accuracy of rifled muskets?

[Darkfold]

Already breaking my promise...

What kind of accuracy can be expected of a .58 caliber rifle musket with a perfectly formed and sized bullet and a carefully-prepared powder charge when the shooter (the part of the system we don't seem to paying much attention to in this discussion) has been on campaign for several weeks on a diet of hard bread, salt horse and coffee, walking ten to twenty miles a day, sleeping on the ground, recently got over a bout of diarrhea, and has just quick-timed the better part of a mile to a little bit of smoke-obscured Hell where he hears the screams of wounded men and horses over the crash and peal of musketry and cannon fire, sees his friends lying torn and bleeding on the ground, and hears and sees the effects of lead and iron missiles coming his way?

My guess: Less than optimum. Downright execrable, to be blunt about it.

My point is, very few CW soldiers had the luxury of working up loads and taking their sweet time about shooting at clearly defined, motionless targets, let alone targets that were coming straight at him with cold steel in their hands and murder in their eyes.

This may be a slight advantage we reenactors have when talking about what can and can't be done with a rifle musket; we at least have experienced something that might just possibly have given us some dim idea of what it might have been like, albeit seen through a glass darkly.

Maybe that idea can help improve the generally low opinion of reenactors that seems to be so prevalent on this forum.

Or maybe not.

 

[almrl]

FYI, an interesting book that includes information on this subject is: Battle Tactics of the Civil War by Paddy Griffith.

1. There was so little range practice that it was the exception rather than the rule.

2. The officers of both sides were trained to fight in the Napoleonic style.

3. Soldiers fired at least the first volleys on command from these Napoleonic trained officers. No Squeeeezing off the trigger. Just pull the trigger on command.

4. And most interesting of all: Griffith studied original battle accounts and found in 113 references to range that the average range was 127 yards, well under the 200 yards accepted as standard for the Brown Bess.

Apparently, although the rifled musket was capable of long range fire, it was seldom used that way. It's like many of the comments I've read in the forum. "My rifle shoots better than I do."

Just something to think about.

Old Coot

 

[RedFeather]

Was perusing one one my books on the history of guns recently and the author ended his discussion of the rifled musket by pointing out how its use quickly changed battlefield tactics. Prior to the Civil War, it was customary for artillery to close within about 200 yards and fire into infantry. Now the batteries were finding it was a bit too hot, even at 500. This was, perhaps, the first war where the balance of power swung to infantry.

As to the "accepted" range of unrifled muskets being 200 yards, I think it was a British General from the American Revolutionay War who was quoted to the effect that a soldier with a Brown Bess had about as much chance of hitting the Man in the Moon at one hundred yards.

To the re-enactor who replied to my earlier post, I don't hold them in contempt. Just that a lot seem to talk a lot about muskets but, when the question is put to them, they haven't any real experience aside from squibs. Also, seen more than one musket traded-in by a re-enactor with a perfectly ruined bore. But maybe the ones in the field were a bit like that, anyway. How much cleaning after a battle did those guys have time for?

 

[Tumblernotch]

Boys, I've got books here written by Ordnance Dept. officers that have all the tables showing trajectories, mean and actual deviations, results of tests with different barrels, charges and bullets and all that neat stuff. And what I have learned from this information is the fact that regardless of any of the conditions that the Civil War soldier fought under, the standard rifle-muskets they used were far more accurate than almost all of the soldiers who used them. There are too many factors involved in battle to accurately judge what these weapons are truly capable of. They were tested in machine rests under controlled conditions (although different weather conditions are noted in some of the tests and these were factored in). They were also fired countless times between cleaning, sometimes being tested to see how many times they could be fired before becoming so fouled they couldn't be loaded. Throw in all the conditions mentioned in earlier posts and all this goes into a cocked hat. Even modern weapons are terribly inaccurate in the hands of inexperienced or weary troops under harsh conditions. How many of us have had "buck fever" and missed our target with a shiny new centerfire with a scope? The musket itself was quite accurate; the soldier had to be accurate as well.

As for a statement in an earlier post about "blown skrts"; Someone is using a poorly designed Minie or they are dangerously overloading a musket. The skirt would have to be ridiculously thin to be "blown" or melted with a service charge or lower. A standard old style Minie will handle charges considerably higher than a 60 gr. (U.S.) service charge (68 gr. Enfield). Too many people try to make this weapon something it ain't. It wasn't designed as a dangerous game getter. It was designed solely to kill men and it did a bang-up job. We can tweak it for better accuracy and I don't fault anyone for doing that, I do it myself. But it's a slow gun (963 fps average) and by nature hasn't got the flattest trajectory and there's not a heck of a lot we can do about it. I like what Va.Manuf.06 said; "It's as accurate as it needs to be."

 

[jdstrang]

What KR said! Amen, and Selah! :bow: