Re-visiting Artillery's Effectiveness During the CW.
Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:49 pm
As the "new patch" is being prepared and effectiveness of both the rifle-musket and artillery fire are being reconsidered, perhaps it is time to "re-visit" much of the information presented previously in this forum in the (vain ?) hope that correct historical emphasis may be included...historical emphasis and detail that is documented and not merely the result of "hearsay".
From "Civil War Tactics in Perspective" (http://www.johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html), comes the following (edited) information regarding, first, the CW Rifle-Musket and then the Artillery.
"Rifled bullets flew a straighter, more predictable course, than did the smooth-bore musket. But in one important respect the rifled musket was actually inferior to its predecessor! A bullet traveling down a smoothbore barrel would bounce around, with its final trajectory determined by its final bounce. But at fairly short range, 100 yards or less, the smoothbore was quite good, though, with between 40-75% of shots hitting a simulated line of cavalry in various peacetime experiments. At 200 yards, 18-30% of shots hit the target. (Hughes 27-28). The rifling in the new rifled muskets gave the bullet a much truer course, but they also created much more friction than in smoothbores, which lowered the muzzle velocity significantly. This meant that the bullet traveled a more parabolic course. So even though the bullet flew a truer course, its relatively slow speed meant that at long range the shooter had to estimate the range accurately to within a few yards in order to hit his target. Jack Coggins writes, 'A bullet fired by a kneeling man at the belt buckle of a man running toward him at an estimated range of 300 yards would pass over the head of a man 250 yards away. Thus, if the shooter had overestimated the range by as little as 50 yards he would have missed.' In addition, the bullet would fall at the feet of a man 350 yards away. The farther the range, the more vital the estimate of range was, and the more difficult the task became. Twentieth century studies show that people are quite bad at estimating ranges, with errors usually around 30%. (Ohio Dept of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife website) Modern rifles are much better longer range weapons. While the rifled musket bullet would rise 43 inches over the line of sight, a World War II era M-1 rifle bullet would rise just 7.2 inches above the line of sight, making accurate range estimation much less important. (Coggins 38-9) Despite the flatter trajectory of modern bullets, even today, firefights rarely occur at ranges over 400 yards. The human eye is the reason for this. In fact, at 500 yards, a human face can only be made out as a light spot. (Hughes 26) Take a look across a football field. Do you think you could hit anything at 100 yards? What if someone was shooting at YOU? Brent Nosworthy's "Bloody Crucible of Courage" says that the Union army quit making adjustable sights for their rifle muskets because the men were too frightened in battle to remember to adjust them. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered even if men could keep their wits in battle."
"Many men were too frightened to even tell whether their weapon had fired. Not even noting the absence of a kick to their shoulder, a strong enough force to leave a bruise, men simply loaded one round on top of the other. SLA Marshall, in a flawed but important study of Korean War combat, found that a substantial portion of infantrymen in battle never fired their weapons; the fear of death simply overcame them. It is expecting a great deal for an infantryman to accomplish the simple task of loading and aiming a musket in battle. People are not designed to face that sort of danger. They are designed to run for their lives."
"When you also figure that after some artillery fire and a volley or two of musketry there may have be so much smoke that men couldn't even see the enemy, how can you expect them to hit anything? It should be no surprise that Paddy Griffith in "Battle Tactics of the Civil War" calculated an average first volley of around 140 yards, little different from previous wars, and with little difference in lethality. When you consider that each man was eager to open fire, to do something seemingly constructive against the threat facing him, 140 yards was too far away for an effective volley." (With this data in mind, Norb, Jim and the rest of the team MUST be congratulated on establishing the opening range of fire for the normal Blue or Gray regiment at 160 yards...rather than the currently favored 200 or 250 yards! It was/is real! It was/is bloody! And, it is CORRECT!)
"So although rifle-muskets were an improvement over smoothbores, the advantage appears slight. Grady McWhiney's thesis that there was a rifle revolution and that the Confederates wasted their manpower in futile frontal assaults is dead wrong. The technology of rifled muskets didn't make combat indecisive. Other factors may have, however."
"We have seen that the effectiveness of rifled muskets wasn't as great as is often portrayed. So far, we haven't said much about Civil War artillery. The supposed threat that rifled muskets posed to artillerymen is largely an illusion. Artillery units suffered lower casualty rates than the infantry, in line with experience in previous wars. New rifled artillery pieces were accurate at long range, making columns vulnerable. At ranges less than 1,000 yards, brass Napoleon guns were more useful. (Fratt 50) Civil War brass guns were nowhere near as effective as the artillery of the 1866 and 1870 wars in Europe. The guns do look much like their Napoleonic predecessors, but appearances can be deceiving. The 12 pounder Napoleon guns were actually a great improvement over their predecessors."
