GDG- Battle between the Farm Lanes

[Batrinque at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/24/07 8:55:04 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
cameron2 at optonline.net writes:

> What very interesting in looking over the test targets, is that at 100 
> yards 
> volley fire from a .58 rifles musket put 48 out of 50 shots on target. 
> That's better than the 36 or 37 by the smoothbores, but not drastically so, 
> and the actual target shows the hits dispersed over the 10x10 target as 
> widely as the shoots from the smoothbores.  At 200 and 300 yards, the number 
> 
> of hits continues to be better than the smoothbores, but the individual 
> shots are still all over the place. 


Based on my study of 19th century test firings of rifle-muskets versus 
smoothbores (with single round ball, not buck-and-ball), it appears to me that a 
rough rule of thumb emerges: what smoothbores would hit at any given range, 
rifle-muskets would hit at twice that range; this was true even for quite short 
range, such as 50 yards or less,  while the relatively superior accuracy of 
rifle-muskets increased greatly over about 200 yards.  How well such firing range 
tests would apply in field conditions can be questioned, of course, and 
buck-and-ball ammunition would certainly substantially increase the effectiveness of 
smoothbores at close range.  And, of course, the standard of marksmanship 
training of most Civil War soldiers was abysmal.

As far as I can make out, buck-and-ball seems to have been an essentially 
American practice and not used to any significant extent by European armies, 
despite what would seem to be its readily apparent advantages.  Its use went back 
at least to the American Revolution.

Bruce Trinque
Amston, CT


**************************************
 AOL now offers free email to 
everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.