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Hey Barndon You once mentioned that musket men had a tendency to shot too high or too low, where would you say is a good point to aim? What part of the opponent makes for the ideal aiming spot?
I would also add that hopefully your side brought artillery and cavalry. That would be very useful for making sure they do what you want them to do. Gustavus Adolphus was known for his artillery tactics and using them to force the battle to commence on his terms. Wars are fought with a myriad of weapons to benefit from the strengths of each and minimize their drawbacks. Cavalry can be used to harass supply lines. Soldiers carry spades with then so they can dig trenches everywhere. Cannons destroy strongpoints, their artillery, and their cavalry too and generally reduce their number. You can use your marksmen with rifles to destroy communications and runners. You don't fight battles like this unless it is necessary and other ideas won't net the results you need.
Hey, the Normany landings only killed 7% of the Americans who hit Omaha beach, do we have any volunteers to go back in time and give it a try? The First World War only killed one in eight soldiers in the British army, but I rarely hear anyone say they wish they were in the British trenches in 1917.
It would also be worth considering artillery rounds are against men in trenches... if you're out in the open and well spotted, they're extremely accurate and deadly. It's disingenuous as heck to suggest muskets match modern weaponry's accuracy at all. And if you're saying they are indeed horribly niaccuracte comparedto modern expectaions... then why did you act like people were mistaken at all? They're not.
Yeah, the fact it's horribly inaccurate by today's standards leads to jokes about it being horribly inaccurate by today's standard. Except the Japanese, who unlike the malnourished European conscripts, were hitting single man targets in the Imjinwaeran.
@@vanivanov9571 Have you been to a public range lately? The skill level of most people with modern two thousand plus dollar rifles all tac'ed out like it's ready for a modern top teir operator mission - is nothing short of laughable. Most modern shooters ain't hitting shit either.
Its purpose was to hit a group of soldiers because it was INCAPABLE of hitting a single soldier. That's inaccurate. That is an inaccurate weapon. Even in its own day it was inaccurate.
I knew a guy in the army who, on paper, had a 200% accuracy with his rifle in a marksman test. 24 hits with 12 shots. Now, as these tests were conducted some 30 people at a time, and several people next to him had already passed their tests, it's possible they decided to help a buddy out and fire a few rounds into his target. But we'll never know for sure...
The explanation is very simple, 1 or 2 of the other shooters was shooting at the same target. It happens easily when there is 30 targets and you are miscalculating what to shoot at by 1 count. Been there done that myself during practice ...
I had 23 hits on a 10 shot practice once. The fun thing was that we were supposed to sight our rifles based on that and none of the three of us who shot at my target seemed to be particularly good shooters.
And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. -John 3:16 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out. -Acts 3:19 If are in North America, please go check out any of the churches available to you: PCA, OPC, Rpcna/Rpc, Urcna, or a canrc church (These are conservative and actual Presbyterian churches) If you can’t find one of the conservative presby churches then, maybe a Lcms or Wels Lutheran church. If you are Scottish, I recommend the Free Church of Scotland and the APC (Different from the Church of Scotland) If you are English I recommend the Free Church of England. (Different from the Church of England) Online you can look up church finders for each of the groups and it will show you locations.
In regards to the shots fired to kills scored ratio in modern wars, most rapid fire weapons aren't meant to inflict casualties, they're meant to force the enemy to keep their heads down.
It's largely the same during this period as well. Soldiers were trained to fire by sections, rather than along the entire line, in order to keep up a continuous fire. After the first couple hundred shots, the field was covered in smoke, making the individual shot nearly impossible to aim, but fire on they would, in order to prevent the enemy from advancing against them. They were putting up suppressive fire.
This is true in some but not all cases. Room clearing would be a case where accuracy matters. It's a complicated topic. Doctrine varies from force to force, and even then, battlefield practices vary from doctrine.
In the US, the doctrine is to suppress the enemy with small arms fire and call in artillery or air support to take them out. This is especially true when you encounter a stubbornly dug in enemy.
@@Riceball01not necessarily true. Calling for local fire like mortars would be pretty standard, but arty and air would only be for major enemy positions or emergency situations like ambushes. In the smaller scale scenarios, after fire superiority (aka suppression) is achieved, a section of the assaulting unit (or another whole platoon, depending on the scale of the assault) will break off and flank the enemy, hitting them from an angle that negates their cover/concealment, while they are tied down. Artillery and air support is expensive and take time to arrive, it is usually much more expedient for the forces on the ground to handle buisness themselves, especially considering doctrine insists that we only ever attack a position with a 3-1 advantage or better.
The example of the advancing line also makes another point: if muskets weren’t effective until they were within bayonetting range, pikes would have remained the predominant weapon well into the 19th century.
Hello Brandon. You may remember me talking about spreadsheets on a live stream and how I did a science degree. I have seen more data than I could have ever imagined. I was dying for you to get to the point that the weapon was fit for purpose. I saw a video before from Royal Armouries about muskets versus the new rifles coming in about the time of Crimea War, that was also very interesting.
I think this adequately explains the musket's effectiveness, despite having a less-than-stellar accuracy. I loved the first marching line example; I'd be terrified to see ten people out of 100 either dead or wounded in an instant. And that's just the first volley at 300 yards.
Except you wouldn't. Combat accuracy is way less than paper target accuracy, he eventually admitted. I once saw a US study on how much less from the army, but I lost it and forget the dropoff.
The Swedes actually did what he just described as a bad idea... and they built an empire with a slew of great victories. That's how inaccurate Euro musketeers generally were.
@@vanivanov9571 I get that combat accuracy is much lower, and yes, this is admitted in the video, complete with logs and firing range tests. I know nothing about the Swedish Empire or their military tactics; just by mentioning them you've demonstrated that you know more than I do on this topic! I guess my appreciation of the musket at long range comes from the fact that while the odds of being struck at maximum range were very low, they weren't zero. In the present day it's easy to disregard the musket as a weapon; but in the context of waging warfare with limited resources, it would be foolish to pass up the slightest advantage.
This was a really fascinating, gripping video. I especially love how you put the hit percentages into perspective (around 10 minutes into the video), with brutal descriptions of just how devastating it would be to a line of soldiers. "Only 10% accuracy" sounds a helluva lot more destructive when trying to imagine being on the receiving end of that fire.
Except you wouldn't. Combat accuracy is way less than paper target accuracy, he eventually admitted. I once saw a US study on how much less from the army, but I lost it and forget the dropoff. The Swedes actually did what he just described as a bad idea, rushing into oncoming fire... and they built an empire with a slew of great victories. That's how inaccurate Euro musketeers generally were. The Scots won many successes, too, relying on their broadswords and shields.
Excellent video Brandon. What modern people seem to miss is that 1800 solider was aiming at the enemy, not an individual. As a video game commentator says, "Throw enough shit at the wall, some of it is bound to stick". Armies of the time were throwing as many lead balls at the enemy as possible, like a modern shotgun.
I did just a Google search and Wikipedia does say the Brown Bess did have an effective range of 300m for area target. Which holds up with the Prussian tests (I know the Prussians didn’t use the Brown Bess, it was a British weapon). I appreciate they have that static, shows that a lot of this information is available and can be accurate. You just need to actually do some looking and know what data is actually useful.
A FAST 43 minutes Brandon! Another fine presentation! Anyway you look at it you DON't want to be downrange of any group of men slinging those big bullets at you! Whether the bullet hits you or the guy next to you makes no difference to that bullet! You, your buddy, or somebody's going down! Ouch! An additon to the concept of "area denial" or "firing on formations" that idea lasted right into the 20th Century. Many firearms enthusiasts look at World War One era rifles such as the British SMLE, the American 1903 Springfield, or the German 1898 Mauser and wonder why the rear sights have those extreme ranges indicated on them, in the case of the Springfield up to 2800 yards. Well, soldiers werent expected to hit an indiviual target at that range BUT they could (by volley firing) bring fire to bear on an enemy formation, either infantry or cavalry. Very important in those days of no field radios and limited field telephone usage. How often it was actually done is open to speculation though.
