Clibanarius
Banned
IOTL both North and South used Minie Balls and Rifled weapons but what if the progression of firearms is delayed long enough that the ACW is fought using Smoothbore Muskets?
WI: Muskets used instead of Rifles in ACW?
- Thread starter Clibanarius
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67th Tigers
Banned
Very little different. The weapon type made no statistical difference to the combats.
On a tactical level its fairly easy to predict would would happen, you would have a conflict very similar to the Napoleonic wars.
You would likely see a huge increase in the use of cavalry and lancers for direct assaults in infantry. By and large cavalry in the ACW was for scouting, screening, mounted infantry or for engaging your enemies horsemen. The rifled weapons of the time made it impractical for large bodies of horsemen to attack infantry as the range of the rifles was devestating. Smoothbores had a max effective range of only around 100 yards, whereas rifles like the Springfield could more than triple that.
I think the South would find the fight harder as they had less manpower to draw on for their armies, so trying to field the large amounts of infantry they already had as well as a cavalry force of significant size could be taxing for them.
How this would change the overall course of the war is very difficult to say. Its certain that every battle from Bull Run onwards would be different than in the OTL and so it could be possible for the South to win an early victory if they had the ability to capitalise on their win.
Alternatively the North could have smashed their army.
Whoever won, casualties on both sides would have been much higher than they were. The closer range volleys of musket fire could be devestating, and unlike in the OTL fleeing enemies could be chased down with your large cavalry forces or even by your infantry as they are only a 100 yards or so from the enemy line.
Take Bull Run for example, the North had around 30-35000 troops, but lost only 3000 (similar sorts of figures for the South) which is around 10% of their force. Compare this to a battle like Waterloo, where the French lost a third of their army killed or wounded, and thousands mroe captured. There were as many casulaties in this one battle as there was in the 3 days of the battle at Gettysburg. This was quite common for battles of the time, where the losing force would lose a large proportion of their force.
Battle of Ulm - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ulm
Battle of Austerlitz - [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz[/url]
Battle of Jena-Austedt - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena-Auerstedt
Even when an outright victory was not attained both sides would take massive casualties, much larger (both in absolute numbers and % of total strength) than most battles in the ACW. Its certain that this would have a big impact on the course of the war.
You would likely see a huge increase in the use of cavalry and lancers for direct assaults in infantry. By and large cavalry in the ACW was for scouting, screening, mounted infantry or for engaging your enemies horsemen. The rifled weapons of the time made it impractical for large bodies of horsemen to attack infantry as the range of the rifles was devestating. Smoothbores had a max effective range of only around 100 yards, whereas rifles like the Springfield could more than triple that.
I think the South would find the fight harder as they had less manpower to draw on for their armies, so trying to field the large amounts of infantry they already had as well as a cavalry force of significant size could be taxing for them.
How this would change the overall course of the war is very difficult to say. Its certain that every battle from Bull Run onwards would be different than in the OTL and so it could be possible for the South to win an early victory if they had the ability to capitalise on their win.
Alternatively the North could have smashed their army.
Whoever won, casualties on both sides would have been much higher than they were. The closer range volleys of musket fire could be devestating, and unlike in the OTL fleeing enemies could be chased down with your large cavalry forces or even by your infantry as they are only a 100 yards or so from the enemy line.
Take Bull Run for example, the North had around 30-35000 troops, but lost only 3000 (similar sorts of figures for the South) which is around 10% of their force. Compare this to a battle like Waterloo, where the French lost a third of their army killed or wounded, and thousands mroe captured. There were as many casulaties in this one battle as there was in the 3 days of the battle at Gettysburg. This was quite common for battles of the time, where the losing force would lose a large proportion of their force.
Battle of Ulm - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ulm
Battle of Austerlitz - [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz[/url]
Battle of Jena-Austedt - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena-Auerstedt
Even when an outright victory was not attained both sides would take massive casualties, much larger (both in absolute numbers and % of total strength) than most battles in the ACW. Its certain that this would have a big impact on the course of the war.
Delaying Minie ball rifle to after ACW will have major world wide implications. The Russians do a lot better in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny does not happen.
IIRC, a big chunk of the forces did use muskets for a while in the early part of the war, due to a general lack of more modern weapons available; the war kinda caught both sides unprepared. Thus, the mass importation of rifles from overseas...
Clibanarius
Banned
So the ACW would go pretty much like it IOTL but tactically it would resemble a Napoleonic slugfest?
67th Tigers
Banned
There would be very little different, but the killed to wounded ratio will skew towards killed. Smoothbore muskets were much deadlier by the simple virtue of having more kinetic energy at combat ranges. From my blog:
I may do a TL on this.Also I now that the commander of the Irish Brigade expressly requested his troops to be issued with muskets as they would be more effective at close range, and his troops weren't going to be very accurate shots. So instead of wasting more accurate weapons on inexperienced shots, he made sure that his troops would hit harder at close range, and would have an advantage in rate of fire over muzzle-loading rifles, putting more lead in the air to compensate for loss in accuracy. With out rifles the style of fighting demonstrated by the Irish Brigade would have been the rule of the day in Civil War combat, and casualty figures across the board on both sides would have looked more like the Irish Brigade's then OTL figures as people have pointed already in this thread.
