American Civil War Tactics

67th Tigers

Banned
Well the Boar War was a very good lesson for the British Empire Dan, unfortunately they lost a lot of those lessons when the professional army was diluted after 1914. The Australian and British Sergeants and Warrant Officers of The Great War were privates and corporals in South Africa.

It was no lesson, the Boers didn't shoot as well as the British regulars in 1899, but they had really good artillery, and that was what was important.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
All this discussion of weapons gets us away from the question asked; what would tactics have looked like if they’d kept pace with the weapons of the time.

My guess Autanimous is there would be a lot more flank action and a hell of a lot less “Up the guts with lots of smoke!”

Picture the Boar War with more trees.

Tactics were totally appropriate for the weapons systems used at the time.

Also, you don't think flanking isn't as old as Meggido?
 

67th Tigers

Banned
It's all a question of priorities. If your priority is to rearm with Spencers, then you find a way to do it. Throw enough money at the problem and you'll have entrepreneurs coming out of the woodwork to make it happen.

And they need not rearm the entire army with Spencers. Even if half the brigades in each division were armed with Spencers, leaving the remainder armed with Springfields or Enfields or equivalent, the volume of firepower they could produce would be still be completely overwhelming. Wilder's Lightning Brigade was said to put as much lead in the air as a full Division armed with Springfields, all by itself.

Yet Wilder's brigade does not appear to have performed statistically better than musket armed brigades.

See my comments on http://chickamaugablog.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/tactics-wilders-brigade/
 
Yet Wilder's brigade does not appear to have performed statistically better than musket armed brigades.

See my comments on http://chickamaugablog.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/tactics-wilders-brigade/

Which is yet another example of why those who rely on statistics instead of studying the actual battle history of a unit...such as yourself...do not get a true picture of the effectiveness of the unit. Many things can affect statistics to present a false picture of relative ineffectiveness. But looking at some actual example of the Lightning Brigade at work...

--24-25 June 1863...Wilder's Brigade hold's Hoover's Gap without support against repeated assaults by forces which significantly outnumber his own (perhaps 2-1, or more).

--18 September 1863...One company of the 72nd Indiana defends Alexander's Bridge against repeated assaults by two Confederate regiments. Outnumbered by approximately 8 to 1, they hold their position for almost five hours, and are only dislodged when Confederate troops ford Chickamauga Creek further downstream and threaten to take the position in the rear. Together with other performances by the rest of the Brigade that same day, this action prevented the Confederates from outflanking the Army of the Cumberland, which could have been a disaster for the army.

--20 September 1863...On the second day at Chickamauga, Wilder's brigade with its superior firepower is one of the few units that was not immediately routed by the Confederate onslaught against the Union right flank. Advancing from its reserve position, the brigade launched a strong counterattack, driving the enemy around and through what became known as "Bloody Pond". And were it not for the interference of Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana, who demanded to be escorted off the field, the Lightning Brigade might have taken the Confederate assault force in the flank, possibly reversing the outcome of the battle.

Furthermore, the use of the Spencer Rifles by the Brigade allowed the adoption of a combat formation which drastically reduced losses. From here:

However, Wilder’s troops learned quickly to exploit their still-significant firepower advantage over muzzle-loaders. Initially, they drilled as regular line infantry, in two ranks, shoulder to shoulder. This changed quickly. After the war, Wilder himself noted that in combat, the regiments instead formed a single line, with each man spaced about a yard apart. He preferred close fire, engaging at a hundred yards or so – and reserving full fire until the enemy was brutally close. Then, Wilder noted, the Federals emptied their magazines in a burst of fire that overwhelmed and shattered Rebel lines.

This is the kind of fire Manigault’s men ran into on September 20th as they reached the vicinity of the Widow Glenn Cabin. As they ascended the rise just west of the house (by then on fire) they met Wilder’s bluecoats coming up the other side of the small ridge, and described the Yankee fire as a veritable storm of lead.

Wilder’s preferred formation could best be described as a reinforced skirmish line. Far denser than a textbook skirmish line, formed in two ranks about 5 yards apart, and with five yards also separating each man, Wilder’s line had at two to three times as many men per yard – and of course, those Spencers.