@@Materialist39 Right. The development of smokeless gunpowder and the high velocities it delivered was a real revolution in small arms which the militaries of the advanced nations were quick to take advantage of. The maximum practical lethal ranges of infantry small arms increased to ranges undreamed of in the past, amazingly so. However, those ranges proved to be WAY more than necessary, but that's another story.
It is nice that you cited percentages from modern conflicts. It is often said that, especially in the world wars, artillery was the king of killing. A critique to offer: I loved your live distance example. It was helpful. To exemplify this even more, could you consider a video with you and compatriots if available of an actual advance from 300 yards with a stopwatch timer and maybe a counter fire indicator, as we see you advance firing or at march. Couple it with the hypothetical casualties as you did briefly. That would be an awesome visual.
22:09 I think I commented this on other videos, but the Spanish 1801 infantry manual goes even further, and plans trainings for distances of 50 meters, 100 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters and 400 meters (a meter is about 1.1 yards). Only a few units were actually capable of firing at 400m, though (the Spanish Zayas division amongst them).
Also, it’s worthwhile to note that, outside of shoulder-to-shoulder fighting formations, the other guy gets a vote. It’s most obvious today in law enforcement officer involved shootings where 5 or 6 officers fire dozens of rounds altogether and make only a few hits on the person they’re shooting at. It’s fairly easy to shoot a perfect score on most law enforcement pistol qualifications (usually 50 shots altogether at ranges from 25 to 5 yards-some departments have harder qualifications) with a little practice, but officers’ accuracy drops under 50% in most shootings because the other guy can move suddenly and take cover whereas the paper target stays still.
@@dmman33 It's going to be more tangible and replayable. You will be able to progress faster and have more ways to win the game. There are many interesting ideas I intend to implement in this game. This game will be how Civ should have been. More diplomacy. More trade. A Civ that is smart enough NOT to risk a war because of more trade and diplomacy. A civilization that can remember your move and tactics in the game. And many many more features and ideas.
This, and then take into account the often comparison with the long bow. See how scrutinized the musket performance was by contemporary sources, versus the long bow. And finally realize, no, the musket was more accurate at range, the bow s just shrouded by myth of “skill”. Clear example? When Medieval Korea was invaded by Japan, they made painstaking note that their heavy recurves was outranged by japanese matchlocks.
The attitude towards musket accuracy may come from civilian hunters using modern smoothbore shotguns. The general rule of thumb for your average hunter is 50-60 yards for taking humane shots against white tail deer if you're using a conventional shotgun with nothing but a bead front sight (specialized slug guns with rifled barrels or chokes and conventional rifle sights can reach out to 100-120). But the key point here is a "humane shot" is intended to kill the deer in no more than 10-15 seconds so they don't have time to run away and get lost. For military purposes a hit doesn't have to be a quick kill so long as you take the soldier out of the fight. A soldier that was wounded in the arm or leg would fall out of the line to be treated so the aim doesn't have to be as precise.
I've been following you for years Brandon and I'd like to thank you because your channel is a bless for everybody interested in Musket era warfare like I am. I've been trying to put together a military flintlock fantasy story for a while now, and history, along with the info you have given me are truly helping and inspiring. Cheers from Italy.
Now imagine the even greater accuracy of the rifled muskets during the American Civil War but the same style of tactics, and you see why there were regiments routinely taking 60-70%+ casualties in one particular brutal fight.
I own a 44 caliber Kentucky Long Rifle that I've had since I was a child. The three mistakes modern marksmen make that have a dramatic effect on accuracy with a flint lock 1. Inconsistent powder. Powder that's been left in a horn too long tends to grind itself into a finer powder that burns faster and the finer grains settle to the bottom , so muzzle velocity changes as you use up the powder in the horn. 2. Inconsistent tamping. Ramming the ball in too tight or too loosely changes the muzzle velocity. You should always put the same amount of pressure on the ball. 3. Lock time. This is the time it takes from the time the sear releases on the trigger until the bullet leaves the barrel. On a modern hunting rifle that's about 4-7 milliseconds On a flintlock it's 45-90 milliseconds That's enough time for your body to move the barrel around after you squeeze the trigger. Most modern riflemen struggle to hold the rifle on target that long. Watching today's marksmen use a flintlock is like watching a Millennial trying to drive a car with a manual transmission. Now I was accurate out to 200 yards after a lot of practice, but I had to clean the barrel after every shot because fouling would prevent me from tamping the ball down consistently. I have been told that the military used undersized balls so they could get up to 10 shots before fouling made it difficult to push the ball all the way in.
Now at the US civil war rifled muskets and conical bullets became common, this increased effective ranges a lot and pretty much killed off line formations, rifles was more dangerous than cavalry, at this point you get charged by cavalry but you was screwed anyway :) You got trenches who was an thing during sieges since firearms became common but now it was an infantry tactic.
Very good video. Thank you also from adding pictures of 17th and 18th century fortresses to it. This were were build with the most advanced science and enginiering capacities of their time. The dimensions and measurement of walls, parapets and redoubts were calculated not only for the exchange of canon fire but also for the effective use of smoothbore muskets by common soldiers to defend the fortress. And also the most basic offensive tactics in a siege was to dig trenches to protect their own soldiers by musket fire from the walls and parapets which would be a useless work if smootbore muskets were really so useless.
It was shown since WWII that the natural way in which soldiers fight with firearms is to make noise at the enemy to the effect of "Go away!", and especially if the war is more political than cultural, soldiers tend towards not even engaging deadly force unless prompted by superiors, instinctively going to shouting and stone throwing as the first reaction to the presence of enemy who are not currently engaging. This inspired the Americans to develop a method of training to make soldiers instinctively fire rounds on target as the response to enemy presence. Considering this, how would you interpret data from earlier eras, especially the inconsistencies between sheet firing tests and actual battlefield results? Were soldiers shooting to kill the enemy during the era? Were they firing just because ordered to do so? Just firing with the internal intention of making the enemy go away? And how would you say the answers to each question intermingle?
You overstate your case. If a musket's accuracy of hitting a line is a certain percentage, you can't then take each volley fired at an approaching line for each distance and multiply it by the percentage. Because if some fall in the first far distance volley, then the line has been broken, so the second volley is less likely to hit targets.
An interesting book on this topic that addresses issues of accuracy from a different angle is "On Killing" by Dave Grossman. He asserts that it wasn't necessarily an accuracy issue, but an unwillingness to kill our fellow men by MOST other men. The shots fired high or low -he says- are deliberately inaccurate to appear to be following orders while knowing he isn't contributing kills himself.
I think the biggest thing that hindered long range shooting for soldiers was lock time. Flintlocks if badly tuned and with wet or bad quality gunpowder have very noticeable delay between pull of the trigger and a shot. People claim that invention of minie ball allowed the use of rifling on muskets which in turn allowed to have longer ranges of engagement. But i noticed that prior to flintlocks, majority of all matchlocks and wheellocks had rear sight and some even had peep sights. While vast majority of all military flintlocks didnt have them, and after adoption of caplock smoothbore muskets rear sights returned again. I once saw an article about prussians during napoleonic wars testing out small caliber smoothbore flintlocks with rear sights to see how long they could push fighting distance, but due to either their loss during war, supply issues with new caliber ball or some other reasons they didnt go all the way through with this concept. All this information leads me to believe that flintlocks are just not the best platform for long range shooting, unless you put rifling on top of it. Like with breechloading rifles (Ferguson, Crespi/Durs Egg, and Hall rifles) or like in examples of muzzleloding rifles (Kentucky, Baker and stutzen rifles).
The British had also really taken to the practice of "Volley fire" in 3 or 4 lines, they saw how it QUICKLY reduced the enemy numbers... probably the MAIN reason the Old Guard fled at Waterloo after the shock of seeing so many comrades falling down...
Actually not fully accurate. The Britain disliked the idea of multiple deep lines as it actually reduced the speed of fire (as troops having to crouch and reload and stand, and the drill to coordinate it well just slowed everything down). The British army was actually trained in 2 lines and in a firing pattern of platoon. Essentially each company would be split into two platoons and your 18/20 platoons would from both sides begin ripple firing into the centre two before repeating from the outside. This actually allowed for the continuous spring of fire you’d want as those on the flanks would have the 15-20 seconds to reload before the centre two finished and it would just ripple its way back down the line again.