Yes, but the higher casualties would have a significant impact on the overall strategic situation too. More people killed = less and less support for the war from the people back home, more pressure to end it or more reluctance to get involved in the first place.
With nothing but muskets the infantry would be useless against rifle artillery and shrapnel shells. Artillery has dominated the infantry since the Seven Years War, and the edge kept swinging further to the artillery's advantage. Minie ball rifles gave the infantry a chance. Without it artillery completely rules the field. It would be lopsided like pitting foot soldiers against armored knights before the days of pikes and crossbows.
I suspect that the difference in the ratio of wounded soldiers to dead soldiers has more to do with the fact that battlefield medicine in the American Civil War was substantially better than it was during the Napoleonic War. Johnathan Letterman is called "the father of battlefield medicine" for a reason.
Ah but I think the premise of the OP rules out ALL rifled weapons, so smoothbore muskets and cannon only.
If infantry didn't switch to rifled weapons it's unlikely that artillery would, especially given that artillery was predominately smoothbore at the start of the war anyway.
Smoothbore cannon would have dominated musket armed infantry too. Rifled cannon were not really a decisive weapon in the Civil War.
There would be very little different, but the killed to wounded ratio will skew towards killed. Smoothbore muskets were much deadlier by the simple virtue of having more kinetic energy at combat ranges. From my blog:
However, as you note in your blog...
So, by your own admission, it could be that the statistics make it appear that the rifles were less effective than the muskets because they are looking at WOUNDED MEN DOCUMENTED BECAUSE THEY PASSED THROUGH THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM, while ignoring the dead men who never made it into a hospital, thus ignoring completely the alternative explanation that the rifles were, in fact, more effective and killed more of their victims outright than did the muskets, thus those victims never made it into the statistics.
There is a major fact which argues against your interpretation. The composition of the armies in the Mexican War was not much different than it was in the Civil War. Both were composed of a tiny number of regular troops who were supported by a great majority of Volunteer troops whose training was not of a high standard.[1] Yet, for some reason, American troops in the Mexican War were able to carry home their bayonet charges on a regular basis, but troops in the Civil War rarely did so, instead stopping about 100 yards away and engaging in a firefight. We have to ask why that is.
Your answer, expressed many times on this and other forums, is that it was a training issue. But since the overall standard of training was approximately the same...indeed, Civil War troops may have been BETTER trained than their Mexican War counterparts...that simply can't be the case.
So what else could it have been? The likely answer...a greater effectiveness of the rifle out to a longer range than a musket, and much greater effectiveness through a greater application of aimed fire at close ranges. Essentially the Civil War soldiers charged into a wall of lead which simply wasn't there in the Mexican War and were forced to stop short without making contact with their opponents.
[1] Before anyone trots out the argument that "regular troops made up a greater percentage of the overall forces in the Mexican War," some facts you may want to consider. It is true that overall, regular troops (about 26,000 of them) made up about a quarter of all US forces involved raised during the Mexican War, which is a greater percentage than in the Civil War. However, the US Army prior to the Mexican War numbered only about 5,000 men. So the other 21,000 were new recruits who were NO BETTER TRAINED THAN THE VOLUNTEERS.
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Snake Featherston
Banned
Muskets were used in the US Civil War, particularly in the first year of the war and rather longer than that in the Western theater. If the war is a war where the offensive *can* break through anything the defense does, then the superior weight of US artillery produces a sequence of endless CSA asskickings as Confederate armies are torn apart by a weight of canister they will never have counter to.
67th Tigers
Banned
I'm afraid you're completely wrong here. The killed are still recorded. What we don't know is what killed them because the doctors never recorded it. The K:W ratios are out of kilter with previous smoothbore wars.
I suggest you check the composition of the US forces that fought in Mexico. 13 of the 21 infantry units with Scott (and all the cavalry and artillery) are regulars and 7 out of 13 of Taylor's infantry units are regulars. More to the point they are the same regulars.
That doesn't really stand, especially in light of US musketry in the Mexican war being about twice as accurate (with flintlock smoothbores, percussion muskets only appeared in small numbers) as in the ACW.
This doesn't stand. Combat ranges did not increase and the % of shots that hit actually decreased vs Mexico or Napoleon's time.
Firepower throughout the period was primarily a matter of artillery, and for the first time American experienced European levels of artillery fire....
and I'll point out the troops that actually did the fighting were mostly prewar regulars. The offensive core of both armies was the same few prewar regular infantry battalions supplemented by a select few volunteer units and later the newly raised regulars. However, prettymuch all the major offensives were conducted by the regulars.