Senior Member
Amen to that. I would imagine that soldiers actually shooting at an enemy were more scared out of their minds than worried that their rifles might not be as good as the ones they are shooting at. I'm sure the guys shooting the Krags were more than thrilled that they weren't shooting Trapdoors!
Hence, my original question. It seems bizarre to blame a rifle - which is what it appears happened -when the slapstick approach to the whole campaign was the actual issue. This question was posed in class to several military officers with a comparison to the modern era, something like this: would you deploy to Afghanistan in, say, 3 months from now with a random group of civilians?! Regardless of weapon, there are some serious risks to that approach! Here is a novel idea; what if the US Army had deployed to Cuba with…M1903s, or M93s…or M1 Garands…or M14s…or M16A2s! Whatever. Regardless, would there be any serious takers for a bet saying the US Army could take El Caney with a division of civilians led by political appointees motivated by jingoism and aspirations of colonialism?Originally Posted by Art
Has/was this point been applied to study? If so, how and what parameters? From a back of the envelope calculation; before or without machine guns - most combat engagements with rifle fire occurred from 100 to 300meters, possibly more depending on circumstances. What was the sustained rate of fire - not the maximum - for a platoon using the Krag? IIRC, the manual for an M16 is something like 12-15 per minute although that may have more to do with overheating than availability of ammo but using that as a guide for consumption purposes; a platoon of 40 shooting 15 per minute for 10 hours = over a quarter million rounds! Didn't happen. Lugging all that ammo for one platoon alone would have required a pack train of mules 100 miles long. Hmm, I would guess that the average rate of consumption was more like a a few shots per hour per man interspersed with periods of high activity…and lulls of nothing. During high activity, the sustained volume of units providing covering fire was probably adequate to occupy the Spanish…except that they had terrain, battle works and buildings and were fighting against essentially civilians either unwilling to advance in the open under fire, were poorly led, or were trying to fight smarter not harder and avoid Gallipoli type situations.
Regardless, offhand it appears a Krag could and likely did provide the volume of fire necessary and adequate to the task at hand. In a apples to apples force on force all out charge, yes, a Mauser could load and fire faster but that is probably a dynamic that was not occurring in Cuba.
Senior Member
Attempts to isolate the effectiveness of the individual rifle on the modern battlefield are useless as the other factors need to be added in to get the holistic result. By the same token attempts to isolate the tactical, leadership, and other force structure issues into individual silos is doomed to failure as the rules of complementary evolution are almost as fixed as the rules of thermodynamics.
The oft bandied "too much ammunition" assertion doesn't need to be heavily theorized as the load factors for individual issue and train supply are easily available as are the transportation capability figures for the standard transportation units. A "walk sideways" to engagements of a similar nature, before and after, are enlightening - specifically the Battle of Plevna.
The arbitrary leadership and conscript troop assertion requires two additional considerations for proper weight: enemy structure and analog comparisons. The "regular" U.S. army was there and heavily represented vis-a-vis the total strength of the army whereas the soldiers on the Spanish side were in fact conscripts. The "levy en masse" was an artefact of the French revolution and Napoleon didn't seem to have issue with regards to leadership or soldier performance.
The rules of complementary evolution are almost as fixed as the laws of thermodynamics and everybody ignores that aspect.
Very Senior Member - OFC
Battle of Plevna, so much for the oft bandied remark that lever action Winchesters are too fragile for military use!
Little known today, and even less remembered, the the 30th of July, 1877, cast shadows which even now are still there for anyone with eyes to see. The great Russian army massed before the Turkish defenses of Plevna on the morning of that day stood in their might prepared to sacrifice themselves to the full, determined to storm the trenches ahead regardless of cost. They would not be halted; their front ranks would inevitably fall before the defenses of the courageous Turks. They were prepared for that. So thought General Todleben and his staff as they studied the quiet fields ahead on that fateful morning. In their trenches the Turks, barely half as numerous as the Russians, waited grimly, almost eagerly for the assault.
The Russian Guards soberly checked their Berdan rifles, their bottle-necked .42-caliber cartridges. Other units swung up the side-locking blocks of their .63-caliber Krnka breechloaders, confident that the modifications of the Bohemian Sylvester Krnka had provided them with the speed of loading necessary to match the American Peabody-Martini rifles in the trenches ahead of them.
Bugles sounded. Officers shouted. The men roared. In massed formations the long lines advanced stolidly, inexorably. The solid lines marched on until, suddenly, a cloud of smoke arose from the black-powder rifles in the trenches far ahead. Strangely and with terrifying accuracy, a plunging hail of lead ripped into the Russian ranks before the reports of the rifles reached them. The Russian staff stared aghast through their glasses as ranks thinned out before they could fire a shot. They claimed later that the slaughter began at a distance of two kilometers, some 2200 yards. Other observers on the Russian side claimed even more fantastic ranges for the Peabody-Martinis in the hands of the Turks -- as much as 3000 yards! Perhaps the observers were too excited to measure correctly. Perhaps they were seeking to alibi their terrible mistake in ordering massed men to certain death. But we do know the American rifles had shown deadly efficiency at 700 yards, and it is possible that massed plunging fire at 1000 yards may have decimated the advancing Russians. Riflemen of today armed with Springfields or Garands could not hit consistently at ranges claimed in 1877. Of one thing, however, we are sure, at a range considered far beyond that of a rifle of those days, the Peabody-Martini began chopping down the numerical superiority on which the Russians had counted for victory.
