GDG- Arty Anti-personnel Effectiveness

ccj at infionline.net ccj at infionline.net
Tue Nov 28 20:43:29 CST 2006


J. G. Benton's A Course of Instruction in Ordnance & Gunnery is available on 
the web.  It provides much information relating to questions raised in this 
thread.  If nothing else, it is an excellent point of departure for any 
inquiry having to do with Civil War ordnance.

Concerning casualty causative agents, the generally accepted proportion for 
the Civil War is 90% small arms and 10% artillery.  Practically the same 
proportion was observed for the German armies in the Franco-Prussian War 
(1870-71); in the French army, artillery fire caused 25% of the casualties, 
and this is the largest percent attributable to artillery between 1860 and 
1914.  In the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), artillery caused 15% of all 
casualties.

There is rather a large medico-military literature on this subject.

Curt Johnson




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