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Post by Yan Taylor on Apr 25, 2013 8:51:55 GMT -6
I have just been looking at the service Rifles issued to U.S. Forces, I started with the first breech-loader and worked up to the first Bolt-action.
Springfield M.1863 = Percussion Cap Springfield M.1865 = Breech-Loader Springfield M.1866 = Breech-Loader Springfield M.1968 = Breech-Loader Springfield M.1873 = Breech-Loader Springfield M.1884 = Breech-Loader Springfield M.1892/99 = Bolt-action (Krag) Springfield M.1895 = Straight Pull Springfield M.1903 = Bolt-Action
So going by the dates, the U.S. Army used Breech-Loading Rifles for over 22 years, then the Army got the more improve Bolt-Action M.1892/99, its funny that all these westerns you come across have the Army using Repeaters, I know this was not the case by going on the evidence above, but I thought that the Army may have adopted a Repeater before the M.1903 came into service, just goes to show how Hollywood can give a false impression.
One last thing, how did the U,S, Army deal with Indian attacks before the Breech-Loaders came into service, we have seen from the BLBH that even with single shot Rifles the Indians could still defeat the Army, I know that the Indians had both single shot and Repeaters during the Indian wars, and they must have had Muskets around the same time as the Army did, but by the looks of things, the warriors did a lot of damage with their local weapons (Bows and Clubs), these type of weapons would have been used in abundance by all the Indian Tribes, so how did the Army manage to repel any attacks when issued with Muskets, would the warriors simply move in for the kill when the soldiers had fired and were attempting to re-load, there must have been plenty of engagements fought with these weapons, so the Army must have had a hard job subduing the warriors with such slow firing weapons, I know I would feel uncomfortable fighting a large band of Indians in close terrain with such a weapon.
Ian.
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Post by fuchs on Apr 28, 2013 5:20:15 GMT -6
so how did the Army manage to repel any attacks when issued with Muskets, would the warriors simply move in for the kill when the soldiers had fired and were attempting to re-load, there must have been plenty of engagements fought with these weapons, so the Army must have had a hard job subduing the warriors with such slow firing weapons, I know I would feel uncomfortable fighting a large band of Indians in close terrain with such a weapon. Hmmh, I would have thought that the folks here would have been able to at least explain how this problem was solved in principle, if not specifically for the Indian wars. I was under the impression that any halfway disciplined infantry formation armed with musket and bayonet was able to hold at bay several times their number in light/irregular cavalry, unless said cavalry was determined enough to accept horrific losses in wiping out the infantry formation My somehow tangential take on this: A central feature of Indian warfare was that they were very keen on avoiding losses at all, unless absolutely necessary. They simply hadn't the spare numbers to throw away lives for "winning" random skirmishes. So all that was necessary was to make it costly for the Indians to get into effective arrow range (<50 yards). Even smooth-bore muskets are just fine for that. According to historic tests by the US War department and with modern replicas, under firing range conditions a hit rate at a man sized target of 30-50% at 100 yards could be achieved. (Given, "A Most Pernicious Thing") Of course this would be much less under combat conditions, but the weapon itself wouldn't be too much of a limit there. At least as important as the range advantage is the much, much higher destructive capacity of a musket ball compared to an arrow. An arrow will punch a basically one-dimensional slit about half an inch wide into tissue, and it hasn't enough momentum to shatter major bones. A smooth-bore ball of 0.5 to 0.75 caliber on the other hand will plow a circular path of destruction of at least it's own diameter through tissue, it will shatter large bones, and at longer ranges it will penetrate further than an arrow. It will have a ballpark number of 10 times as much momentum as an arrow. In short, pretty much regardless where you are hit by a smooth-bore ball, you are out of combat, especially if you need your muscular apparatus completely intact to draw an arrow or engage in hand-to hand combat. Of course an arrow hitting a vital organ or major blood vessel will kill you as surely as a musket ball, but the ball is more likely to achieve this in the first place. And a lot of a human body's cross section consists of non-vital organs, where a musket ball will inflict incomparably more damage than an arrow. Overall, the smooth-bore musket has a major advantage in range as well as in destructive capacity compared to the arrow, more than enough to compensate for the slow rate of fire.
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Post by quincannon on Apr 28, 2013 7:09:15 GMT -6
Ian and Fuchs:
Fuchs I accept everything you say. The Army after the Mexican War was armed with a rifle, not a musket. This you already know, nothing new. The rifle, with patch and ball, was slow to load. A well trained soldier could get off three or four rounds per minute. The introduction of the Minnie Ball decreased the load time, and therefore increased the rate of fire. Range with a rifle is much greater than with a musket. That is the ground work. Again nothing either of you did not know.
