GDG- Re:long range riflfe fire

[James Cameron]

<< I have read accounts that in the fighting around Santiago, Cuba in the
Span-Am War, with Spanish troops using German Mausers, Americans operating 
in  the
rear areas were hit by Mauser bullets that passed through battle lines to
indiscriminately strike targets well to the rear.

While not like the aimed fire story of WW1 that you posted, it still shows
what these weapons could do and indeed shows what could have happened if 
troops
 are properly trained.  >>

Almost any modern (by modern, I mean almost any smokeless powder bolt action 
from the late 1890's on) full power infantry rifle had far more range and 
power than even well trained troops (other than perhaps the most highly 
skilled snipers) could really use effectively.   A full power rifle round 
such as the .30-06, 8mm Mauser, or the .303 British will easily kill a man 
at triple the range, or more, that most men could hit a man-sized target. 
That's one reason so many countries adopted lighter rounds in the post-WW2 
assault rifles class of weapons.

One example of just how powerful these full sized rifle rounds were is that 
during WW1, heavy machine units would sometimes be used to fire long range, 
indirect fire barrages at targets behind the enemy trench line.  A machine 
gun company or battalion would be given a mission to support an attack by 
massing its guns, sighting them much like artillery pieces, and firing 
continuously at a road junction or area over which it was expected the enemy 
might bring up reinforcements.  Ranges might well be 2,000 yards or more, at 
targets on the reverse slopes of intervening hills or ridges, and ammunition 
expended measured in the hundreds of thousands of rounds.  The common mental 
image of WW1 is of machine guns mowing down attacking troops in the barbed 
wire at point blank range, but these were also very much long range killing 
machines, some sighted to as much as 4,000 yards.

Jim Cameron