The Middle Guard and not the Old Guard. The Old Guard were the two remaining squares of the French army that the Emperor had taken refuge inside before his departure from the battlefield. These squares were never broken and the British-Prussian cavalry stopped charging them, accepting that they did not know how to destroy them and then let them fall back in good order. I'm just restoring a little historical truth here, it does a lot of good sometimes.
Also volley fire has a brief pause for each unit to have some of their smoke clear somewhat and see where the enemy is. Accuracy is hitting the man aimed at. Effectiveness is hitting the enemy somewhere, even if not the man aimed at. Just as bayonet effectiveness is not how many are stabbed but how many run away.
Also the British under Wellington in the Peninsular War, partly due to manpower, fired from two ranks as opposed to three or four. The French advanced in columns towards the British lines, and the thin red line stood there and fired 4 shots per minute from two ranks. 120men, for example in two ranks puts down 60 rounds per volley as opposed to 40 in three ranks. Whilst in a minute the company got through 480 rounds, the impact of each volley would have been far greater.
It’s funny how military minds found out later in the twentieth century (especially after WW2) that most fire fights still occurred within 300 meters, similar ish range to a musket fire fight.
According to wikipedia The Effective Range for the Brown Bess Musket is: 100 yards for a point target (an individual) and 300 yards for an area target (the entire company). This is acceptable for gun that is unrifled. side note it can fire up 1200 yards but good luck hitting anything.
Hello, nice vid, 2 points from my side: 1/ being a Czech, the pronunciation of Chotusitz is "Khotusitz" 2/ 30:55 - the psychological factor of not shooting another human/living being is in fact VERY considerable. Fun test: if you only shot with any real (ie deadly) firearm only to common round targets so far, swap for targets with depicted humans (f.e. hostage-bad guy etc.). Spoiler alert - your efficiency will drop significantly at the start. On subconscious level, you are resilient to deliever the deadly blow. It usually takes 10+ rounds to start performing, ie convince yourself is safe and harmless to shoot that paper. And that is just subconscious... Ofc it is a completely different story with hardened veterans, but, aside of Napoleonic wars, there were not so many opportunities for armies to actually participate series of battles with the same units to grow some...
really liked the range demonstration on the road. What i would be interested in is the possibility of smoothbores to use buck and ball instead of only ball. how dioes that change the effectiveness and when did this ammunition start to be used ?
Another thing to take into consideration is people don't want to kill people. Early 1900s testing revealed that training accuracy and field accuracy are wildly different. At a range where say 70% accuracy was achieved you get maybe 2% accuracy in the field because aiming your gun at another human and pulling the trigger is extremely difficult especially if you've never done it before and even if you have it doesn't get much easier usually. It may sound like I'm pulling this out of my butt however I remember doing research into it from resources provided by Lindybeige.
7.7% is still a very valuable amount of hits. you're say a 30 man formation and turning your opposing formation into a 27 man formation in a swift stroke
The musket in that first test not hitting the exact man it was aimed at kinda proves the opposition’s point somewhat. Compared to contemporary weapons, they *are* inaccurate, and battle doctrine of the era reflects it. The range may be well beyond 100 yards but hitting a particular individual soldier beyond that is unlikely. So, on marksmanship alone, they had an effective range of perhaps 100 yards, but could be effectively deployed at further ranges with formations of infantry because of accuracy by volume. You can’t reliably hit a man that far away, but you *can* hit an army, and while a solitary soldier may struggle to hit you from that far away, an army certainly won’t. Someone from the enemy army could hit you, even if they weren’t aiming for you specifically, just because the volume of fire is so large.
I think hitting a white square canvas of 30x30 feet its far easier than hitting people. After all people have plenty of gaps among themselves and with the next soldier...bullets can pass through those gaps.
Very enlightening video. Not related to your main point exactly, but there's also run speed. A high school athlete can run 300 yards in 40 seconds. A soldier is probably college aged, but carrying stuff and possibly tired and hungry from the march. They might have to run up hill too. So 40-50s sounds reasonable to me. 3 shots a minute is one shot every 20s. So that means two shots before the charge reaches the shooters. Maybe one volley at 300 yards. Then they hold their fire till 100 yards then go for a second volley. Alternatively, if you are in command of the shooters and you know your troops load slow, they might only get one volley out. So you can tell them to hold their fire until it'll be more effective. So I think these two situations might be cases where commander yelling hold.
There is good evidence that musquets had much longer ranges than stated in modern texts... Fortification traces require musketry to cover the base and ladder of the assult on an adjacent bastion - and this is often 200m or so... though it can be shorter.
I was hoping to hear some information on manufacturing technology of the day. What kind of tolerances could you expect in the machining or lathing of barrels? How consistent was the black powder? How prone were the stocks to warping? How consistent was the lead shot?
It's like modern weapons. A study on the last war of Afganisthan demostrated that usually an american squad needed about 1200 rounds fired to hit an enemy. That means that modern weapons are inaccurate? I don´t think so. Excellent video.
I think rather than arguing men would have preferred not to kill and intentionally fired away from the enemy, which while possible is probably impossible to prove, we could instead focus on the idea of combat confusion. It is known that during the US civil war, numerous men had reloaded their guns multiple times and failed to fire between reloads. Rifles were recovered which had tacks of powder and bullet in the barrel. It isn't just smoke making it hard to see the enemy, its all the stress of combat hitting men and probably making it fairly hard for most shots to be made effectively. If its possible for battle confusion to cause men to not fire their weapons at all, then isn't it possible for men who do fire, to forget the necessary details and steps to fire their weapons in an effective manor? You can evidently get good hit rates at hundreds of yards when doing formation volleys against formation sized targets. The problem is clearly not the musket.
I have been told that they are inaccurate at longer ranges. I have not been told that soldiers did not aim. I will try to pay attention to this when Iook at stuff.
The name "Soldier King" (Soldatenkönig) is attached to Friedrich II.s father, Friedrich Wilhelm. Friedrich II himself preferred 'roi-philosophe', philosopher king. He would have been much displeased to be compared to his father, whom he hated. ;)
on the statistics of this battle where X bullets were fired for Y loss to the enemy therefore 0.77% precision (very very low precision) a detail may have been forgotten. how many of these shots were in reality not intended to hit any target but were just "suppression shots" or fired to just "scare" or to deceive the advancing forces and make them think that you were there 3 or 4 times more numerous on the side from which these shots are coming. in short, no need for precision on your shots but just tactics and/or strategy
Interestingly, the effective range of a the SA80 (L85A2) is 300yds. Only when used as a section weapon suppression fire, does it become effective up to 600yds.
Both modern and historical firefights tend to be around the same range, I think this has more to do with human capabilities to detect and see the enemy, aswel as to remain organized themselves. It's simply not practical to have a formation so loose, as not the be able to hear each other shouting or showing hand signals.
Ive shot all sorts of firearms, including smoothbores at rendezvous festivals. I can tell you for certain that no matter how you spin it, the smoothbore is indeed harder to hit a target with, even with modern iron sights like the ones ive shot. There simply isnt a comparison in my experience. Sure you can still use it effectively but its not the same.
You can hit with 50% accuracy a 30 ft by 30 ft square at 100 yards. So 100% accuracy with a 60 ft square. That's a 700+ MOA accuracy. Muskets are a target area weapon.
One thing we have to remember when talking about the tests done in the 18th century is their motivation. Why did they only test beyond 80 yards? Of course they knew that muskets were plenty accurate in that distance and after that they had trouble hitting. And they knew they had trouble at that distance because it was common to commence fire at large ranges, even doing prolonged firefights at those distances were common in the mid 18th century with little effect on each other. We know that many armies learned certain lessons from that and one was to not engage in those long range firefights anymore and to rely more on the bayonet, especially the austrians would develop the Stoßtaktik. On the other side, developments like the conical touchhole to improve reload time (you didnt need to prime anymore) were removed as they were bad for accuracy. The less than 1% casualties per shot fired really is telling as that also does include long and short range shots, long range shots having a far less hit probability than that 1% and of course far less than the period tests concluded.
I think there’s a bit of irony in using the phrase “hindsight is 20/20” in a video where people today have inaccurate views of the past. Great and informative video though! And well, to my initial comment, a great explanation on how people’s contemporary expectations out of firearms bias them to how older firearms worked/should work.