What I think made the difference is terrain, and the ability to close upon the rifleman at a fast rate. Fetterman was destroyed. He was destroyed in a place that offered superb fields of fire. At the point he was destroyed you can see Interstate Highway 90 several miles in the distance it is so open. Now when you combine this openness with the ability to close quickly with your adversary, any long range accuracy(but slow firing and reloading) you may enjoy, in formation or not, has been overcome. McNeil and Hays of the Texas Rangers used that Colt Patterson in this very way to close with and kill before their Mexican adversaries could reload. The question is one that you pose Fuchs. Would the Indians close and kill. I think the answer must be sometimes and sometimes not. I think that is why it is very hard to draw any definitive conclusions.
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Post by fuchs on Apr 28, 2013 8:03:41 GMT -6
What I think made the difference is terrain, and the ability to close upon the rifleman at a fast rate. Fetterman was destroyed. He was destroyed in a place that offered superb fields of fire. At the point he was destroyed you can see Interstate Highway 90 several miles in the distance it is so open. Now when you combine this openness with the ability to close quickly with your adversary, any long range accuracy(but slow firing and reloading) you may enjoy, in formation or not, has been overcome. Now that lets me scratching my head. I was under the impression that Fetterman's command was goaded into an ambush, got strung out as the infantry couldn't keep up in the chase of the decoys and was destroyed piecemeal by dismounted as well as mounted warriors. Thus the attack would have had to be initiated from a comparatively short distance. Those "wide open fields" somehow do not match with what I would imagine as an "ambush". That's were I will insist on "almost never". That "closing in to kill" in the face of organized, disciplined and reasonably well armed opposition simply costs more lives than there were in the spare budget of Plains Indian demographics. I'm just in the process of poking at some numbers again, but as a preliminary result it's already fairly certain that this spare budget was fairly limited. "Limited" like 30% of the adult males, AKA warriors. Counted against the entire average adult lifespan of something like 20-30 years. In other words, a tribe or band that blows it's "budget" in two or three major set-piece battles needs 20-30 years to recover from those losses. During that time it would suffer an increased vulnerability to enemy raids, and problems in getting enough meat into the pot. For about half that time an even more severely limited capability for any offensive warfare.
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Post by Mike Powell on May 15, 2013 6:57:17 GMT -6
To my eye the terrain at Fetterman is open but the finger where the command was chased and destroyed has considerable folds and wrinkles along its sides, to my recollection the eastern slopes (toward the Interstate) are more broken and abrupt than the western (toward Storey Road and the creek). At least some opportunity of concealment, especially to the east. In fact, and again to my eye, not greatly different to Battle ridge at LBH. Here's a couple of pic's, both taken atop the finger looking down and along the slope on the western side:
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 15, 2013 9:12:53 GMT -6
Hi Mike, it dose resemble the Calhoun/LSH area, I wonder how over an open space like this that Fetterman got suckered into an ambush chasing a group of around ten warriors, but failed to see the 1000 or so warriors hiding in the area, and in such a wide open space too.
To conceal around 1000 warriors must have took some doing.
The battle was in two phases, 50 Infantry and 30 Cavalry against around 1000 Indians.
Capt. Fetterman and 49 Infantry men who could not keep up with the Cavalry got hit first, their bodies were found in a circle formation.
Lt. Grumman and his Cavalry tried to escape but they decided that they could not outrun the warriors so they made a stand around 400 yards from where Fetterman died and they got overrun by warriors fighting on foot.
The two fights last around 20 minutes each.
About concealment, I remember my teacher at the Army Cadet Barracks saying to me; Ian I never saw you at camouflage class last week, and I replied ‘’yes I am getting quite good at it aren’t I Sir’’.
Ian.
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Post by fuchs on May 15, 2013 12:06:34 GMT -6
Hi Mike, it dose resemble the Calhoun/LSH area, Nice images, and indeed the first one looks to someone who has never been there awfully like the background of von Schmitts "Here fell Custer" One wonders indeed. And in freezing cold winter weather with vegetation at its lowest. (Are these trees evergreens?)
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 15, 2013 13:17:30 GMT -6
Yes, and here we have around 80 men armed with Muskets fighting an Indian force of around 1000 Warriors armed with few Guns, but according to Wiki the Army killed between 13 and 60 (I don’t know how they can get such a big gap, White Elk said that more Lakota were killed here then at the BLBH) Warriors, and only six Soldiers died of gunshot wounds the rest were killed by Bows/Arrows, Clubs etc.,
If the 80 Soldiers managed to kill around 60 Indians with their three rounds per minute 1861 Muskets, then it looks bad on Custer’s 500+ with 1873 Carbines capable of ten rounds per minute.
