I've just started Joseph T. Glatthaar's book "General Lee's Army -From Victory to Collapse" and found a few sentences on page 62 interesting. During 1st Bull Run/Manassas, Glatthaar asserts that Union rifled muskets were sighted for targets at 300 yards, explaining that due to this many of the Yankee shots ended up high, missing the rebel troops. There's no footnote on this, so I'm a little skeptical.  Does anyone have any hard information that this could have or did happen?

Mark,

I find this difficult to believe. The standard sighting on rifle muskets and rifled muskets (.69 cal.) is 100 yards. It may be that some soldiers changed their sights to 300 yards at the beginning of the Battle, but I doubt many of them were that well trained. Markmenship training for most soldiers, other than loading quickly, was a non-issue. Training was based on getting the most lead down-range, not actually hitting anything! A lot of Civil War soldiers never fired their weapons until they actually got into combat.

My guess is the reason people were shooting high, was that they had their eyes closed when they fired. The "Pucker Factor" is pretty high the first time you get shot at.  

  Hallo!

  The two types of rear sights in use on the older and newer M1855 Rifle-Muskets were the "long-range" graduated from 100-900 yards in 100 increments, and the newer "short range" from 100-500 yards graduated 100-300-500 yards.  (As would be the M1861's)

  It was "common,"  NUG, typically, to let them alone at 100 yards (exceptions so noted).
  With the .58 Minie, aiming at the belt plate of a man at 100 yards distance, would send a ball OVER the head of a man 50 yards away due to the rainbow arc trajectory of the slow moving heavy bullet.

  With some few exceptions, the "tactic" was still to deliver a disciplined, timely horizontal sheet of lead into the shoulder-to-shoulder mass of a receiving "wall" of the enemy in typically under nominally 100-200 combat-effective yards ("lengthed" due to the Minie's advantage over the former .69 round ball).

 IMHO, I would look toward shooting high as a function of the rainbow arc of the Minie couple with the lack of aimed marksman type training coupled with lads jerking their guns due to inexperiecne and combat stress, etc., etc., moreso than officers setting range markers as the British sometimes did and then calling for the men to set their sights to the officers' distances and firing commands...

 Others' mileage will vary...
 
  Curt
  Stadia Sight Mess

That early in the war you wonder how many rifled muskets were present at 1st Bull Run/Manassas?

Quote :

Curtis Makamson wrote : That early in the war you wonder how many rifled muskets were present at 1st Bull Run/Manassas?

Curtis

According to Glatthaar, all Federal's had 'em.  This book got good reviews on most of the sites I visited, so I decided to give it a try.  So far, I'm not all that impressed. There's 500+ pages to it, so who knows?  I agree with Bill and Curt regarding the tactics, theory, and first battle jitters.  But, the "sighted for 300 yards" deal, with no footnote, caught my eye as a really big generalization, or worse, BS.  

--Last edited by mstuart on 2008-08-03 17:39:28 --

Quote :

MStuart wrote :   According to Glatthaar, all Federal's had 'em.

Mark,

This is pure BS. Lots of Federal soldiers were still armed with .69 cal. smooth bore muskets at Gettysburg, two years later. There were less than 60,000 M-1855's (total production), along with an unknown number of converted .69 cal. muskets, available to the Federal government in 1861. Everybody else got issued smooth bores. The battle of Bull Run was fought before M-1861's or Enfields were readily available.    

A direct quote from the book, page 62:

"All told, the Confederates had performed extremely well at First Manassas. They had superior numbers, but the Federal soldiers carried rifled muskets, which gave them greater accuracy and more than triple the range of the Confederates, who largely employed smooth-bore muskets. From long distances, the Confederates simply had to endure the Union rifle fire, but during the course of battle, they closed with the enemy and more than neutralized the Union advantage. Nervous soldiers on both sides fired too high, but because the Union weapons were sighted for three hundred yards, the angle of trajectory would naturally have caused the projectile to travel above the heads of close-in targets."

  Hallo!

 IMHO, the auhtor needs to research more and write less...
 Sigh...

 I have not read this book, but from a distance it is starting to smell like a "Lost Cause" celebration of how the underdog Confederates with their flintlocks and smoothbores spanked the Yankees all with their most modern rifle-muskets.

  I wonder, says I.  Whupped 'em again, Josie...

  Curt
  Yes, 1st Bull Run/Manassass was not much of a rifle-musket decided outting

2nd Wisconsin was armed with mule kick to the shoulder Belgian muskets at 1st Manassas....they didn't get the Lorenz in .54 caliber until later.

Curt, rifle musket sited at 100 yards is going to rainbow over a target at 50 yards? Huh? what's the drop at 100 yards, 8 inches?

  Hallo!

 I would have to pull out the U.S. performance tests done in the 1850's... but I recall for the M1855 Rifle-Musket the vertical deviation was 15 inches at 500 yards amd the horizontal 13 inches.  And that of the P1853 Enfield RM 20 and 17.

 If I am recalling it correctly...  the trajectory arc went something like this...  

 A standing man firing at the belt plate of a man at 300 yards would have the Minie pass at 68 inches at 50 yards, 83 inches at 100 yards, 93 inches at 150 yards, 89 inches at 200 yards, 84 inches at 250 yards, and 40 inches (the belt plate) at 300 yards, and 0 inches at 350 yards.