I think the problem lies not in the “accuracy” of the weapon, but the concept of the target. Modern shooters have weapons that are far more precise than the old black powder weapons, so we consider the target the item (person) we are shooting at. What you are describing is the target isn’t the individual, but the Formation. As an individual target, the smooth bore musket has an effect range depending upon shooter of 75-125 yds. As a formation target your arguments here are perfectly valid. So it isn’t “accuracy” but concept of target that is ….inaccurate.
I havent watched the video yet but I've always thought that they were considered inaccurate mainly due to lack of rifling and lack of a rear sight to line up your firearm. Put that together with the shaking from adrenaline and it might seem like it would be super inaccurate.
As long as you are hitting their block of men, yeah you are on target. Precise accuracy is irrelevant, results are what you look for in warfare. It reminds me of the account given by a ww2 veteran who my father knew. He was in a machinegun company in North Africa. Their unit engaged a convoy of German trucks that were carrying troops to the front, the trucks being 4 or so kilometres distant from the machinegunners. Having calculated the fall of shot and cone of spread for their vickers machineguns they opened up at a high trajectory. They probably fired a lot of bullets that landed on desert floor neither hitting lorry nor soldier , but out of 5 trucks filled with people nothing survived the rain of lead.
When I think of the inaccuracy of muskets, I don't think of the European style volley fire, which is exactly what muskets were designed for. I think of 1 man firing 1 musket at 1 mansized target. I don't think even David Crockett could have picked up a Brown Bess and picked off a specific man at 300 yards.
in modern wars enemies are behind cover so the comparison is not really fair. After this much appreciated attempt to explain why people considered shooting at each other in lines as a suitable way to win wars, I understood that we have no idea why. Muskets being very inaccurate at >100m seemed reasonable, but everybody seems to observe otherwise. All other explanations (smoke on the battlefield, lack of training) might have some effect, but I find it hard to believe that they could account for a reduction of the accuracy of 100 times.
The theory that these men stood in lines across from one another and shot one another at 80 yards is a fucking loose yarn. Cover, concealment and distance was used quite often.
The historical examples of the use of "point blank" do not seem to match the historical definition. The definition suggest a projectile leaving the muzzle perfectly parallel to the ground, being that distance before the effect of gravity is reasonably noticeable(this will be familiar to anyone who's taken Newtonian physics), AKA the pure straight "absolute drop" in a ballistics calculator. Given the muzzle velocity of the ball, there's no way it's 300 yrds, without working out the equation, and assuming that a reasonably noticeable drop due to gravity is 12in(given the context), it should be roughly, 80-ish yrds for a 12in absolute drop. The historical examples seem to match the definition of "a distance which the projectile does not rise above or drop below the size of the target". So were there multiple definitions at the time, or...?
I can't help but think about that anti 2A commercial were a guy walks into an office with a musket and gets within 20ft of another guy. Shoots and MISSES! Yeah NO! that guy is gone.
Ok, here my 2 cents the equipment they had at the time was the best of the time. A case in point is the Civil War basically the same tactics were used but different Equipment rifled muskets & mini balls used in Revolutionary War-type tactics. the outcome was far greater than expected.
Please answer. Why did they use musket balls? They already knew pointed artillery shapes even from ancient times. I get that cannon balls bounced, but what was the point of shooting a ball? Is it that without rifling a ball fired best? That the benefits of a pointed shape can’t be taken advantage of without rifling? And early semi automatic mechanism that even predate america were explored but never really caught on because of cost and not enough gunsmiths that knew how to work on them existed. Why wasn’t that pushed by some crown somewhere. Train a bunch of smiths to work on guns like those?
Very interesting on a subject that, as a game developer, has puzzled me for some time. Still one question on the 600,000 rounds fired at Chotusitz. How did the Prussians determine this number? What I mean with that question is whether there is evidence that all of these were actually fired in anger or… Alternatively, I can imagine they checked the supplies before-after and counted the difference. In other words, are we looking at the number of rounds having been issued or indeed those fired?
What I am trying to say is that before the battle each musketeer starts with a known amount of cartridges. In addition they will know the amounts in the various caissons, etc. That’s what they begin with. My question is on at the end of the battle. Assume a musketeer that has fired only halve his number of cartridges, for whatever reason. How did they ascertain that for all musketeers? What about those that fell? Etc… Did they ask each and every one or…? I am curious how exactly the 600,000 was determined…
Shooting from the bench should provide the ideal grouping as far as accuracy is concerned. The accuracy of muskets is actually worse than I expected, and if you compare it to the rifles of today (or even the rifles of the day) that is abysmal. To add to this, you may be firing on cavalry (more to hit but moving fast) or artillery (yeah, your not hitting anything). Your kills per round are then dependant on enemy dispersion. Meanwhile with a British carbine rifle, Thomas Plunkett killed two french officers in a supine firing position at around 500 yards during the Peninsular War. With a modern scoped rifle and two weeks of training, most people can make that shot easily, and this claim comes from personal experience. Bear in mind, I am not talking about just hitting a person, but hitting a 12 to 18 inch center of mass target. History supports this, as when ammo has been scarce, in order to not waste it, engagement distances were shortened such as at the Battle of Breed's/Bunker Hill. It is also supported inasmuch as muskets were phased out in support of rifles. Muskets stayed around as long as they did because they were cheaper to produce at military numbers. This doesn't mean that muskets were ineffective, it just means that there were strategic and tactical considerations that needed to be taken into account when ordering a volley above what existed for rifles of the time. Accuracy and range would also vary based on the barrel length, which was different for different countries/times.
So I guess muskets being inaccurate to a larger degree than what can be accounted for by only the design would be because many soldiers had very little practice and in the heat of combat often fired low. Also maybe soldiers wouldn’t clean their muskets well enough before a battle after campaigning for a while so you would have stuff in there making it worse. Because in some way they are accurate while also being very inaccurate as things like he carolean tactics worked especially against non elite units
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Hey Barndon
You once mentioned that musket men had a tendency to shot too high or too low, where would you say is a good point to aim?
What part of the opponent makes for the ideal aiming spot?
I would also add that hopefully your side brought artillery and cavalry. That would be very useful for making sure they do what you want them to do. Gustavus Adolphus was known for his artillery tactics and using them to force the battle to commence on his terms.
Wars are fought with a myriad of weapons to benefit from the strengths of each and minimize their drawbacks. Cavalry can be used to harass supply lines. Soldiers carry spades with then so they can dig trenches everywhere. Cannons destroy strongpoints, their artillery, and their cavalry too and generally reduce their number. You can use your marksmen with rifles to destroy communications and runners. You don't fight battles like this unless it is necessary and other ideas won't net the results you need.
Hey, the Normany landings only killed 7% of the Americans who hit Omaha beach, do we have any volunteers to go back in time and give it a try? The First World War only killed one in eight soldiers in the British army, but I rarely hear anyone say they wish they were in the British trenches in 1917.
10% accuracy at a 30x30 foot target at 200 yards? That's atrociously bad. That's like the old cn't hit the side of a barn line IRL.
It would also be worth considering artillery rounds are against men in trenches... if you're out in the open and well spotted, they're extremely accurate and deadly. It's disingenuous as heck to suggest muskets match modern weaponry's accuracy at all. And if you're saying they are indeed horribly niaccuracte comparedto modern expectaions... then why did you act like people were mistaken at all? They're not.
I feel like the biggest reason people believe muskets aren’t accurate is the view that its purpose is to hit an individual soldier
Yeah, the fact it's horribly inaccurate by today's standards leads to jokes about it being horribly inaccurate by today's standard. Except the Japanese, who unlike the malnourished European conscripts, were hitting single man targets in the Imjinwaeran.
@@vanivanov9571 That why they lost?
@vanivanov9571 "malnourished European conscripts" perpetuating a myth while supposedly debunking myth, ironic isn’t it
@@vanivanov9571 Have you been to a public range lately? The skill level of most people with modern two thousand plus dollar rifles all tac'ed out like it's ready for a modern top teir operator mission - is nothing short of laughable. Most modern shooters ain't hitting shit either.