But why did Fetterman do such a rash act, he was told (ordered in fact twice) not to pursue over the ridge, I wonder if Fetterman and Custer knew each other.
Ian.
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Post by fuchs on May 15, 2013 13:55:12 GMT -6
Yes, and here we have around 80 men armed with Muskets fighting an Indian force of around 1000 Warriors armed with few Guns, but according to Wiki the Army Don't trust Wiki on anything but mainstream topics. A "reliable source" by Wiki standards is a book or newspaper article, no matter the pedigree. That would be more than about 25, if correct If you have a bandwidth of Indian warrior casualty estimates it's usually safe to look near the low end for the truth, or even below that if they are estimates solely from the White side. For the two cases I'm aware of where this issue was thorougly analyzed, Washita and the LBH, "unbelievably" low numbers resulted as most likely historic reality. And for a lot of less thoroughly analyzed cases, the tendency is the same. Soldiers armed with guns, any guns, had a large firepower advantage against Indians mostly armed traditionally. They might have had been more capable soldiers than the 7th in 1876, given that it was shortly after the Civil War. It might have been much less warriors than 1000. If only a quarter of the Indians fighting at the LBH had rifles, of any sort, they would have had at least firepower parity. At t=0. It would go downhill from there.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 16, 2013 5:05:56 GMT -6
Staying on the subject of battle of American soil. There was a show on last night about the Alamo (one of Chuck’s favourite subjects); it made me look up a few details of the battle;
1700 Mexican Troops took part in the final assault against 250 Defenders (I always thought that there was less than 200 but there you go).
The odds favoured to defenders because they were in a fortified position so the Mexican victory was not a forgone conclusion. The North Wall which was a metre thick hindered the defenders fire, causing an area of dead ground in which the defenders could not engage with their muskets.
The first phase of the final attack was conducted against the South Wall; this was done to fix the defenders in place before the main assault against the North Wall.
400 Troops from the Toluca and San Luis Battalions were repulsed by canon fire which resulted in the death of their commander Col. Duque, this force was then commanded by General Castrillon.
Another attack commanded by Col. Romero and 300 Troops was forced back from the Northeast, but continued to move north to the east side of the compound.
It was at this time that Santa Anna committed his reserve in the assault against the North Wall; this force of Troops from the Zapadores Battalion merged with the men from the Toluca and San Luis Battalions and due to overwhelming numbers broke through.
When the position came untenable a group of 50 or 60 defenders broke free and headed for the Gonzalez road (sounds a bit like the break out to deep ravine), these were cut down by a Regiment of Mexican Cavalry.
The program finished with a segment about a manuscript, and according to this manuscript written by Lt Jose Enrique De la Pina, and it mentioned about Santa Anna ordering the execution of Davy Crockett and a number of other survivors.
The researchers who gave data; Daniel Martinez (Historian N.P.C.) Alan Huffines (Historian) Thomas Ricks Lindley (Alamo historian) Gregg Dimmick (Archaeologist) Jake Ivey (Archaeologist) Stephen Harding (Professor)
Ian.
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Post by quincannon on May 16, 2013 6:19:12 GMT -6
Ian:
1400-1700 troops is correct depending upon how you count. I think there may be some double counting in there,, and it must be remembered that recruits and untrained personnel were withdrawn from the attacking battalions and left in camp before the assault. Equally important was the fact that the light infantry companies of most or all of the attacking battalions were withdrawn to form the task force that assaulted the southwest corner of the Alamo plaza (the pinning attack you cited). All of this leads me to believe that the assault force was nearer 1400 than 1700.
There are at last count 189 known (by name) Alamo defenders. The figure of 250 stems from a body count of those burned by Francisco Ruiz, the Alcalde of San Antonio de Bexar. That number is also suspect and probably includes 60 or so Mexican soldiers that were thrown on the fire with the defenders.
The late Tom Linley used this number to promote his second reinforcement theory. The first reinforcement was 32 men from the Gonzalez Mounted Ranging Company that broke in on or about 3 March 36. bringing the number of defenders up to between 180-190. There was a patrol action by the defenders at the Garza Mill on 4 March, and Lindley believes that this is when a second reinforcement group broke in. I don't put much money on this. I think Lindley was totally wrong, and attribute the number to a simple mistake, or a mistake on purpose. At that time the Roman Catholic Church did not look kindly on burning good Catholic boys reserving that method of disposal for heretics, and by extension Texians I suppose. We know the Mexican officers were most probably buried in the Campo Santo, but to my knowledge no one knows anything about the burial place of the Mexican enlisted men.