  For infantry, that would make the "danger zone" of hits starting at head shots at about, what...  260 yards to a foot shot at 350.

 Of course, that is based upon a man shouldering at 50 inches above the ground, and not overly tall lads "down range."

 I have tried long range shooting with 900 and 1,000 yard sight set.  The sharp angle of the stock would take some getting used to, IMHO, to be able to shoot well, PLUS the size of the target in the open "V" of the rear sight ladder notch does not make for a very precisely viewed or held POA.  (Shoot, no pun intended, as slow as the Minie went, at 900-1000 yards how long was a target likely to be there or still for to await the fall of the round?)
 I suspect, this was a factor in why the U.S. dropped the M1855 long range rear sight (900 or 1000 yards) in favor of a maximum of 500 (it of itself not an "easy" sight picture to shoot..)

 Hmmmmm.  For years in the N-SSA I shot at the 100 yard targets using a 50 yard sight, and elevating about 12 inches.  But that is irrevelent as I used about a half charge and a 2/3 weight bullet...  ;)  

 Curt
 Former Shootist Mess

Quote :

Curt Schmidt wrote :    I suspect, this was a factor in why the U.S. dropped the M1855 long range rear sight (900 or 1000 yards) in favor of a maximum of 500 (it of itself not an "easy" sight picture to shoot..)

Curt,

In the real world of military shooting with iron sights, 300 yards or meters is about it. I remember shooting at those 300 meter pop-up targets and the little plastic guy only looked about an eighth of an inch tall! It doesn't matter how accurate your weapon is, you're only as good as your eye can see. The smoke and dust on an actual battlefield would only make the problem worse. I've shot at 500 meters, but the target is about ten feet square, which gives you roughly the same sight picture as the 100 meter target, which is about two feet square.

As you know, the Army did a lot of accuracy testing, just before the Civil War, using ten foot square targets. There was one major fallicy in their testing. The shooters were firing at targets where the ranges were known and exactly matched the sights on the weapons. If they had been shooting at estimated ranges, I think the results of the testing would have been far worse.  

  Hallo!

 "If they had been shooting at estimated ranges, I think the results of the testing would have been far worse."  

 Absolutely correct.

 As people pulling out in front of me in traffic still attest everyday.      

 Curt

Quote :

Curt Schmidt wrote :   Hallo! As people pulling out in front of me in traffic still attest everyday.        Curt

All the more reason we should be allowed to mount guns on the front of our cars..  

but back to the above topic.
I plotted the data you had above and was able to understand what you meant by the rainbow arc.   Thanks for the data.. that is rather interesting.

Again, I wish I could remember the source, but I recall reading something where they said that if you aimed at the opponents knees, you might be able to hit him in the chest.

  Hallo!

  And now to freak some out...

 Here is question I missed on a high school physics class final...  
 Thanks to gravity...
 
 If you drop a bullet from the muzzle of a gun at the exact same time you fire a bullet that leaves the muzzle of another gun- both bullets hit the ground at the same time.

 Muhahahahahahahahaaaa!

  Curt

Quote :

Curt Schmidt wrote : If you drop a bullet from the muzzle of a gun at the exact same time you fire a bullet that leaves the muzzle of another gun- both bullets hit the ground at the same time.

Isn't that what they were testing yesterday in front of that museum in Gettysburg?  

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

Quote :

Curt Schmidt wrote :   Hallo!   And now to freak some out...  Here is question I missed on a high school physics class final...    Thanks to gravity...    If you drop a bullet from the muzzle of a gun at the exact same time you fire a bullet that leaves the muzzle of another gun- both bullets hit the ground at the same time.  Muhahahahahahahahaaaa!   Curt

This can also be followed up with a discussion of projectile motion with the classic question:

"If a bullet is shot forward parallel to the ground without anything in its way, and at the exact same moment another bullet is dropped from the same height, which bullet will hit the ground first?" (Both bullets hit the ground at the same time since gravity is the only force pulling them down)

Quote :

Isn't that what they were testing yesterday in front of that museum in Gettysburg?   Hank Trent hanktrent@voyager.net

Weren't they testing Newton's first law of motion in Gettysburg.. or maybe it was the 3rd..  

Quote :

Curt Schmidt wrote :    And now to freak some out...      If you drop a bullet from the muzzle of a gun at the exact same time you fire a bullet that leaves the muzzle of another gun- both bullets hit the ground at the same time.     Curt

That only holds true if the fired weapon's barrel is exactly horizontal to the ground. The more you elevate a gun barrel, the longer it takes for a round to hit the ground.

Hallo!

 Correct. A horisontal bore...

 I missed the question because I incorrectly thought that the horizontal force imparted to the bullet as it moved away from the gun was sufficient to keep it "suspended in air" longer than it took the dropped bullet to reach the ground.

 I think what they were testing in G-Burg was whether the bullet
fired at the ground got there faster than the bullet fired through one's shoe and toes.

 Where'd I leave that cleaning jag?  It's around here somewhere.

 Curt
 Jon-Erik Hexum Mess  

--Last edited by Curt Schmidt on 2008-08-05 11:10:41 --