Its purpose was to hit a group of soldiers because it was INCAPABLE of hitting a single soldier. That's inaccurate. That is an inaccurate weapon. Even in its own day it was inaccurate.
I knew a guy in the army who, on paper, had a 200% accuracy with his rifle in a marksman test. 24 hits with 12 shots. Now, as these tests were conducted some 30 people at a time, and several people next to him had already passed their tests, it's possible they decided to help a buddy out and fire a few rounds into his target. But we'll never know for sure...
I helped my buddy out once or twice. Fatigue is real.
The explanation is very simple, 1 or 2 of the other shooters was shooting at the same target. It happens easily when there is 30 targets and you are miscalculating what to shoot at by 1 count. Been there done that myself during practice ...
I had 23 hits on a 10 shot practice once. The fun thing was that we were supposed to sight our rifles based on that and none of the three of us who shot at my target seemed to be particularly good shooters.
And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13
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-Acts 3:19
If are in North America, please go check out any of the churches available to you: PCA, OPC, Rpcna/Rpc, Urcna, or a canrc church
(These are conservative and actual Presbyterian churches)
If you can’t find one of the conservative presby churches then, maybe a Lcms or Wels Lutheran church.
If you are Scottish, I recommend the Free Church of Scotland and the APC
(Different from the Church of Scotland)
If you are English I recommend the Free Church of England.
(Different from the Church of England)
Online you can look up church finders for each of the groups and it will show you locations.
@@romaliop🐪
In regards to the shots fired to kills scored ratio in modern wars, most rapid fire weapons aren't meant to inflict casualties, they're meant to force the enemy to keep their heads down.
That's why his example was with a single shot cartridge gun used against the Zulu.
It's largely the same during this period as well.
Soldiers were trained to fire by sections, rather than along the entire line, in order to keep up a continuous fire. After the first couple hundred shots, the field was covered in smoke, making the individual shot nearly impossible to aim, but fire on they would, in order to prevent the enemy from advancing against them.
They were putting up suppressive fire.
This is true in some but not all cases. Room clearing would be a case where accuracy matters. It's a complicated topic. Doctrine varies from force to force, and even then, battlefield practices vary from doctrine.
In the US, the doctrine is to suppress the enemy with small arms fire and call in artillery or air support to take them out. This is especially true when you encounter a stubbornly dug in enemy.
@@Riceball01not necessarily true. Calling for local fire like mortars would be pretty standard, but arty and air would only be for major enemy positions or emergency situations like ambushes.
In the smaller scale scenarios, after fire superiority (aka suppression) is achieved, a section of the assaulting unit (or another whole platoon, depending on the scale of the assault) will break off and flank the enemy, hitting them from an angle that negates their cover/concealment, while they are tied down.
Artillery and air support is expensive and take time to arrive, it is usually much more expedient for the forces on the ground to handle buisness themselves, especially considering doctrine insists that we only ever attack a position with a 3-1 advantage or better.
The example of the advancing line also makes another point: if muskets weren’t effective until they were within bayonetting range, pikes would have remained the predominant weapon well into the 19th century.
Hello Brandon. You may remember me talking about spreadsheets on a live stream and how I did a science degree. I have seen more data than I could have ever imagined. I was dying for you to get to the point that the weapon was fit for purpose.
I saw a video before from Royal Armouries about muskets versus the new rifles coming in about the time of Crimea War, that was also very interesting.
One thing not mentioned is the eyesight of the soldiers. There'd be a whole lot of variability
I think this adequately explains the musket's effectiveness, despite having a less-than-stellar accuracy. I loved the first marching line example; I'd be terrified to see ten people out of 100 either dead or wounded in an instant. And that's just the first volley at 300 yards.
Except you wouldn't. Combat accuracy is way less than paper target accuracy, he eventually admitted. I once saw a US study on how much less from the army, but I lost it and forget the dropoff.
The Swedes actually did what he just described as a bad idea... and they built an empire with a slew of great victories. That's how inaccurate Euro musketeers generally were.
@@vanivanov9571 I get that combat accuracy is much lower, and yes, this is admitted in the video, complete with logs and firing range tests. I know nothing about the Swedish Empire or their military tactics; just by mentioning them you've demonstrated that you know more than I do on this topic!
I guess my appreciation of the musket at long range comes from the fact that while the odds of being struck at maximum range were very low, they weren't zero. In the present day it's easy to disregard the musket as a weapon; but in the context of waging warfare with limited resources, it would be foolish to pass up the slightest advantage.
As said in the video, they probably wouldn’t usually fire all at once
With reference to the definition of 'point blank range', HMS Rodney's 16" guns apparently fired on a flat trajectory at a little over 3,000 yards.
Yea and that’s a cannon not a small arm
@@tillercaesar-kq4outhe term is not exclusive to small arms.
This was a really fascinating, gripping video. I especially love how you put the hit percentages into perspective (around 10 minutes into the video), with brutal descriptions of just how devastating it would be to a line of soldiers. "Only 10% accuracy" sounds a helluva lot more destructive when trying to imagine being on the receiving end of that fire.
Except you wouldn't. Combat accuracy is way less than paper target accuracy, he eventually admitted. I once saw a US study on how much less from the army, but I lost it and forget the dropoff.
The Swedes actually did what he just described as a bad idea, rushing into oncoming fire... and they built an empire with a slew of great victories. That's how inaccurate Euro musketeers generally were. The Scots won many successes, too, relying on their broadswords and shields.
@@vanivanov9571”Waah waah waah his video sucks and I’m going to copy and paste this comment everywhere because it’s so bad!1!1!1! Waah waah!”
Excellent video Brandon. What modern people seem to miss is that 1800 solider was aiming at the enemy, not an individual. As a video game commentator says, "Throw enough shit at the wall, some of it is bound to stick". Armies of the time were throwing as many lead balls at the enemy as possible, like a modern shotgun.
I did just a Google search and Wikipedia does say the Brown Bess did have an effective range of 300m for area target. Which holds up with the Prussian tests (I know the Prussians didn’t use the Brown Bess, it was a British weapon). I appreciate they have that static, shows that a lot of this information is available and can be accurate. You just need to actually do some looking and know what data is actually useful.
A FAST 43 minutes Brandon! Another fine presentation!
Anyway you look at it you DON't want to be downrange of any group of men slinging those big bullets at you! Whether the bullet hits you or the guy next to you makes no difference to that bullet! You, your buddy, or somebody's going down! Ouch!
An additon to the concept of "area denial" or "firing on formations" that idea lasted right into the 20th Century. Many firearms enthusiasts look at World War One era rifles such as the British SMLE, the American 1903 Springfield, or the German 1898 Mauser and wonder why the rear sights have those extreme ranges indicated on them, in the case of the Springfield up to 2800 yards. Well, soldiers werent expected to hit an indiviual target at that range BUT they could (by volley firing) bring fire to bear on an enemy formation, either infantry or cavalry. Very important in those days of no field radios and limited field telephone usage. How often it was actually done is open to speculation though.
It’s fascinating how WWI was the high water mark for what the expected infantry small arms combat ranges were.
@@Materialist39 Right. The development of smokeless gunpowder and the high velocities it delivered was a real revolution in small arms which the militaries of the advanced nations were quick to take advantage of. The maximum practical lethal ranges of infantry small arms increased to ranges undreamed of in the past, amazingly so.
However, those ranges proved to be WAY more than necessary, but that's another story.
It is nice that you cited percentages from modern conflicts. It is often said that, especially in the world wars, artillery was the king of killing.
A critique to offer: I loved your live distance example. It was helpful. To exemplify this even more, could you consider a video with you and compatriots if available of an actual advance from 300 yards with a stopwatch timer and maybe a counter fire indicator, as we see you advance firing or at march. Couple it with the hypothetical casualties as you did briefly. That would be an awesome visual.
22:09 I think I commented this on other videos, but the Spanish 1801 infantry manual goes even further, and plans trainings for distances of 50 meters, 100 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters and 400 meters (a meter is about 1.1 yards). Only a few units were actually capable of firing at 400m, though (the Spanish Zayas division amongst them).
Right, you often train for more than you actually expect to achieve.
Hey nice long shot showing the distances they would use, you did nice on that!