I would make the number of brake out defenders on the order of 80 or 90. All came out of the eastern portion of the compound in two and most likely three locations. The fight was spread out over a three or four square block area of what is now downtown San Antonio. This is also something that Alamo (go down fighting swinging Old Betsy) purists become deathly ill about. It is well recorded that it happened, but this is not the stuff of which legends are made.
Tom Lindley were he alive, would have a seizure at the mention of the execution of Crockett and the name De la Pena. Me, I think Crockett was killed early on at a bastion outside the west wall. Some were executed without much doubt. Truth is none of it matters. They all died, except MAYBE, one or two, and that is remote, but possible.
Of those you list Martinez is my least favorite. Lindley shows his bias to the detriment of his work I think but his heart is in the right place. The rest are first rate. Huffines (LTC USA Ret) has the best one volume, cram it all in about the siege itself, book. Blood of Noble Men. Worth looking for, or it can be purchased at the Alamo.
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Post by Mike Powell on May 16, 2013 6:25:45 GMT -6
Re the weapons in Fetterman's command; the 27 men of C Company, 2nd Cavalry were armed with Spencer .52 caliber repeating carbines. James Wheatley and Issac Fisher, civilians, both carried Henry repeating rifles and the 49 members of the Eighteenth Infantry were armed with Springfield muzzle-loading rifles. The bodies of Wheatley and Fisher were found at the north end of the fight among a rock pile where they found cover. A number of expended Henry cartridges were found there. Here's a pic of two friends standing on that rock pile. The view is about ENE with Interstate 90 in the background.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 16, 2013 8:06:26 GMT -6
Hi Chuck, I knew this was your field, one site claims that Col. Travis may have died defending the North Wall, the program also mentioned about the Mexicans using one of the 18 pdr Canons captured on one of the walls to fire on the defenders as they ran.
Hi Mike, the Spencer Repeater along with the two Henry’s would have given the Cavalry an advantage over the slow firing Muzzle Loaders used by the Infantry, but 27 men against 1000 (Fuchs claims a lesser total) is still a one sided affaire.
I think this is the Carbine you have mentioned.
Spencer Carbine Year: 1860 Origin & Make: U.S.A. / Winchester (1867) Type: Repeater Carbine Calibre: .52 (13mm) 56-50 Cartridge Weight: 350 Grains (23g) System: Leaver Action Length: 760mm Barrel: 560mm Gun Weight: 3.62 kg Sights: (Front) Blade (Rear) Adjustable Ladder Muzzle Velocity: 315 m/s Magazine Capacity: 7 Rounds Rate of Fire: 20 rpm Maximum Range: 500m Total Produced: 200.000
Great Photos too, showing a beautiful but bleak landscape, apparently the Indians took a dislike to both Wheatley and Fisher (maybe they killed a few of their Warrior friends before being succumbed) they bashed their heads in, have you heard the story concerning the Company Trumpeter, apparently he was the only victim who was not disfigured and was said to have fought bravely, killing several Indians with his bugle before falling. The Warriors wrapped his body in a buffalo hide.
Ian.
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Post by wild on May 16, 2013 8:35:07 GMT -6
Hi Ian A version of the same story is told of Isandlwana where a soldier managed to take up a position at the mouth of cave with a pile of ammo and held out after all other resistance had ended.He was eventually silenced when a volley was fired into the cave. And we hear the same story about a brave officer at the LBH. And then there was the boy who stood on the burning deck at his gun position when all about him lay dead. There always seem to be an attempt to salve some pride from disaster. Regards
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Post by quincannon on May 16, 2013 8:38:42 GMT -6
Ian: Travis was killed, and the site well documented, as being in the present lobby of the main U S Post office in San Antonio, where Houston Street intersects Alamo Plaza.
There was only one 18lbs gun, and it was located in the southwest corner of the plaza and was the objective of the light infantry pinning attack. That location, looking from the front of the Alamo - west - is about ten yards, 15 at most to the left of the steps leading down from Alamo Plaza to the Paseo del Rio. Some garrison cannon were used against the buildings by the Mexicans, no doubt, but I do not believe that one was used. Would not seem very practical to use garrison cannons against those that broke out. I would think they would be much to scattered, plus the Mexican cavalry were out there waiting for them in the dark and they pounced upon them very quickly. Keep in mind when looking at all of this that despite all the movies, except one, this battle was fought and over before the sun was fully up.
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