"Could the increased effectiveness of Civil War era artillery help explain the tactical changes since Napoleon's time? Perhaps advances in artillery explain why it was rare for infantry to advance in maneuver columns, and almost never with cavalry support. Prussian observer Justus Scheibert says as much; 'Americans tried the column for offense and gave it up because artillery poured murder on their columns.' (Scheibert 41) The only alternative, advancing over long distances in line, was cumbersome and likely to result in confusion. Better discipline and better coordination between units was required to successfully attack in line. At Waterloo the contending armies started the battle 700 yards from each other. Due to improved artillery technology, at Gettysburg the armies were separated by a distance roughly twice that, around 1,400 yards. (Fratt 53-4)"
"Just as in Napoleon's time, brass smoothbore pieces dominated the battlefield. Let's take a look at what had changed. Civil War armies preferred the 12 pounder Napoleon gun, named after Napoleon III, and used them almost exclusively for their smoothbore needs. In contrast, Napoleon's Grand Battery at Waterloo - created for long-range bombardment - was made up of 24 of the 12-pounders and 48 6-pounders. So only around one-third of the Emperor's Grand Battery was made of Civil War sized weapons. (Barbero 102) Overall for the battle, just 80 of Napoleon's 534 pieces were 12 pounders, just 15% of the total. (Fratt 44) As low as this percentage may seem, Wellington's Peninsular veterans were shocked at even this proportion of 12-pounders. The universal Civil War use of long range 12-pounders had significant benefits. More guns along the battle line could be concentrated against the enemy in both attack and defense. At Gettysburg, guns from along most of the Union line were able to concentrate against Pickett's Charge. In Napoleon's time, this sort of thing just wasn't practical. For short range defense against infantry attack, the 12 pounder was a great advancement from the past because a canister round from a 12 pounder not only contained more projectiles, those projectiles could be shot much further. This made the weapon much deadlier than its smaller rivals. (Eighteenth century tests showed that canister projectiles spread 32 feet per 100 yards of range.) (Hughes 35)"
"Another beneficial advance of the 12-pounder Napoleon was far and away the most important and dramatic. Before and during the Napoleonic Wars, guns, which are direct fire weapons, were limited to firing round shot or canister. Howitzers, for indirect fire at a higher trajectory, fired a shell, a hollow projectile filled with explosive detonated by a fuse which was set alight during firing. Around 1800, Henry Shrapnel invented the round that bears his name, a shell filled with powder and small round balls, a much more lethal round than the simple shell that it made obsolete. When it was invented, the shrapnel round could only be fired by howitzers, a small fraction of the artillery pieces in use. With advances in metal technology, however, and with a reduction in the powder charge from 1/3 to 1/4 of the weight of the projectile, the shrapnel round could be fired from a standard piece styled a "gun-howitzer", the famed Napoleon gun-howitzer. .Seventy eight bullets were contained in a single 12 pounder shrapnel round. (Coggins 67) No longer was the artilleryman limited to roundshot at long range. Now he could deliver killing power said to approach that of canister at nearly a mile's range. In British peacetime experiments, around 10% of the bullets in a shrapnel round hit a target. (Hughes 38) Both enemy infantry and cavalry were made more vulnerable. Brent Nosworthy notes that during the 1859 Italian War, artillery disrupted a cavalry unit from over a mile away, preventing it from forming and attacking. Confirming that this thinking was prevalent during the Civil War, in 1865, Francis Lippitt wrote in "A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms, Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry": Since the introduction of the new rifled arms, exposing cavalry masses to a deadly fire at far greater distances than ever before known, a fire often reaching to the reserves, it seemed doubtful whether the maneuvering and charging in heavy compact masses, which formerly rendered cavalry of the line so formidable, would any longer be practical.So more than any other cause, advances in artillery technology made the combined use of cavalry and infantry for decisive combat a difficult proposition."
