Mounted cavalry or no?

Because you are a high up, easy to shoot target. Men on the ground are shorter and can crouch or crawl if need be. Your best protection, outside an armored vehicle, is not to be shot. That is easier close to the ground than on horseback.
You're right, cavalry can't sneak.
 
Because you are a high up, easy to shoot target. Men on the ground are shorter and can crouch or crawl if need be. Your best protection, outside an armored vehicle, is not to be shot. That is easier close to the ground than on horseback.
Not to mention one good shot and the rider is going down anyway, maybe even crushed if they fall wrong.
Horse are also massive targets, a WW1 artillery barrage would litter them with shrapnel.
 
Question for you all, was the rise of mechanized warfare such as the tank etc inevitable, or could the use of mounted cavalry have continued well into the 20th century? If so, what would've been required for that to be the case?

The use of the use of horse mounted infantry remained right up to the beginning of WW2 for most armies the fastest way to move a fully equipped rifleman across countryside / battlefield.

When this statement is no longer true - ie reliable suitable 'semi' off road mass produced transport - then mounted cavalry (which in the mass majority of cases is a horse mounted rifleman who fights on foot) gets replaced as motorisation/mechanization is a more efficient and reliable method than use of Horses.

This move to motor/mech transport was if anything retarded by the Great Depression and we might otherwise have seen the British cavalry and artillery replace its horses much earlier than it did possibly as early as 1930.

This is when the technology and experience begins to align and but for the lack of funds I can see the British going full mechanisation much earlier than it did.

Contrary to popular belief the Cavalry Rgts were the actual driver for much of this change away from horses and had funding been available for tanks and suitable vehicles before the late 30s then they would have gone mostly vehicle far earlier than they did.

Which is a good thing as horse are Fcuking evil.

This works for the Regular British army of the day as it was only 6 Divisions Strong (plus 13 TA Divisions) - so it was relatively inexpensive to go fully mech/motor and by the time the decision was made to go to a 32 Division force (6 Reg and the 13 TA Divisions doubled to 26)

Other armies were faced with more difficulty as they tended to be larger or as in the case of the US Army - blissful neutrality allowed congress to starve it of funds - so without WW2 and the rise of National Socialist governments we may see a much slower move away from horses in the militaries of the world.
 
I'd say it's barbed wire that made cavalry suicidal.

Artillery was, unsurprisingly the greatest threat. Barbed wire seriously restricted mobility.

There are severe accounts of successful cavalry charges in which machine-guns were captured. British and Imperial mounted troops also used a mix of mounted and dismounted tactics very effectively.
 
Artillery was, unsurprisingly the greatest threat. Barbed wire seriously restricted mobility.

There are severe accounts of successful cavalry charges in which machine-guns were captured. British and Imperial mounted troops also used a mix of mounted and dismounted tactics very effectively.

Almost anything can succeed if everything goes right and that is what you need for a cavalry charge.
 
I thought horsemen were also used in Afghanistan as spotters for airstrikes back in 2001.

I mentioned that in my post, so I'm confused what you're asking here.

So, it would require some sort of asb then to prevent the development of technology such as that it makes horses non redundant?

Just have a large-scale conflict between resource-strained combatants who can't afford aircraft in terrain where vehicles aren't appropriate. Something like the bush wars in Southern Africa comes pretty close.
 
Just have a large-scale conflict between resource-strained combatants who can't afford aircraft in terrain where vehicles aren't appropriate. Something like the bush wars in Southern Africa comes pretty close.

Those wars resulted in the early versions of MRAPS (well from South Africa's POV anyway) with the Hippo

Just saying
 
Question for you all, was the rise of mechanized warfare such as the tank etc inevitable, or could the use of mounted cavalry have continued well into the 20th century? If so, what would've been required for that to be the case?
Portugese used cavalry in the 70es Angola conflict.
 
Hardly. The accounts I've read are not of operations where 'everything' went right. I don't think I've read of any military operation where everything goes right.

OK, almost everything. The odds are highly in favor of being shot to pieces.
 
Arguably cavalry was obsolete with the large scale introduction of magazine rifles in the 1880s. Charging toward a line of riflemen trying to stab them with a sword was absurd. It’s just that there weren’t any big wars in Europe to drive this point home.

Dragoons would still be useful though. The invention of machine guns probably improved their effectiveness if they could be properly employed.
 
Arguably cavalry was obsolete with the large scale introduction of magazine rifles in the 1880s. Charging toward a line of riflemen trying to stab them with a sword was absurd. It’s just that there weren’t any big wars in Europe to drive this point home.

Dragoons would still be useful though. The invention of machine guns probably improved their effectiveness if they could be properly employed.

