Post by twomoons on May 14, 2005 20:28:24 GMT -6
At the beginning of the "Just what did Wier See?" thread, I proposed a timing theory based upon Gray's work. It does propose futher questions, like the one's below.
When you figure the amount of shells needed to sustain a fight at Calhoun hill, the rate of fire for their Springfields including reloads is approximatly 4 per minute. Assuming then on the average, that the soldiers fired approximatly 4 per minute, for approximatly 20 minutes, non stop they would have consumed about 80 shells per man. Even if we back that off to 3 per minute the amount is still considerably high, 60 shells per man. Taking these numbers as a base we find that the soldiers had only 5 to 10 minutes of ammo left for their primary weapon, assuming that each man had 100 rounds for that weapon, perhaps supplied by the packs they had on their mounts.
The questions are then:
What caused the tactical breakdown of this unit?
Was it as some have claimed, attrition and fear caused by clustering followed by flight?
Or was it because of the need of more ammunition?
These questions in and of themselves causes more questions to be asked. For example:
Where was the horseholders, where presumably there was more ammo?
Were these horses scared off by the indians too?
This does seem to be the case because most of the remainder of these soldiers retreated to the Keough sector on foot.
When you figure the amount of shells needed to sustain a fight at Calhoun hill, the rate of fire for their Springfields including reloads is approximatly 4 per minute. Assuming then on the average, that the soldiers fired approximatly 4 per minute, for approximatly 20 minutes, non stop they would have consumed about 80 shells per man. Even if we back that off to 3 per minute the amount is still considerably high, 60 shells per man. Taking these numbers as a base we find that the soldiers had only 5 to 10 minutes of ammo left for their primary weapon, assuming that each man had 100 rounds for that weapon, perhaps supplied by the packs they had on their mounts.
The questions are then:
What caused the tactical breakdown of this unit?
Was it as some have claimed, attrition and fear caused by clustering followed by flight?
Or was it because of the need of more ammunition?
These questions in and of themselves causes more questions to be asked. For example:
Where was the horseholders, where presumably there was more ammo?
Were these horses scared off by the indians too?
This does seem to be the case because most of the remainder of these soldiers retreated to the Keough sector on foot.