"Despite all this, many historians still believe that artillery wasn't important during the war. Casualties caused by artillery fire were negligible - or so they say. A frequently cited example is the Wilderness, where artillery was said to account for only about 6% of all casualties. Paddy Griffith points out that many casualties attributed to small arms fire may in fact have been caused by artillery, specifically by the small round balls in Shrapnel rounds. Griffith suggests that the percentage of casualties caused by artillery in this battle were probably in proportion to the percentage of artillerymen in the armies. Because of the terrain, this battle, and this result, represent an extreme case. Lee knew that he was deficient in artillery, and he fought in the Wilderness in order to negate the Union advantage. The relative ineffectiveness of artillery in this battle is clearly an aberration. Chancellorsville was also fought in the Wilderness. In this battle, perhaps only the Confederate guns at Hazel Grove allowed Lee to capture Fairview Heights and defeat the Union army. Look at Spotsylvania a year later, also fought in the Wilderness. The massive Union attack on the Mule Shoe broke through because Lee had withdrawn his artillery the night before. Several days later, a Union attack on the base of the salient failed quickly and decisively due to Confederate artillery fire. And we must remember that most ground was NOT as unfavorable as the Wilderness. Take a look at Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg and the importance of artillery is obvious. Clearly artillery was important or army commanders wouldn't have eagerly added to their stocks of guns up until the last year of the war. In fact, Paddy Griffith suggests that in some battles, artillery accounted for 20 to 50% of casualties. Those who over-estimate the advantages of the rifled musket say that it threatened to make the artilleryman obsolete, but perhaps the opposite was more true. Although many historians do not stress this point, or even acknowledge it, advances in the artillery arm had made Napoleonic combined arms tactics difficult to impossible."
TWENTY TO 50% OF CASUALTIES CAUSED BY ARTILLERY! WOW! Currently, the artillery casualties from "long-range" (perhaps 300 to 400 yards in the game) does not even come close to reflecting the actual rate as reflected above! As noted in the British peace-time trials, around "10% of the shrapnel rounds (i.e. 5-7 rounds) would have inflicted wounds on the advancing enemy! This is NOT reflected in the game, either! Can we have this adjusted to accuratly reflect the effectiveness of the "long arm"? And, to those who would say that the artillery would dominate the game, why does historical accuracy have to sacrificed to minimize your column charges, your inability to accept historical casualties, or your unwillingness to develop tactics that align with the historical facts?
J
From "Civil War Tactics in Perspective" (http://www.johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html), comes the following (edited) information regarding, first, the CW Rifle-Musket and then the Artillery.
"Rifled bullets flew a straighter, more predictable course, than did the smooth-bore musket. But in one important respect the rifled musket was actually inferior to its predecessor! A bullet traveling down a smoothbore barrel would bounce around, with its final trajectory determined by its final bounce. But at fairly short range, 100 yards or less, the smoothbore was quite good, though, with between 40-75% of shots hitting a simulated line of cavalry in various peacetime experiments. At 200 yards, 18-30% of shots hit the target. (Hughes 27-28). The rifling in the new rifled muskets gave the bullet a much truer course, but they also created much more friction than in smoothbores, which lowered the muzzle velocity significantly. This meant that the bullet traveled a more parabolic course. So even though the bullet flew a truer course, its relatively slow speed meant that at long range the shooter had to estimate the range accurately to within a few yards in order to hit his target. Jack Coggins writes, 'A bullet fired by a kneeling man at the belt buckle of a man running toward him at an estimated range of 300 yards would pass over the head of a man 250 yards away. Thus, if the shooter had overestimated the range by as little as 50 yards he would have missed.' In addition, the bullet would fall at the feet of a man 350 yards away. The farther the range, the more vital the estimate of range was, and the more difficult the task became. Twentieth century studies show that people are quite bad at estimating ranges, with errors usually around 30%. (Ohio Dept of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife website) Modern rifles are much better longer range weapons. While the rifled musket bullet would rise 43 inches over the line of sight, a World War II era M-1 rifle bullet would rise just 7.2 inches above the line of sight, making accurate range estimation much less important. (Coggins 38-9) Despite the flatter trajectory of modern bullets, even today, firefights rarely occur at ranges over 400 yards. The human eye is the reason for this. In fact, at 500 yards, a human face can only be made out as a light spot. (Hughes 26) Take a look across a football field. Do you think you could hit anything at 100 yards? What if someone was shooting at YOU? Brent Nosworthy's "Bloody Crucible of Courage" says that the Union army quit making adjustable sights for their rifle muskets because the men were too frightened in battle to remember to adjust them. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered even if men could keep their wits in battle."