In addition to being more than a match for a conventional battleline in firepower, Wilder’s formation also helped reduce losses. A shoulder-to-shoulder formation was just a much more vulnerable target in a firefight, and it showed. At Chickamauga, despite hard fighting over all three days, the brigade reported 122 losses out of 2283 engaged – 5%. Average losses for most regiments, by contrast, ran 20-30%, with the highest topping 50%.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
--24-25 June 1863...Wilder's Brigade hold's Hoover's Gap without support against repeated assaults by forces which significantly outnumber his own (perhaps 2-1, or more).

two Confederate regiments and a section of guns, 650 total against 2,000 Union rifles and 10 guns. Wilder outnumbered the attackers more than 3 to 1

--18 September 1863...One company of the 72nd Indiana defends Alexander's Bridge against repeated assaults by two Confederate regiments. Outnumbered by approximately 8 to 1, they hold their position for almost five hours, and are only dislodged when Confederate troops ford Chickamauga Creek further downstream and threaten to take the position in the rear. Together with other performances by the rest of the Brigade that same day, this action prevented the Confederates from outflanking the Army of the Cumberland, which could have been a disaster for the army.

Essentially the half of Wilder's brigade was in line defending Alexander's bridge (1,000 rifles and 4 guns), the attackers were Liddel's brigade, again Wilder's brigade actually outnumbers the opposition, especially as due to the defile they could only attack a coy at a time.

--20 September 1863...On the second day at Chickamauga, Wilder's brigade with its superior firepower is one of the few units that was not immediately routed by the Confederate onslaught against the Union right flank. Advancing from its reserve position, the brigade launched a strong counterattack, driving the enemy around and through what became known as "Bloody Pond". And were it not for the interference of Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana, who demanded to be escorted off the field, the Lightning Brigade might have taken the Confederate assault force in the flank, possibly reversing the outcome of the battle.

you should source direct quotes from wikipedia.

Wilder's brigade wasn't really hit, it was in line, but at the far right and the attacking Confederate line only slightly overlapped Wilder's extreme left, he later hit 3 of Manigault's regiments with 6, against roughly a 2:1 numberical advantage.

Furthermore, the use of the Spencer Rifles by the Brigade allowed the adoption of a combat formation which drastically reduced losses. From here:

Not a factor of the weapons....
 

Cook

Banned
Tactics were totally appropriate for the weapons systems used at the time.

Also, you don't think flanking isn't as old as Meggido?

Standing shoulder to shoulder and advancing on an enemy who is hiding behind a stone wall and armed with a rifled musket does not strike me as an appropriate tactic. The extremely low number of successful charges and massive casualty rates would support this.

And of course flanking is an old tactic, if you’d followed the thread you’d see that the point is that tactics adapt to the weapons in use. In civil war they hadn’t caught up to the weapons in use.
 

Cook

Banned
It was no lesson, the Boers didn't shoot as well as the British regulars in 1899, but they had really good artillery, and that was what was important.

Infantry and light Horse in the Boer War were armed with Lee-Enfields. Lee-Metfords and Mausers. Dug in they could stop any frontal advance and made a frontal assault suicide.

It was a lesson that could have been learned 40 years before.
 
About Gatlin guns,

Wasnt one of the problems that the barrels would foul quickly from using the black powder ammunition? And I imagine after shooting only a hundred rounds or so the smoke produced would have been so think that the gunners could not have seen anything.
 
Standing shoulder to shoulder and advancing on an enemy who is hiding behind a stone wall and armed with a rifled musket does not strike me as an appropriate tactic. The extremely low number of successful charges and massive casualty rates would support this.

And of course flanking is an old tactic, if you’d followed the thread you’d see that the point is that tactics adapt to the weapons in use. In civil war they hadn’t caught up to the weapons in use.
Exactly, Cook. In the early stages of the Civil War, everyone was still playing by Napoleonic battle tactics. When those tactics were invented, they played for the strengths of the firearms of the time, and against the weaknesses as well. Smooth-bore muskets firing round balls were highly inaccurate; massed fire was used to get hits against enemy formations. The only way to obtain massed-fire was mass formations. Hundredns or thousands of men, packed closely together, firing together, were a reliable way of destroying enemy troops formations, like a giant shotgun.
Efforts to overcome this lead to the introduction of rifled weapons and conical, areodynamic projectiles.

Here, this paragraph from Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
The invention of the Minié ball solved both major problems of muzzle-loading rifles. The Crimean War (1853-1856) saw the first widespread use of the rifled musket for the common infantryman and by the time of the American Civil War (1860s) most infantry were equipped with the rifled musket. These were far more accurate than smoothbore muskets and had a far longer range, while preserving the musket's fast reloading rate. Their use led to a decline in the use of massed attacking formations, as these formations were too vulnerable to the accurate, long-range fire a rifle could produce. In particular, attacking troops were within range of the defenders for a longer period of time, and the defenders could also fire at them more quickly than before. As a result, while 18th century attackers would only be within range of the defenders' weapons for the time it would take to fire a few shots, late 19th century attackers might suffer dozens of volleys before they drew close to the defenders, with correspondingly high casualty rates. However, the use of massed attacks on fortified positions did not vanish overnight, and as a result, major wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries tended to produce very high casualty figures.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Exactly, Cook. In the early stages of the Civil War, everyone was still playing by Napoleonic battle tactics. When those tactics were invented, they played for the strengths of the firearms of the time, and against the weaknesses as well. Smooth-bore muskets firing round balls were highly inaccurate; massed fire was used to get hits against enemy formations. The only way to obtain massed-fire was mass formations. Hundredns or thousands of men, packed closely together, firing together, were a reliable way of destroying enemy troops formations, like a giant shotgun.
Efforts to overcome this lead to the introduction of rifled weapons and conical, areodynamic projectiles.

