67th Tigers
Banned
the only 'roll' in the ground that gave any kind of cover was near the Emmitsburg road, and that was only partial cover. And the Union artillery had no problems firing into the advancing Confederates for nearly the whole distance (including a battery on Little Round Top). The main problem for any attacking force is that the Union has command of all the high ground in the area.... Cemetary Hill, the Round Tops, even a little hill to the south of Pickett's line of advance.
The gunners describe the motion of the attackers as like a wave, they kept cresting peeks (which were only a few meters different, and not even shown on modern 1:10,000 maps, but were militarily significant dead ground) and then disappearing again.
Only two of the guns on LRT could turn their arcs to enfilade, and they had very limited arcs of fire.
and I have to wonder if any type of set piece combined arms attack wouldn't actually be worse than Pickett's Charge. As it was, Pickett's division basically charged ahead and with momentum, managed to get up to the wall and overrun a section of it. Any attempts at maneuvering around on the field will only give the Union time to bring up more men and cannons to the threatened position (remember, they still outnumber the attackers a lot). The typical European combined arms attack would do well against the Union army somewhere else, but if stuck with Pickett's plan, it won't...
Actually there was a fairly complicated (and deftly executed) series of obliques, which slowed the advance down considerably. Even at the quick step (85 yds/min) it took nearly 25 mins ISTR to travel 1,200 yds (the distance between the start line and the main defensive position), showing that considerable manoeuvring (consuming about 10 mins) occurred en route.
(Distances from http://www.gdg.org/Gettysburg Magazine/measure.html )
Perhaps the decisive action on Pickett's division was Stannard's 1st Vermont bde swinging out to envelop, which on a European field could have been met by a cavalry charge on Stannard and and exploitation through that gap.