Paging Nestor Makhno...
 
I'll say it again, at lot depends on what the enemy is doing. troops on the move aren't the same as troops in prepared positions. The latter have caused cavalry trouble since breech-loading weapons can along, the former were vulnerable right up until WW2, depending on terrain.
 
Arguably cavalry was obsolete with the large scale introduction of magazine rifles in the 1880s. Charging toward a line of riflemen trying to stab them with a sword was absurd. It’s just that there weren’t any big wars in Europe to drive this point home.

Dragoons would still be useful though. The invention of machine guns probably improved their effectiveness if they could be properly employed.

'Cavalry' - certainly in the British Commonwealth forces were for the most part mounted infantry that fought on foot - the horse still then being the fastest way in which an infantry man could move cross country.

They did not as a rule 'charge' at the enemy (there are some classic examples where they did - but those are generally exceptions that prove the rule) but used their mobility to move to a position at which point the men would dismount with every 4th man taking the horses to 'the rear' and the unit would fight as infantry in the way that Mechanized units would deploy their infantry to fight on foot and the APCs to not generally fight the enemy directly.

The disadvantage was that Cavalry units tended to be smaller in number than their equivalent Infantry units (400-500 odd compared to 600-800 odd in an Infantry battalion) and this was further reduced as every 4th man would not actually fight but take charge of his and 3 other men's horses after they had dismounted - reducing the effective number of fighting men in a given company/platoon further by 25% effectively less than half an infantry Battalion.

Obviously the advantage that they allowed was that they could exploit a situation (or address a situation) 3x faster than an infantry unit and be less fatigued when they got their with the intention being that they would be relieved by the slower moving Infantry.

As for being obsolete in the face of modern arms - be it magazine bolt action rifles, reliable belt fed machine guns, artillery (Shrapnel and HE) and barbed wire....well that's true buts its also true of Infantry.

Where a Cavalry unit could not survive in such an environment - pretty much neither could infantry and both resorted to manning trenches.

So where the need to have to move a large body of armed infantrymen cross country as fast as possible exists 'Cavalry' will exist - and before reliable vehicles exist - which is arguably the late 30s at the earliest - 'Cavalry' or horse mounted infantry will stay relevant.
 
'Cavalry' - certainly in the British Commonwealth forces were for the most part mounted infantry that fought on foot - the horse still then being the fastest way in which an infantry man could move cross country.

They did not as a rule 'charge' at the enemy (there are some classic examples where they did - but those are generally exceptions that prove the rule) but used their mobility to move to a position at which point the men would dismount with every 4th man taking the horses to 'the rear' and the unit would fight as infantry in the way that Mechanized units would deploy their infantry to fight on foot and the APCs to not generally fight the enemy directly.

The disadvantage was that Cavalry units tended to be smaller in number than their equivalent Infantry units (400-500 odd compared to 600-800 odd in an Infantry battalion) and this was further reduced as every 4th man would not actually fight but take charge of his and 3 other men's horses after they had dismounted - reducing the effective number of fighting men in a given company/platoon further by 25% effectively less than half an infantry Battalion.

Obviously the advantage that they allowed was that they could exploit a situation (or address a situation) 3x faster than an infantry unit and be less fatigued when they got their with the intention being that they would be relieved by the slower moving Infantry.

As for being obsolete in the face of modern arms - be it magazine bolt action rifles, reliable belt fed machine guns, artillery (Shrapnel and HE) and barbed wire....well that's true buts its also true of Infantry.

Where a Cavalry unit could not survive in such an environment - pretty much neither could infantry and both resorted to manning trenches.

So where the need to have to move a large body of armed infantrymen cross country as fast as possible exists 'Cavalry' will exist - and before reliable vehicles exist - which is arguably the late 30s at the earliest - 'Cavalry' or horse mounted infantry will stay relevant.

Most of the text above perfectly describes the Australian Light Horse Regiments, in Palestine in WW1.

The "Charge" at Beersheba, is a classic example of the effect of rapid movement, as the Australians came in so fast the Turkish troops didn't have time to adjust their sights, so most of their fire was going way over. Two things possibly led to this - the attack came out of a supposedly impassable desert, and fell on a "rear area" so the quality of the defending force may have been a bit down, leading to panic, and forgetting to adjust, as the range closed.

Even as late as 1941 Australia still maintained mounted units, mainly militia, in home defence, which were promptly converted to armour, or infantry, once the Japanese became a threat.

However, right through WW11, the long isolated, uninhabited coastlines of northern Australia were patrolled by "Curtain's Cowboys", (named after John Curtain, the Prime Minister of the time,) mounted units, living off the land.
 
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