GDG- Ranging, Trajectories, and Sights

[James Cameron]

<< Friends,
  As the discussion regarding Rifled Musket Characteristics?was in progress, 
I was desperately trying to expand my understanding of the marksmanship and 
tactical dilemmas confronting ACW small unit commanders based to a large 
extent on your superb comments. This research has discovered that while the 
better ACW rifled muskets(Springfield & Enfield) exceeded the smoothbore in 
both range and accuracy they  had a looping trajectory that required 
excellent sights, range firing experience and ranging knowledge or 
assistance for the combat infantryman to be effective at ranges exceeding 
100 yards. These requirements made it likely that an average ACW grunt 
couldn't have hit a horse better than on shot in ten at a range of 200 yards 
even though the weapon could kill at ranges exceeding 500 yards. These 
characteristics(must have been widely known by mid-year 1862. Is this why it 
seems that more arty horses were casuialties than cannoneers in many 
actions? Given that, why was there
 not any widespread corrective/instructional effort either at the army 
department(ordnance) or at field army (AoP, etc.) level due to the rather 
apparent advantages of improved marksmanship? Is the answer to my question 
the obvious one that the officer corps on either side was generally ignorant 
of or unconvinced of the benefits capable of being derived from improved 
marksmanship. I readily admit that in many ACW combat situations 
marksmanship was irrelevant. the ones that readily spring to mind are 
Chancelordville, the Wilderness, Shiloh and Chicamauga which all occured in 
heavily wooded terrain. However, at GB, either Bul Run , the Penninsula or 
Antietam the open vistas seem to have provided favorable terrain where 
improved distance marksmanship could possibly have altered combat results.
  Dick  >>

Dick,

You touch on a number of complicated and interrelated issues.

CW rifled muskets did have a very high trajectory, but not so much so as to 
be too serious a factor at the ranges within which musketry exchanges 
commonly took place, roughly 200 yards of so.  At that range, the 100 yard 
sight setting could be used.  Beyond that, the sights needed to be raised, 
but most officers prefered to have their men withhold their fire until the 
enemy was within 250 yards.  Also, the troops on the main line generally 
couldn't open fire as long as their own skirmishers were out in front.  On a 
field as open as Gettysburg was in most places, the skirmishers would be 
hundreds of yards out, keeping the enemy well out of musketry range of the 
battle line.

The thing to be kept in mind is that except for skirmishers and 
sharpshooters, CW infantry combat wasn't so much man versus man, as line 
against line. This kind of firing, against dense, closely packed targets, 
didn't place a great premium on individual accuracy.  Rifles arms extended 
the killing zone somewhat, to be sure, but while a skirmisher armed with a 
smoothbore was at a serious disadvantage to one armed with a rifle, a 
smoothbore armed regiment wasn't necessarily at all that much of a 
disadvantage compared to one with rifles.

Another thing to be kept in mind, especially during the first couple of 
years of the war, is that a large proportion of the troops engaged would 
have been armed with smoothbore muskets, not rifles.  Bull Run, the 
Peninsula, and Shiloh were all fought in large part with smoothbores, and 
even Antietam and to an extent, Gettysburg, saw considerable numbers of 
smoothbores still in the hands of the troops.  And the commanders tended to 
make little or no distinction, in the battle line, between rifle and 
smoothbore armed regiments.  Because, in terms of the tactics and doctrine 
of the day, the prevailing mindset was that a musket was simply a musket, 
rifled or not.  This mindset must be kept in view, as it is somewhat 
contrary to what may seem to us a matter of common sense, i.e., that 
soldiers must routinely be given careful training in marksmanship.

Jim Cameron