GDG- Arty Anti-personnel Effectiveness

[Richard M Kadas]

I wanted to thank everyone who participated in this thread. Their comments increased my knowledge of the topic. Yesterday, I gained access to a copy of . Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65) which should shed some light  on the arty casualty issue. At least I'll be able to find out if there are some gems of wisdom hiding in the casualty stats. Nevertheless, the stats can't change the reality that only living casualties admitted to hospital were classified by wound type. They'll also miss the ones caused by arty submunitions which look similar enough to minie ball wounds to be mistaken for them.
  Dick
  ballccj at infionline.net wrote:
  Esteemed GDG Member Contributes:


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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