Also, it’s worthwhile to note that, outside of shoulder-to-shoulder fighting formations, the other guy gets a vote. It’s most obvious today in law enforcement officer involved shootings where 5 or 6 officers fire dozens of rounds altogether and make only a few hits on the person they’re shooting at. It’s fairly easy to shoot a perfect score on most law enforcement pistol qualifications (usually 50 shots altogether at ranges from 25 to 5 yards-some departments have harder qualifications) with a little practice, but officers’ accuracy drops under 50% in most shootings because the other guy can move suddenly and take cover whereas the paper target stays still.
Just what I need.
I am developing a Civ like video game and this video is very useful.
Would love to hear more about the game!
@@dmman33
It's going to be more tangible and replayable.
You will be able to progress faster and have more ways to win the game.
There are many interesting ideas I intend to implement in this game.
This game will be how Civ should have been.
More diplomacy.
More trade.
A Civ that is smart enough NOT to risk a war because of more trade and diplomacy.
A civilization that can remember your move and tactics in the game.
And many many more features and ideas.
This, and then take into account the often comparison with the long bow. See how scrutinized the musket performance was by contemporary sources, versus the long bow.
And finally realize, no, the musket was more accurate at range, the bow s just shrouded by myth of “skill”.
Clear example? When Medieval Korea was invaded by Japan, they made painstaking note that their heavy recurves was outranged by japanese matchlocks.
Too be fair some Japanese matchlocks were meant for long range engagements but most were short ranged weapons.
Bow where often derided as useless against armour and by the 1500's cheap plate armour was every where in Europe.
The attitude towards musket accuracy may come from civilian hunters using modern smoothbore shotguns. The general rule of thumb for your average hunter is 50-60 yards for taking humane shots against white tail deer if you're using a conventional shotgun with nothing but a bead front sight (specialized slug guns with rifled barrels or chokes and conventional rifle sights can reach out to 100-120). But the key point here is a "humane shot" is intended to kill the deer in no more than 10-15 seconds so they don't have time to run away and get lost.
For military purposes a hit doesn't have to be a quick kill so long as you take the soldier out of the fight. A soldier that was wounded in the arm or leg would fall out of the line to be treated so the aim doesn't have to be as precise.
The British light companies were so deadly accurate that the Americans feared them as much as their own riflemen.
I've been following you for years Brandon and I'd like to thank you because your channel is a bless for everybody interested in Musket era warfare like I am. I've been trying to put together a military flintlock fantasy story for a while now, and history, along with the info you have given me are truly helping and inspiring.
Cheers from Italy.
I think the (duelist1954) hade better results !
Now imagine the even greater accuracy of the rifled muskets during the American Civil War but the same style of tactics, and you see why there were regiments routinely taking 60-70%+ casualties in one particular brutal fight.
I own a 44 caliber Kentucky Long Rifle that I've had since I was a child.
The three mistakes modern marksmen make that have a dramatic effect on accuracy with a flint lock
1. Inconsistent powder.
Powder that's been left in a horn too long tends to grind itself into a finer powder that burns faster and the finer grains settle to the bottom , so muzzle velocity changes as you use up the powder in the horn.
2. Inconsistent tamping.
Ramming the ball in too tight or too loosely changes the muzzle velocity.
You should always put the same amount of pressure on the ball.
3. Lock time.
This is the time it takes from the time the sear releases on the trigger until the bullet leaves the barrel.
On a modern hunting rifle that's about 4-7 milliseconds
On a flintlock it's 45-90 milliseconds
That's enough time for your body to move the barrel around after you squeeze the trigger.
Most modern riflemen struggle to hold the rifle on target that long.
Watching today's marksmen use a flintlock is like watching a Millennial trying to drive a car with a manual transmission.
Now I was accurate out to 200 yards after a lot of practice, but I had to clean the barrel after every shot because fouling would prevent me from tamping the ball down consistently.
I have been told that the military used undersized balls so they could get up to 10 shots before fouling made it difficult to push the ball all the way in.
Musket was a first weapon that consistentlyand reliably punched trough plate armor.
Now at the US civil war rifled muskets and conical bullets became common, this increased effective ranges a lot and pretty much killed off line formations, rifles was more dangerous than cavalry, at this point you get charged by cavalry but you was screwed anyway :)
You got trenches who was an thing during sieges since firearms became common but now it was an infantry tactic.
Very good video. Thank you also from adding pictures of 17th and 18th century fortresses to it. This were were build with the most advanced science and enginiering capacities of their time. The dimensions and measurement of walls, parapets and redoubts were calculated not only for the exchange of canon fire but also for the effective use of smoothbore muskets by common soldiers to defend the fortress. And also the most basic offensive tactics in a siege was to dig trenches to protect their own soldiers by musket fire from the walls and parapets which would be a useless work if smootbore muskets were really so useless.
It was shown since WWII that the natural way in which soldiers fight with firearms is to make noise at the enemy to the effect of "Go away!", and especially if the war is more political than cultural, soldiers tend towards not even engaging deadly force unless prompted by superiors, instinctively going to shouting and stone throwing as the first reaction to the presence of enemy who are not currently engaging. This inspired the Americans to develop a method of training to make soldiers instinctively fire rounds on target as the response to enemy presence.
Considering this, how would you interpret data from earlier eras, especially the inconsistencies between sheet firing tests and actual battlefield results?
Were soldiers shooting to kill the enemy during the era? Were they firing just because ordered to do so? Just firing with the internal intention of making the enemy go away? And how would you say the answers to each question intermingle?
You overstate your case. If a musket's accuracy of hitting a line is a certain percentage, you can't then take each volley fired at an approaching line for each distance and multiply it by the percentage. Because if some fall in the first far distance volley, then the line has been broken, so the second volley is less likely to hit targets.
An interesting book on this topic that addresses issues of accuracy from a different angle is "On Killing" by Dave Grossman. He asserts that it wasn't necessarily an accuracy issue, but an unwillingness to kill our fellow men by MOST other men. The shots fired high or low -he says- are deliberately inaccurate to appear to be following orders while knowing he isn't contributing kills himself.
"Our arrows will blot out the sun."
"Lol bro ur gonna miss."
I think the biggest thing that hindered long range shooting for soldiers was lock time. Flintlocks if badly tuned and with wet or bad quality gunpowder have very noticeable delay between pull of the trigger and a shot.
People claim that invention of minie ball allowed the use of rifling on muskets which in turn allowed to have longer ranges of engagement. But i noticed that prior to flintlocks, majority of all matchlocks and wheellocks had rear sight and some even had peep sights. While vast majority of all military flintlocks didnt have them, and after adoption of caplock smoothbore muskets rear sights returned again.
I once saw an article about prussians during napoleonic wars testing out small caliber smoothbore flintlocks with rear sights to see how long they could push fighting distance, but due to either their loss during war, supply issues with new caliber ball or some other reasons they didnt go all the way through with this concept.
All this information leads me to believe that flintlocks are just not the best platform for long range shooting, unless you put rifling on top of it. Like with breechloading rifles (Ferguson, Crespi/Durs Egg, and Hall rifles) or like in examples of muzzleloding rifles (Kentucky, Baker and stutzen rifles).
The British had also really taken to the practice of "Volley fire" in 3 or 4 lines, they saw how it QUICKLY reduced the enemy numbers... probably the MAIN reason the Old Guard fled at Waterloo after the shock of seeing so many comrades falling down...
Actually not fully accurate. The Britain disliked the idea of multiple deep lines as it actually reduced the speed of fire (as troops having to crouch and reload and stand, and the drill to coordinate it well just slowed everything down).
The British army was actually trained in 2 lines and in a firing pattern of platoon.
Essentially each company would be split into two platoons and your 18/20 platoons would from both sides begin ripple firing into the centre two before repeating from the outside. This actually allowed for the continuous spring of fire you’d want as those on the flanks would have the 15-20 seconds to reload before the centre two finished and it would just ripple its way back down the line again.
The Middle Guard and not the Old Guard. The Old Guard were the two remaining squares of the French army that the Emperor had taken refuge inside before his departure from the battlefield. These squares were never broken and the British-Prussian cavalry stopped charging them, accepting that they did not know how to destroy them and then let them fall back in good order. I'm just restoring a little historical truth here, it does a lot of good sometimes.
