Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The deadliness of American Civil War rifle fire has been rather exaggerated.

Although the minie bullet rifle (e.g. Enfield and Springfield) had much better inherent accuracy than a smoothbore musket, there are several reasons why this did not take effect in the war.

1. The ballistic arc of a heavy, low velocity bullet is quite pronounced, and takes careful training to cope with.
2. The troops didn't have markmanship training.
3. Engagement ranges were often remarkably short, due to the nature of the terrain.

The casualties rates from ACW battles are similar to Napoleonic battles.

I was under the impression that unlike previous wars it was guns and small arms that claimed many more lives than earlier combats? They often stood at close ranges shooting at each other (negating the rifle advantage) for the reasons described. Falling back only to have another shoot out.

I don't know a lot about the ACW but from what I have read, although for many reasons they could not make the best use of their weapons, they did make a lot of use out of them in odd situations often having huge shoot outs to remove enemy forces.

I have always heard that casualties were disproportionate compared to earlier battles with less accurate weapons precisely because of this.

While the rifles were accurate at long ranges, the tactics were still in line with older less accurate weapons. So the soldiers were engaging each other at ranges where anyone with a decent amount of training would have little difficulty hitting with the weapons they had. So instead of only 20% of your volley hitting a target it would be more like 40%. And this isn't counting situations where repeating rifles were in play.

Plus while the soldiers might not have had specific marksman training, anyone who hunted regularly wouldn't have needed any. Which would have been a very large number of the soldiers.

No, I would have to check it up, I'm afraid. I looked into it some years ago for a thread on The Miniatures Page.

From memory, the average Napoleonic casualties were 20% to the losing side, 15% to the winning side, per battle, taking the wars all together. This did not include soldiers lost through illness.

Losses from sickness outweighed actual battle casualties in all wars until WW1.

Taking the Battle of Shiloh as one example, Union casualties were 13,000 out of 45,000, giving a rate of 28%. Shiloh was a particularly bloody battle, though in fact the Union won at the end of the second day. This obviously is higher than the Napoleonic average, but it is from one battle.

If we take Borodino as an example of a large Napoleonic battle, the casualty rate was 28% counting both sides. Borodino was also regarded as a bloody battle.

Of course, there are many problems with finding out casualty rates from early battles.

Interestingly, for military history buffs, the casualty rate at the Battle of Verdun is reckoned to be 24% dead (doesn't include wounded.) Verdun was one of the bloodiest campaigns in history.

Ah, so you're talking in terms of percentage figures rather than pure casualty numbers. Makes sense now, I can definitely see that being fairly consistent. However, compare the scale of the battles in the Napoleonic and AC wars, and that relatively similar percentage accounts for a lot more casualties.

That point about disease claiming more dead than battle wounds prior to WW1 is definitely true for the British, although off the top of my head, I seem to recall other armies in Europe had reached that point earlier (might be imagining that, though). It's certainly fair to say that health in the British army was pretty appalling until the early 1900s.

The issues around determining casualty rates is something that persists until quite recently, and it doesn't help that every army had its own way of recording the figures. Brits in WW1 listed anyone who was killed, taken prisoner or wounded to an extent that required treatment in any way, while the Germans recorded only those who had to actually be removed from the front for an extended or permanent period. Not sure how the French did it, but in all likelihood it included a significant portion of the wounded as well.

With that in mind, the fact that Verdun actually saw 24% actually dead rather than just 'casualties' is pretty horrendous. The fact that attack at the Somme was conceived in part to draw German forces away from Verdun is rather telling in that regard too.

 Paradigm wrote:

That point about disease claiming more dead than battle wounds prior to WW1 is definitely true for the British, although off the top of my head, I seem to recall other armies in Europe had reached that point earlier (might be imagining that, though).

The British were not very different from other European armies in terms of medical care, ineffective, until the end of the 19th century when professional medical services were introduced. Armies have always been prone to disease, Napoleon's Grande Armee that invaded Russia in 1812 is estimated to have suffered 100,000 casualties from typhus alone.

 Paradigm wrote:

With that in mind, the fact that Verdun actually saw 24% actually dead rather than just 'casualties' is pretty horrendous. The fact that attack at the Somme was conceived in part to draw German forces away from Verdun is rather telling in that regard too.

It shows just how badly wrong the French cowardice stereotype really is.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The deadliness of American Civil War rifle fire has been rather exaggerated.

Although the minie bullet rifle (e.g. Enfield and Springfield) had much better inherent accuracy than a smoothbore musket, there are several reasons why this did not take effect in the war.

1. The ballistic arc of a heavy, low velocity bullet is quite pronounced, and takes careful training to cope with.
2. The troops didn't have markmanship training.
3. Engagement ranges were often remarkably short, due to the nature of the terrain.

The casualties rates from ACW battles are similar to Napoleonic battles.

1. Does that means every rifled muskets (usually converted flintlocks like Brownbess.. meh this thing got so many upgrades to a very modern thing... the trapdoor rifle) required higher aim? (and Prussian troops learned this when Bismarck waged war against Austrians)
2. Military doctrine didn't cope up with tech advancements of that day (or never will it be?). while advanced weapons like bolt action rifles (Sharps, Greene and Dreyse needle gun) and repeaters (Henry and Spencer) came to be.. even regular muskets were heavily converted ... first flints gave way to percussion caps, and later riflings. trainers didn't (regardless that some advanced weapons like Hall breech loaders and Colt revolver rifles were seen action in Mexican War about 20 years earlier)
3. Really? or was this contributed to training alone? What about the proliferations of skirmishers with such advanced weapons like Berdan Sharpshooters and those with Spencers?

 Paradigm wrote:
Ah, so you're talking in terms of percentage figures rather than pure casualty numbers. Makes sense now, I can definitely see that being fairly consistent. However, compare the scale of the battles in the Napoleonic and AC wars, and that relatively similar percentage accounts for a lot more casualties.

...
...

Percentage is the only way that makes sense, if you are trying to judge the deadliness of battle at any point in time.

You have highlighted some of the ways it is very hard actually to determine accurate casualty figures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What it means is that while a minie rifle bullet will fly pretty true for 500 yards, compared to 50 yards for a smoothbore musket, you have to aim up a lot, due to the ballistic arc of the bullet, which means the amount of drop over that distance. Civil War soldiers were not taught this.

The Berdan Sharpshooters were a specially selected group, who had developed marksmanship by their own previous experience, the army didn't teach them. Ownership and sue of weapons was far less common in the USA in the ACW era than we might imagine from modern dramatic fiction.

All Civil War era weapons used black powder, and fired low velocity, high mass bullets that had a higher ballistic arc than modern, smokeless powder bullets like the 7mm to 8mm calibre rounds that were introduced towards the end of the 19th century.