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The American Civil War in the 1860s didn't feature smokeless powder, which wasn't produced in a stable manner until 1884.

• bluGill 6y ago
  It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. The civil war sometimes had 3 people reloading guns for the marksman. The faster loading guns to come latter just eliminated that. Even today, the machine gun isnisn't expected to hit. Sharpshooters are one shot one kill and take time to aim. The machine gun is about keeping the enemy undercover while your guys do something. Anyone who dies in machines gun fire it was their own stupid fault.
  • emidln 6y ago
    > It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. While certain rifles were fairly accurate on man-sized targets at 100-150 yards (Springfield 1861 being the most common), being able to visually identify a target at 100+ yards, even at 50 yards didn't matter much after the shooting started. The black powder from a mass of rifles causes a thick fog to form on each side, obscuring individual targets. This leads to a lot of massed volley firing tactics (and most of the rifled muskets used were lethal to 300-400 yards) similar to what were used with smoothbore muskets of the previous 100 years. You can read a lot of stories were officers were picked off behind the lines or when riding between lines, largely because of the accuracy of these for a handful of shots (and a well-trained individual could fire 3-5 shots per minute), but this accuracy simply didn't matter once the literal fog of war set in. The salient difference in technology between Napoleonic conflicts and the ACS is the rifled barrel both in small arms and in field artillery. The reason this mattered was the Napoleonic tactics were formed with the idea that outside 100 yards is relatively safe. A mass of bodies 400 yards away poses no threat, so you can casually march forward. The most famous example of this backfiring is Picket's Charge on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Fifteen thousand men plodded forward for several hundred yards while being mowed down by masking fire from rifled muskets. Picket's subordinates ordered the quickstep and the charge a bit earlier than convention (by 1863, both sides understood the tactics they had learned at military academies to be somewhat outdated and almost succeeded for it). This wasn't done soon enough, and resulted in their attack failing due to lack of manpower. This same masking fire made assaulting trenches nearly impossible. Sappers/miners and siege artillery were required to poke holes in the lines, and in most cases this wasn't enough. The tactics that worked were spreading thin and outflanking the lines. It's worth noting that there were some engagements that did show the power of rapid firing machine guns and rifles with magazines to offer less reloading time. The Gatling Gun, and a few similar machine guns were designed and first deployed in the ACS. While these were rare (typically purchased privately by commanders or supporters instead of being government issue), they were devastating when in operation. The first repeating rifles were deployed effectively (again, privately purchased) by dismounted calvary at the Battle of Petersburg to offer unprecedented firepower from a small group.
    • emidln 6y ago
      s/ACS/ACW/ ACW being American Civil War. I don't know how I made this mistake multiple times.