Also volley fire has a brief pause for each unit to have some of their smoke clear somewhat and see where the enemy is. Accuracy is hitting the man aimed at. Effectiveness is hitting the enemy somewhere, even if not the man aimed at. Just as bayonet effectiveness is not how many are stabbed but how many run away.
Also the British under Wellington in the Peninsular War, partly due to manpower, fired from two ranks as opposed to three or four. The French advanced in columns towards the British lines, and the thin red line stood there and fired 4 shots per minute from two ranks. 120men, for example in two ranks puts down 60 rounds per volley as opposed to 40 in three ranks. Whilst in a minute the company got through 480 rounds, the impact of each volley would have been far greater.
@@peterbray5383 Good point!
The first part makes me want to see you re-enact Full Metal Jacket's rifleman's creed. THIS IS MY MUSKET. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT BUT THIS ONE IS MINE.
It’s funny how military minds found out later in the twentieth century (especially after WW2) that most fire fights still occurred within 300 meters, similar ish range to a musket fire fight.
According to wikipedia The Effective Range for the Brown Bess Musket is: 100 yards for a point target (an individual) and 300 yards for an area target (the entire company). This is acceptable for gun that is unrifled. side note it can fire up 1200 yards but good luck hitting anything.
put a giant telescope on the gun, that will increase accuracy
I almost had a heart attack when I saw that in Napoleon
Also look at a infantry square formed solid, they were nearly immune to being over run by cavalry all due to a musket and bayonet
Hello, nice vid, 2 points from my side: 1/ being a Czech, the pronunciation of Chotusitz is "Khotusitz" 2/ 30:55 - the psychological factor of not shooting another human/living being is in fact VERY considerable. Fun test: if you only shot with any real (ie deadly) firearm only to common round targets so far, swap for targets with depicted humans (f.e. hostage-bad guy etc.). Spoiler alert - your efficiency will drop significantly at the start. On subconscious level, you are resilient to deliever the deadly blow. It usually takes 10+ rounds to start performing, ie convince yourself is safe and harmless to shoot that paper. And that is just subconscious... Ofc it is a completely different story with hardened veterans, but, aside of Napoleonic wars, there were not so many opportunities for armies to actually participate series of battles with the same units to grow some...
This was a very good video! Thanks Brandon!
really liked the range demonstration on the road. What i would be interested in is the possibility of smoothbores to use buck and ball instead of only ball. how dioes that change the effectiveness and when did this ammunition start to be used ?
As usual, Brandon’s video makes me FEEL like a 18th century soldier!
Thank you for these insights. It was, as always, very enlightening for me.
Being on the receiving end of bullets; 300 yards is and will always be, "Oh Shit!" territory.
Another thing to take into consideration is people don't want to kill people. Early 1900s testing revealed that training accuracy and field accuracy are wildly different. At a range where say 70% accuracy was achieved you get maybe 2% accuracy in the field because aiming your gun at another human and pulling the trigger is extremely difficult especially if you've never done it before and even if you have it doesn't get much easier usually. It may sound like I'm pulling this out of my butt however I remember doing research into it from resources provided by Lindybeige.
7.7% is still a very valuable amount of hits. you're say a 30 man formation and turning your opposing formation into a 27 man formation in a swift stroke
The musket in that first test not hitting the exact man it was aimed at kinda proves the opposition’s point somewhat. Compared to contemporary weapons, they *are* inaccurate, and battle doctrine of the era reflects it. The range may be well beyond 100 yards but hitting a particular individual soldier beyond that is unlikely. So, on marksmanship alone, they had an effective range of perhaps 100 yards, but could be effectively deployed at further ranges with formations of infantry because of accuracy by volume. You can’t reliably hit a man that far away, but you *can* hit an army, and while a solitary soldier may struggle to hit you from that far away, an army certainly won’t. Someone from the enemy army could hit you, even if they weren’t aiming for you specifically, just because the volume of fire is so large.
An interesting addendum to this might be some discourse on the "Highland Charge" acting as the "Picard Maneuver" of its day.
36:16 Ironically that's what is currently called "effective range".
I think hitting a white square canvas of 30x30 feet its far easier than hitting people. After all people have plenty of gaps among themselves and with the next soldier...bullets can pass through those gaps.
Very enlightening video.
Not related to your main point exactly, but there's also run speed. A high school athlete can run 300 yards in 40 seconds. A soldier is probably college aged, but carrying stuff and possibly tired and hungry from the march. They might have to run up hill too. So 40-50s sounds reasonable to me.
3 shots a minute is one shot every 20s. So that means two shots before the charge reaches the shooters. Maybe one volley at 300 yards. Then they hold their fire till 100 yards then go for a second volley.
Alternatively, if you are in command of the shooters and you know your troops load slow, they might only get one volley out. So you can tell them to hold their fire until it'll be more effective.
So I think these two situations might be cases where commander yelling hold.
There is good evidence that musquets had much longer ranges than stated in modern texts...
Fortification traces require musketry to cover the base and ladder of the assult on an adjacent bastion - and this is often 200m or so... though it can be shorter.
I was hoping to hear some information on manufacturing technology of the day. What kind of tolerances could you expect in the machining or lathing of barrels? How consistent was the black powder? How prone were the stocks to warping? How consistent was the lead shot?
It's like modern weapons. A study on the last war of Afganisthan demostrated that usually an american squad needed about 1200 rounds fired to hit an enemy. That means that modern weapons are inaccurate? I don´t think so. Excellent video.
I think rather than arguing men would have preferred not to kill and intentionally fired away from the enemy, which while possible is probably impossible to prove, we could instead focus on the idea of combat confusion. It is known that during the US civil war, numerous men had reloaded their guns multiple times and failed to fire between reloads. Rifles were recovered which had tacks of powder and bullet in the barrel.
It isn't just smoke making it hard to see the enemy, its all the stress of combat hitting men and probably making it fairly hard for most shots to be made effectively. If its possible for battle confusion to cause men to not fire their weapons at all, then isn't it possible for men who do fire, to forget the necessary details and steps to fire their weapons in an effective manor?
You can evidently get good hit rates at hundreds of yards when doing formation volleys against formation sized targets. The problem is clearly not the musket.
Basically what I expected. Accuracy through volume. It's not an accurate weapon platform.
I have been told that they are inaccurate at longer ranges. I have not been told that soldiers did not aim. I will try to pay attention to this when Iook at stuff.
The name "Soldier King" (Soldatenkönig) is attached to Friedrich II.s father, Friedrich Wilhelm. Friedrich II himself preferred 'roi-philosophe', philosopher king. He would have been much displeased to be compared to his father, whom he hated. ;)
on the statistics of this battle where X bullets were fired for Y loss to the enemy therefore 0.77% precision (very very low precision)
a detail may have been forgotten.
how many of these shots were in reality not intended to hit any target but were just "suppression shots" or fired to just "scare" or to deceive the advancing forces and make them think that you were there 3 or 4 times more numerous on the side from which these shots are coming.
in short, no need for precision on your shots but just tactics and/or strategy
Interestingly, the effective range of a the SA80 (L85A2) is 300yds. Only when used as a section weapon suppression fire, does it become effective up to 600yds.
Both modern and historical firefights tend to be around the same range, I think this has more to do with human capabilities to detect and see the enemy, aswel as to remain organized themselves. It's simply not practical to have a formation so loose, as not the be able to hear each other shouting or showing hand signals.
Ive shot all sorts of firearms, including smoothbores at rendezvous festivals. I can tell you for certain that no matter how you spin it, the smoothbore is indeed harder to hit a target with, even with modern iron sights like the ones ive shot. There simply isnt a comparison in my experience. Sure you can still use it effectively but its not the same.
You can hit with 50% accuracy a 30 ft by 30 ft square at 100 yards. So 100% accuracy with a 60 ft square. That's a 700+ MOA accuracy. Muskets are a target area weapon.
This really does make me want to " "own a musket for home defense."