"Many men were too frightened to even tell whether their weapon had fired. Not even noting the absence of a kick to their shoulder, a strong enough force to leave a bruise, men simply loaded one round on top of the other. SLA Marshall, in a flawed but important study of Korean War combat, found that a substantial portion of infantrymen in battle never fired their weapons; the fear of death simply overcame them. It is expecting a great deal for an infantryman to accomplish the simple task of loading and aiming a musket in battle. People are not designed to face that sort of danger. They are designed to run for their lives."
"When you also figure that after some artillery fire and a volley or two of musketry there may have be so much smoke that men couldn't even see the enemy, how can you expect them to hit anything? It should be no surprise that Paddy Griffith in "Battle Tactics of the Civil War" calculated an average first volley of around 140 yards, little different from previous wars, and with little difference in lethality. When you consider that each man was eager to open fire, to do something seemingly constructive against the threat facing him, 140 yards was too far away for an effective volley." (With this data in mind, Norb, Jim and the rest of the team MUST be congratulated on establishing the opening range of fire for the normal Blue or Gray regiment at 160 yards...rather than the currently favored 200 or 250 yards! It was/is real! It was/is bloody! And, it is CORRECT!)
"So although rifle-muskets were an improvement over smoothbores, the advantage appears slight. Grady McWhiney's thesis that there was a rifle revolution and that the Confederates wasted their manpower in futile frontal assaults is dead wrong. The technology of rifled muskets didn't make combat indecisive. Other factors may have, however."
"We have seen that the effectiveness of rifled muskets wasn't as great as is often portrayed. So far, we haven't said much about Civil War artillery. The supposed threat that rifled muskets posed to artillerymen is largely an illusion. Artillery units suffered lower casualty rates than the infantry, in line with experience in previous wars. New rifled artillery pieces were accurate at long range, making columns vulnerable. At ranges less than 1,000 yards, brass Napoleon guns were more useful. (Fratt 50) Civil War brass guns were nowhere near as effective as the artillery of the 1866 and 1870 wars in Europe. The guns do look much like their Napoleonic predecessors, but appearances can be deceiving. The 12 pounder Napoleon guns were actually a great improvement over their predecessors."
"Could the increased effectiveness of Civil War era artillery help explain the tactical changes since Napoleon's time? Perhaps advances in artillery explain why it was rare for infantry to advance in maneuver columns, and almost never with cavalry support. Prussian observer Justus Scheibert says as much; 'Americans tried the column for offense and gave it up because artillery poured murder on their columns.' (Scheibert 41) The only alternative, advancing over long distances in line, was cumbersome and likely to result in confusion. Better discipline and better coordination between units was required to successfully attack in line. At Waterloo the contending armies started the battle 700 yards from each other. Due to improved artillery technology, at Gettysburg the armies were separated by a distance roughly twice that, around 1,400 yards. (Fratt 53-4)"
"Just as in Napoleon's time, brass smoothbore pieces dominated the battlefield. Let's take a look at what had changed. Civil War armies preferred the 12 pounder Napoleon gun, named after Napoleon III, and used them almost exclusively for their smoothbore needs. In contrast, Napoleon's Grand Battery at Waterloo - created for long-range bombardment - was made up of 24 of the 12-pounders and 48 6-pounders. So only around one-third of the Emperor's Grand Battery was made of Civil War sized weapons. (Barbero 102) Overall for the battle, just 80 of Napoleon's 534 pieces were 12 pounders, just 15% of the total. (Fratt 44) As low as this percentage may seem, Wellington's Peninsular veterans were shocked at even this proportion of 12-pounders. The universal Civil War use of long range 12-pounders had significant benefits. More guns along the battle line could be concentrated against the enemy in both attack and defense. At Gettysburg, guns from along most of the Union line were able to concentrate against Pickett's Charge. In Napoleon's time, this sort of thing just wasn't practical. For short range defense against infantry attack, the 12 pounder was a great advancement from the past because a canister round from a 12 pounder not only contained more projectiles, those projectiles could be shot much further. This made the weapon much deadlier than its smaller rivals. (Eighteenth century tests showed that canister projectiles spread 32 feet per 100 yards of range.) (Hughes 35)"