Here, this paragraph from Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

This isn't true.

"Napoleonic" tactics were a movement away from the classical linear contest of the 17th-18th century to the use of columnar assaults etc.

The ACW was fought with classical pre-Napoleonic linear tactics (see http://www.johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html ), but lacked decent cavalry, and this loss of the arm of decision was the problem.

The Minie ball did alter European combat, but not American. It takes a lot of training to make a rifleman, American armies simply didn't get this and remained "musketeers".
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Infantry and light Horse in the Boer War were armed with Lee-Enfields. Lee-Metfords and Mausers. Dug in they could stop any frontal advance and made a frontal assault suicide.

It was a lesson that could have been learned 40 years before.

Before the Boer War the British had adopted a skirmish formation which also served until well into the Great War. A company of 120 men occupied a frontage of 400 yds (the same as a typical ACW brigade).

The Boer musketry hit with about 1 round in 500 (as a comparitor, the rifle-musket armed British at Inkerman hit with 1 in 18), vs. ca. 150-200 rounds per hit in the ACW.

What was devastating was the Boer artillery. This was the first time infantry came under HE fire, and it caused destruction on a scale previously unknown.
 

Cook

Banned
"Napoleonic" tactics were a movement away from the classical linear contest of the 17th-18th century to the use of columnar assaults etc.

The ACW was fought with classical pre-Napoleonic linear tactics (see http://www.johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html ), but lacked decent cavalry, and this loss of the arm of decision was the problem.

The Minie ball did alter European combat, but not American. It takes a lot of training to make a rifleman, American armies simply didn't get this and remained "musketeers".

Since the Officers on both sides studied Napoleon and his battles and campaigns extensively I’d wonder about this one.

I’m not sure what could be called “decent cavalry” to provide the “arm of decision” following the invention of the rifled musket except maybe a Tank.

As to training requirements of a rifleman as opposed to a musketeer seems to me a matter of semantics. It takes training and discipline to make an infantry soldier. And it was definitely the case that bath sides had some extremely will trained and disciplined units and some very poor units.

The issue here is that American Civil War Tactics were not up to the job. I invite anyone you thinks that a thirty percent casualty rate is acceptable to stand in an open field will I get in some marksmanship practice.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Since the Officers on both sides studied Napoleon and his battles and campaigns extensively I’d wonder about this one.

Few officers really did study Napoleon. There were a total of 9 hours instruction above battalion level in the entire West Point syllabus, but WP was a school for company officers.

I’m not sure what could be called “decent cavalry” to provide the “arm of decision” following the invention of the rifled musket except maybe a Tank.

Why?

Shock cavalry worked in Europe until the Great War, and even made successful shock charges against Maxim gun lines. The rifle-musket did not drive cavalry from the field (especially as it was no more effective than a smoothbore musket in untrained hands, such as in the ACW).

Late ACW the Union cavalry had advanced to the point where they could put in a shock charge against entrenched infantry, and it was extremely successful.

As to training requirements of a rifleman as opposed to a musketeer seems to me a matter of semantics. It takes training and discipline to make an infantry soldier. And it was definitely the case that bath sides had some extremely will trained and disciplined units and some very poor units.

There was simply no training in rifle use, which is why we have no known successful firefights beyond 200 yards (i.e. within the effective range of the smoothbore). A few years earlier the British and Indians with their Enfields shot down Jihadists at 1,000 yards with impunity, a few years later the French shot down Prussians at 1,000 yards with impunity, but this didn't happen in the ACW.


The issue here is that American Civil War Tactics were not up to the job. I invite anyone you thinks that a thirty percent casualty rate is acceptable to stand in an open field will I get in some marksmanship practice.

Musketry on the battlefield wasn't that destructive. When a 500 man regiment fired a volley they might hit 2 people on average. Now if you stand there and simply shoot (as happened in the ACW) you'll both expend a lot of ammunition and over time cause a lot of casualties. This was been the same since the 17th century. The missing ingredient is shock, when the moment comes troops have to advance with level bayonets and take ground. There was a marked aversion to this, hence a lot of indecision and casualties.
 
Top