One thing we have to remember when talking about the tests done in the 18th century is their motivation. Why did they only test beyond 80 yards? Of course they knew that muskets were plenty accurate in that distance and after that they had trouble hitting. And they knew they had trouble at that distance because it was common to commence fire at large ranges, even doing prolonged firefights at those distances were common in the mid 18th century with little effect on each other. We know that many armies learned certain lessons from that and one was to not engage in those long range firefights anymore and to rely more on the bayonet, especially the austrians would develop the Stoßtaktik. On the other side, developments like the conical touchhole to improve reload time (you didnt need to prime anymore) were removed as they were bad for accuracy. The less than 1% casualties per shot fired really is telling as that also does include long and short range shots, long range shots having a far less hit probability than that 1% and of course far less than the period tests concluded.
Been looking forward to this one.
Very good and informative video, again. Now i have to go to the range with my son :D
I think there’s a bit of irony in using the phrase “hindsight is 20/20” in a video where people today have inaccurate views of the past.
Great and informative video though! And well, to my initial comment, a great explanation on how people’s contemporary expectations out of firearms bias them to how older firearms worked/should work.
I think the problem lies not in the “accuracy” of the weapon, but the concept of the target. Modern shooters have weapons that are far more precise than the old black powder weapons, so we consider the target the item (person) we are shooting at. What you are describing is the target isn’t the individual, but the Formation. As an individual target, the smooth bore musket has an effect range depending upon shooter of 75-125 yds. As a formation target your arguments here are perfectly valid. So it isn’t “accuracy” but concept of target that is ….inaccurate.
I like you idea of showing the loss as they walk forward great vedio
Thank you
I havent watched the video yet but I've always thought that they were considered inaccurate mainly due to lack of rifling and lack of a rear sight to line up your firearm. Put that together with the shaking from adrenaline and it might seem like it would be super inaccurate.
Not depicted in the older tests I'm guessing: Smoke and terror
As long as you are hitting their block of men, yeah you are on target.
Precise accuracy is irrelevant, results are what you look for in warfare. It reminds me of the account given by a ww2 veteran who my father knew. He was in a machinegun company in North Africa. Their unit engaged a convoy of German trucks that were carrying troops to the front, the trucks being 4 or so kilometres distant from the machinegunners. Having calculated the fall of shot and cone of spread for their vickers machineguns they opened up at a high trajectory.
They probably fired a lot of bullets that landed on desert floor neither hitting lorry nor soldier , but out of 5 trucks filled with people nothing survived the rain of lead.
At 133 yards, a third of fired rounds managed to hit a 100 x 6 foot square... I am unimpressed.
When I think of the inaccuracy of muskets, I don't think of the European style volley fire, which is exactly what muskets were designed for. I think of 1 man firing 1 musket at 1 mansized target.
I don't think even David Crockett could have picked up a Brown Bess and picked off a specific man at 300 yards.
in modern wars enemies are behind cover so the comparison is not really fair. After this much appreciated attempt to explain why people considered shooting at each other in lines as a suitable way to win wars, I understood that we have no idea why. Muskets being very inaccurate at >100m seemed reasonable, but everybody seems to observe otherwise. All other explanations (smoke on the battlefield, lack of training) might have some effect, but I find it hard to believe that they could account for a reduction of the accuracy of 100 times.
Thank you sir I learned something today
Would there be a difference in the accuracy at a given distance between the Brown Bess and the Charleville?
The theory that these men stood in lines across from one another and shot one another at 80 yards is a fucking loose yarn.
Cover, concealment and distance was used quite often.
Didn't they only start using bullets instead of mini balls because the spin could stabilize the irregular shape of the bullet with the rifling?
Excellent piece, Brandon :salute:
30 feet by 30 feet? That's a hell of a big target.
The Muskets should have had grooves inside the Barrel. That would have had greatly improved the Accuracy
The historical examples of the use of "point blank" do not seem to match the historical definition. The definition suggest a projectile leaving the muzzle perfectly parallel to the ground, being that distance before the effect of gravity is reasonably noticeable(this will be familiar to anyone who's taken Newtonian physics), AKA the pure straight "absolute drop" in a ballistics calculator. Given the muzzle velocity of the ball, there's no way it's 300 yrds, without working out the equation, and assuming that a reasonably noticeable drop due to gravity is 12in(given the context), it should be roughly, 80-ish yrds for a 12in absolute drop. The historical examples seem to match the definition of "a distance which the projectile does not rise above or drop below the size of the target". So were there multiple definitions at the time, or...?
Nice Video👍 but how far is a musket shot even leathal ? I mean whats the point of opening fire at over 300y? Greetings from Germany
I can't help but think about that anti 2A commercial were a guy walks into an office with a musket and gets within 20ft of another guy. Shoots and MISSES! Yeah NO! that guy is gone.
EXCEPTIONAL !
THANKS !
😎👍
Ok, here my 2 cents the equipment they had at the time was the best of the time. A case in point is the Civil War basically the same tactics were used but different Equipment rifled muskets & mini balls used in Revolutionary War-type tactics. the outcome was far greater than expected.
Please answer. Why did they use musket balls? They already knew pointed artillery shapes even from ancient times. I get that cannon balls bounced, but what was the point of shooting a ball? Is it that without rifling a ball fired best? That the benefits of a pointed shape can’t be taken advantage of without rifling? And early semi automatic mechanism that even predate america were explored but never really caught on because of cost and not enough gunsmiths that knew how to work on them existed. Why wasn’t that pushed by some crown somewhere. Train a bunch of smiths to work on guns like those?
I like how you put the distances into context
one of your best -- Thanks Brandon -- from Wm Scott Turrall KRRNY recreated
Poor accuracy but great effective accuracy, doesn't matter you missed point of aim by 3 meters if you still hit an enemy
Great work and very interesting
Very interesting on a subject that, as a game developer, has puzzled me for some time. Still one question on the 600,000 rounds fired at Chotusitz. How did the Prussians determine this number? What I mean with that question is whether there is evidence that all of these were actually fired in anger or… Alternatively, I can imagine they checked the supplies before-after and counted the difference. In other words, are we looking at the number of rounds having been issued or indeed those fired?
What else would they do with their cartridges, eat them?
What I am trying to say is that before the battle each musketeer starts with a known amount of cartridges. In addition they will know the amounts in the various caissons, etc. That’s what they begin with. My question is on at the end of the battle. Assume a musketeer that has fired only halve his number of cartridges, for whatever reason. How did they ascertain that for all musketeers? What about those that fell? Etc… Did they ask each and every one or…? I am curious how exactly the 600,000 was determined…
@@janwillemboots That is a good question, and think one can only guess.
Just a relatively tiny mistake here but the "Soldier King" was actually Friedrich Wilhelm I, father of Friedrich II.
It's the difference between precision and accuracy
Shooting from the bench should provide the ideal grouping as far as accuracy is concerned. The accuracy of muskets is actually worse than I expected, and if you compare it to the rifles of today (or even the rifles of the day) that is abysmal. To add to this, you may be firing on cavalry (more to hit but moving fast) or artillery (yeah, your not hitting anything). Your kills per round are then dependant on enemy dispersion. Meanwhile with a British carbine rifle, Thomas Plunkett killed two french officers in a supine firing position at around 500 yards during the Peninsular War. With a modern scoped rifle and two weeks of training, most people can make that shot easily, and this claim comes from personal experience. Bear in mind, I am not talking about just hitting a person, but hitting a 12 to 18 inch center of mass target. History supports this, as when ammo has been scarce, in order to not waste it, engagement distances were shortened such as at the Battle of Breed's/Bunker Hill. It is also supported inasmuch as muskets were phased out in support of rifles. Muskets stayed around as long as they did because they were cheaper to produce at military numbers. This doesn't mean that muskets were ineffective, it just means that there were strategic and tactical considerations that needed to be taken into account when ordering a volley above what existed for rifles of the time. Accuracy and range would also vary based on the barrel length, which was different for different countries/times.
So I guess muskets being inaccurate to a larger degree than what can be accounted for by only the design would be because many soldiers had very little practice and in the heat of combat often fired low. Also maybe soldiers wouldn’t clean their muskets well enough before a battle after campaigning for a while so you would have stuff in there making it worse. Because in some way they are accurate while also being very inaccurate as things like he carolean tactics worked especially against non elite units
So Napoleon's pushing the cannons meant they were close to 200 meters from the enemy and not 100.
Can you do a video comparing arquebus, musket and rifles?