How fast can you reload

[paulvallandigham]

When hunting with a BP rifle, " How fast I can load" is irrelevant. I once shot a deer, and managed to reload my rifle out of sight of two yearlings that had been trailing the doe I shot, before they disappeared from sight. I had my sights on the back of the neck of the second yearling, and chose not to fire. That is loading " as fast as I can reload".

However, I consider my BP rifle to be a single Shot Hunting Rifle- and no more. There simply is NO way I can reload that gun--Safely-- fast enough to get a second shot at the same animal.

There ARE UNSAFE ways to reload the gun, faster, but using those methods is just STUPID, and dangerous, for no good reason. If you do not know what these Unsafe methods are, send me a PT, and I will tell you. I do not feel comfortable putting that information out on a general audience forum like this.

If I were under attack, I assure you that my MLer would not be my first choice of my firearms to use to defend myself. There are circumstances where I might use it to gain a psychological advantage over my assailants, but I have far better firearms to use in combat situations.

 

[No Grease]

They were trained to fire one round every fifteen seconds for four minutes until fouling slowed them down. Nothing wrong with learning a bit of history. As was brought up earlier smoothbores were the norm and a paper cartridge or something similar was used. I am quite suprised that our firearms do not look like a lawnmower deck with all the warnings and such stuck to it.

:grin: :hatsoff:

 

[Dphar]

Watched “Unsolved History” last night about the Alamo. It was something like 12 to one odds. That could not be a good situation to say the least. Anyway boys here are my questions to you.
You know there were various different flintlocks there at the time. Just how fast could a man fire and reload his gun? Was it even possible for them to avoid the inevitable massacre?

The only way to keep Santa Anna from killing them would have been to evacuate. The walls were no defense against the Artillery.

Dan

 

[Trench]

In some situations, you probably would only get one shot off before you went to another weapon. Governor Harrison of Indiana Territory formed the Indiana Rangers to patrol the Buffalo Trace in 1807 against Indian raids and required all the volunteers to purchase their own tomahawk, small knife, and large knife. In a raid situation, you probably only had that one shot before you went for your hawk and knife.

 

[tg]

I think the waves of Mexs all had ladders,more at first then less and a lot of men, there was likely a lot of confusion, ladders going up, men and ladders falling down, men climbimg over their dead Mex companions and all before daylight and in a cloud of BP smoke and a strobe of gunfire/rockets.A person has to be in something like that to have any kind of understanding of the why and what of it all.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Thank the NRA for successfully lobbying Congress to keep the EPA away from firearms, and denying the EPA the power to regulate them.

 

[John Wasmuth]

The mexican army bombarded the Alamo every night during the entire stand off. Not an Alamo defender was killed by mexican canon. What damage the ball did to the walls was repaired during the day.

 

[brubincam]

-----I can unload faster than load----- :dead:

 

[tnlonghunter]

One thing that stuck with me when I watched some documentaries on the Alamo back when the most recent movie came out was how ill-suited the Alamo was for a fort. It was a mission - basically a church and accompanying buildings for housing religious workers. IIRC, even after some of the make-shift fortifications (such as the wooden barricade mentioned earlier), there were just too many tactical disadvantages based on the layout to make it a really effective fort. Not that they had any better options, but when you're outnumbered 25 to 1 (or whatever the odds were), less-than-optimal fortifications only make things worse, no matter how fast you can shoot.

 

[ebiggs1]

From what I learned form the show, there were about 2,400 Mexicans and 180 to 200 Texans. Of coarse most all the Texans were either killed or murdered and the Texans killed or wounded 500 give or take.

 

[Emet Huntsman]

The wall surrounding the compound was not a wall as we think of one. Being a mission, the wall was rally the back of the habitations for the missionaries and Indians living there. There were no parapets for the defenders to shoot from cover. They had to stand in open sight to fire. On top of that, the "walls" were three feet thick, meaning to shoot at attackers below, the defenders had to lean out over to fire, thus exposing themselves to covering fire. Finally, 180-185 defenders was way too few for the area enclosed by the walls. Santa Anna's first two assaults were frontal along one of the walls, thus Travis could bring more firepower tot he fore. The final assault in the early morning was from all sides with the north wall being breached.
Sam Houston had advised the Alamo be destroyed because he knew to defend it would be a lost cause.

Oh, yeah, btw -- two shots a minute and a half in a rifle. I haven't tried to time myself with a musket.