"Another beneficial advance of the 12-pounder Napoleon was far and away the most important and dramatic. Before and during the Napoleonic Wars, guns, which are direct fire weapons, were limited to firing round shot or canister. Howitzers, for indirect fire at a higher trajectory, fired a shell, a hollow projectile filled with explosive detonated by a fuse which was set alight during firing. Around 1800, Henry Shrapnel invented the round that bears his name, a shell filled with powder and small round balls, a much more lethal round than the simple shell that it made obsolete. When it was invented, the shrapnel round could only be fired by howitzers, a small fraction of the artillery pieces in use. With advances in metal technology, however, and with a reduction in the powder charge from 1/3 to 1/4 of the weight of the projectile, the shrapnel round could be fired from a standard piece styled a "gun-howitzer", the famed Napoleon gun-howitzer. .Seventy eight bullets were contained in a single 12 pounder shrapnel round. (Coggins 67) No longer was the artilleryman limited to roundshot at long range. Now he could deliver killing power said to approach that of canister at nearly a mile's range. In British peacetime experiments, around 10% of the bullets in a shrapnel round hit a target. (Hughes 38) Both enemy infantry and cavalry were made more vulnerable. Brent Nosworthy notes that during the 1859 Italian War, artillery disrupted a cavalry unit from over a mile away, preventing it from forming and attacking. Confirming that this thinking was prevalent during the Civil War, in 1865, Francis Lippitt wrote in "A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms, Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry": Since the introduction of the new rifled arms, exposing cavalry masses to a deadly fire at far greater distances than ever before known, a fire often reaching to the reserves, it seemed doubtful whether the maneuvering and charging in heavy compact masses, which formerly rendered cavalry of the line so formidable, would any longer be practical.So more than any other cause, advances in artillery technology made the combined use of cavalry and infantry for decisive combat a difficult proposition."
"Despite all this, many historians still believe that artillery wasn't important during the war. Casualties caused by artillery fire were negligible - or so they say. A frequently cited example is the Wilderness, where artillery was said to account for only about 6% of all casualties. Paddy Griffith points out that many casualties attributed to small arms fire may in fact have been caused by artillery, specifically by the small round balls in Shrapnel rounds. Griffith suggests that the percentage of casualties caused by artillery in this battle were probably in proportion to the percentage of artillerymen in the armies. Because of the terrain, this battle, and this result, represent an extreme case. Lee knew that he was deficient in artillery, and he fought in the Wilderness in order to negate the Union advantage. The relative ineffectiveness of artillery in this battle is clearly an aberration. Chancellorsville was also fought in the Wilderness. In this battle, perhaps only the Confederate guns at Hazel Grove allowed Lee to capture Fairview Heights and defeat the Union army. Look at Spotsylvania a year later, also fought in the Wilderness. The massive Union attack on the Mule Shoe broke through because Lee had withdrawn his artillery the night before. Several days later, a Union attack on the base of the salient failed quickly and decisively due to Confederate artillery fire. And we must remember that most ground was NOT as unfavorable as the Wilderness. Take a look at Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg and the importance of artillery is obvious. Clearly artillery was important or army commanders wouldn't have eagerly added to their stocks of guns up until the last year of the war. In fact, Paddy Griffith suggests that in some battles, artillery accounted for 20 to 50% of casualties. Those who over-estimate the advantages of the rifled musket say that it threatened to make the artilleryman obsolete, but perhaps the opposite was more true. Although many historians do not stress this point, or even acknowledge it, advances in the artillery arm had made Napoleonic combined arms tactics difficult to impossible."
TWENTY TO 50% OF CASUALTIES CAUSED BY ARTILLERY! WOW! Currently, the artillery casualties from "long-range" (perhaps 300 to 400 yards in the game) does not even come close to reflecting the actual rate as reflected above! As noted in the British peace-time trials, around "10% of the shrapnel rounds (i.e. 5-7 rounds) would have inflicted wounds on the advancing enemy! This is NOT reflected in the game, either! Can we have this adjusted to accuratly reflect the effectiveness of the "long arm"? And, to those who would say that the artillery would dominate the game, why does historical accuracy have to sacrificed to minimize your column charges, your inability to accept historical casualties, or your unwillingness to develop tactics that align with the historical facts?
J
It's good to hear that you guys understand the issues that arise when we try to balance gameplay and fun with historical accuracy. It's something we constantly struggle with. Right now I have a huge list of things that everyone wants fixed and a lot of them come from this list. It's Jim's and my job to prioritize things and decide what gets in. Even on the team their are a lot of opinions about what should be done to the game. It's a challenge to balance it all and decide how to implement new features in a way that does not upset too many people, as you can never please everyone. When there is a good argument, like the one that denser formations should take more damage from arty, we figure out how it will fit in the design, not mess things up, not screw up released scenarios, and put it in so that it makes sense. It requires a global view of the game, keeping everything in mind, and I'm sure we fail a lot, but we do our best.