were simply not trained to use their arms at militarily useful distances.

A moderately competent shot armed with a Springfield, Enfield, or Austrian rifle or rifle musket can keep every shot that they fire from the standing position on a target the size of a man’s torso at 100 yards. Had Billy Yank and Johnny Reb known or been taught how to shoot the casualties of the Civil War, given the linear tactics required for effective command and control, would have been beyond the bearing of it, and would have sapped the national will of both North and South to continue the bloodshed.

The lack of marksmanship training, and general lack of preparedness, during the Civil War is hardly unique in U.S. military history. In fact, it has been almost universal in every war the U.S. has fought. Consequently, it is somewhat difficult to blame the Civil War commanders for the inadequate training of their troops. The Battles at Lexington and Concord were cited in posts above as an example of American marksmanship skill. By the end of the day 3,960 colonials faced 1,500 British troops. The British suffered 73 killed in action, 174 wound in action, and 53 missing; 20 percent of troops committed. At the same time, the colonial losses were 49 KIA, 39 WIA, and 5 missing. Given the numbers of colonial militia committed and their alleged marksmanship skills, plus the nature of the fight, the British casualties should have been massively higher.

In 1917, General John Pershing, USA, suspended the issuance of marksmanship qualification badges. The suspension continued until 1919. As a holder of the Distinguished Rifleman Badge, Pershing had more than a small clue about small arms marksmanship. But, there were inadequate supplies of ammunition to train his troops to the Army standard, and at the same time support the ammunition expenditures required on the western front. If the Army standard could not be met, Pershing directed that no badges be given. The Army’s refusal to issue marksmanship badges led the doughboys to conclude that they had been inadequately trained, a conclusion that was correct, and which led to morale issues. The Marine units in Europe had a larger percentage of long service personnel who had gone through marksmanship training prior to the war.

In World War II, the Army was faced with the same ammunition supply and utilization issues Pershing had faced. Remembering the World War I solders’ concerns regarding the adequacy of their training, the Army introduced substitute standard marksmanship courses, using reduced ranges and reduced numbers of cartridges. My father was a combat engineer first sergeant in World War II. He went through basic training and unit training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Lewis, Washington, armed with a 1903A1 Springfield bolt action rifle. He was the battalion rifle champion, and in no small part supported my mother on his winnings from side bets placed among the sergeants on the rifle range. As his unit boarded its transport for the invasion of the Philippines, its Springfields were taken away, and it was issued M-1 rifles and M-1 carbines, which the unit had only fired for familiarization previously. Had the transport captain not been persuaded to drop some empty oil drums off of the fantail of the ship so that the troops could function fire their weapons at something, they would have gone ashore in Luzon never having fired their weapons at any kind of a target.

In June 1971, during the Vietnam War, I was a distinguished graduate of the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. I graduated without a qualification in a single infantry weapon. It wasn’t that I couldn’t shoot, but that the Infantry School never afforded me an opportunity to qualify. Another young lieutenant in my company and I had been on the rifle team at Louisiana State University. Both of us were concerned about the lack of marksmanship training in the Infantry Officer Basic Course. Fort Benning range control was willing to let us use a rifle range on the weekends. We were willing to purchase our own ammunition. But, we needed rifles. We approached our company commander about checking out our rifles from the company arms room. This was entirely too august a decision for him to make, and we were referred to the commander of the Infantry School Battalion. So, we reported to the colonel, and explained our purpose. He leaned back in his swivel chair, looked at us and asked “Gentlemen, what possible interest could you have in marksmanship?” Our orders read “for ultimate assignment to a short tour area.” We thought our interest was inherently obvious. We wanted to stay alive in the combat zone.

(Continued in next post)
 
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At the conclusion of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Army convened a lessons learned panel to study the experiences of active Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard commanders and units during the war. The panel did not interview the commanders of all units who deployed, but it did interview a statistically valid sample of active Army, Reserve, and National Guard commanders. The one thing that all the commanders commented upon was that their troops had deployed with significant concerns regarding their ability to use their small arms. The panel identified this issue as a lesson learned in its draft report, and recommended that the Army reemphasize small arms marksmanship. The draft came back from the Army staff with both the “lesson” and the recommendation crossed out. This was a lesson which the Army staff choose not to learn. By the second Gulf War, the state of marksmanship skill in the Army had deteriorated to the point that the Army had to obtain civilian volunteers through the Civilian Marksmanship Program, and hire civilian contractors, to teach designated marksman courses to deploying personnel.

In the mid-1990s, the Army was trying to close the indoor range at Fort Belvoir Virginia; the last shooting range in the Military District of Washington (MDW). The Fort Belvoir commander, who was complaining of the staff and lead abatement costs of keeping the range open, told me that no one in MDW needed to know how to shoot. This ignored the fact that Criminal Investigation Command (CID) special agents at CID headquarters at Fort Belvoir, and the military police units and civilian guards at the MDW installations were required to qualify on a regular basis. Ultimately, the Army closed and bulldozed a virtual state of the art indoor range which had originally been built for the Sky Marshall School when that school was located at Fort Belvoir. Post 9/11 it then had to rent time at local civilian shooting ranges for agent, military police, and civilian guard training and qualification.

Regards,
Don Dixon
 
David Grossman's book, On Killing: The Psychology of Killing is relevant here. While one may be an excellent shot, being a killer is a different matter. The soldier must transcend the training that most received back then that went, "Thou shalt not kill." Of course, by 1864, most soldiers were desensitized to the idea of killing a fellow human being. There certainly were many good shots on both sides. However, not every who could shoot did shoot and there was something Grossman called feigned fighting (passing loaded guns up to the guy in the front, going through the motion of shooting but deliberately aiming high or missing).

One must also consider that for the industrialized North, there were many immigrants who never handled a firearm prior to coming to America. Guns in Europe were for the affluent and hunting was something the noblemen and rich did. This is different from the American notion that every farmboy had a firearm. Secondly, even if one was born in America and lived in a big city, they may be a factory worker or store clerk who never had the opportunity to handle a firearm.
 
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