If they had placed sharpshooters on the hills around the mission and proceeded to lay seige to the mission before trying to storm it, would have helped the Zulus quite a bit.
They did have sharpshooters stationed on the bluffs, but most of them were inadequately trained and ill equipped with older arms (the rifles captured at Isandlwana didn't end up at Rorke's Drift for the most part). And the Zulus didn't have the time for a protracted siege, as Chelmsford's relief column had set out for Rorke's Drift by the time word came in about the defeat at Isandlwana.
All units of the Zulu Regiments available at Roarke's Drift will have to attack at the British held walls front from opposite ends ...
One Zulu Impi at one front that will allow the maximum frontage of their troop size to their advantage and another Zulu Impi to attack the opposite end....
The British troops under siege ; I suspect ; would not have enough troops to cover both attacks and survive at the redoubt ......
have the commanders at the fort decide to run rather than fort up and fight (apparently, they considered doing this for a time)... or, have the commanders not get the word soon enough, so they don't build those famous walls of boxes and bags...
Had their seniority dates been the other way around they may well have advanced to meet to the Zulu in the open - that was the Infantry solution. The Engineer solution was to dig in....
Had their seniority dates been the other way around they may well have advanced to meet to the Zulu in the open - that was the Infantry solution. The Engineer solution was to dig in....
Bromhead was hard of hearing, so that also played into the decision to let Chard have overall command. If Bromhead had not been nearly deaf, he still might have been placed in charge.