With the stoic calm of the true Slav, the Russian advance continued to ranges of 500 yards, 400, 300 -- 200. In the Turkish trenches there was a momentary pause. The Turks laid aside their single-shot Peabody Martinis. And the Russians charged madly ahead.
Russian Intelligence had duly reported the delivery of 30,000 Winchester repeaters to the Turks. Those were Tyler Henry's tube loaders with the new King patent side-loading gate, the first arm to bear the name "Winchester." The caliber was .44 rimfire Turkish. True, the arm had shown its merit in wild, far-away America, but what use would it be on European battlefields? Little if any, they surmised.
Russian Intelligence had not learned that the cavalry had been disbanded and that their Winchesters had been issued to the defenders in the trenches. They had not known the intensive drill they had been given in using the arms. They could not conceive what was about to happen. And so the charge went on.
At 100 yards the storm broke. All down the line a hail of rapid-fire lead burst from the muzzles of 30,000 Winchesters. "Each Turk," wrote General Todleben to General Brialmont in a letter dated January 18, 1878, "carried 100 cartridges, and had a box containing 500 placed beside him. A few expert marksmen were employed to pick off the officers ... the Turks did not even attempt to sight, but, hidden behind the trenches, loaded and fired as rapidly as they could ... the most heroic endeavors of our troops were without effect, and divisions of 10,000 men were reduced to an effective strength of between 4,000 and 5,000." But the General was a stubborn man. In the modern Rusian Army, he would probably have been shot at sunrise, and quite rightly, for his terrible failure. instead he lived to repeat the attack on Plevna with the same tactics - and the same results - on August 11, 1877! In all he admitted losing 30,000 men in the useless assaults!
The Winchesters broke the back of the Russian attacks in their closing phases, after the long-range Peabody-Martinis had whittled the advancing ranks down with harrowing fire. The "quick loaders" fastened to the sides of the Berdans and the Krnkas to hold cartridges ready for insertion in the breech were no possible answer to the true repeating arm.
A hush settled over the chancelleries of Europe that summer of 1877. Every European nation now set itself to re-arm with repeaters as rapidly as possible. The Turks turned first to Winchester for another 140,000 repeaters, then to Germany for a long secession of Mauser designs.
In the day of the nuclear bomb it is difficult to conceive the way the success of the Winchester then altered the economic planning and military thinking around the globe. The hush that began on the field of Plevna and spread throughout Europe was more than just another episode in the duel between Turks and Russians. It was a hush that presaged a development of arms and a course of diplomacy leading inevitably to years of strain that lay ahead.
Truly, the day of the single-shot military rifle was over.
Phillip McGregor (OFC)
"I am neither a fire arms nor a ballistics expert, but I was a combat infantry officer in the Great War, and I absolutely know that the bullet from an infantry rifle has to be able to shoot through things." General Douglas MacArthur
Senior Member
PHILLIPM wrote" A hush settled over the chancelleries of Europe that summer of 1877. Every European nation now set itself to re-arm with repeaters as rapidly as possible. The Turks turned first to Winchester for another 140,000 repeaters, then to Germany for a long secession of Mauser designs."
do you know which countries issued lever action rifles ?
Senior Member
If one can only select one battle of the 1800s to study Plevna would be it. It was a Russian "war of expansion." The "Sick Man of Europe" was Turkey. The Russians used the "help the Romanians liberate themselves" as a land grab excuse - no different from the "help the Serbs" land grab which triggered WW1.
It wasn't "trenches" ala WW1 but "redoubts" outside of the town.
The Turks had no problem keeping their Winchesters fed for days yet, in spite of being on the defensive, the ammunition wasn't pre-located; the Turks had force marched to Plevna from another engagement at a distance.
The Turks marched far from support and were completely isolated and cut-off. Russian cavalry clipped their supply lines early on.
Much has been made of the long range fire from the Peabody rifles but a study of the weather conditions and a read of the personal accounts from those present paint a different picture as it was the rainy season with visibility obscured during many of the assaults.
Oddly enough there were Peabody rifles on both sides as the Romanians had them also.
It wouldn't be unfair to say the Turks "shot at" the Russians at long range with Peabody rifles and then "shot them" at close range with Winchesters.
The European armies studied the battle and a mad rush, as mentioned, to adopt repeaters ensued. The U.S. Ordnance Department, that narrative not fitting their notions, focused on the Peabody rifles and moved further away from repeaters with efforts to "prove" the trapdoor could hit a barn at 1,000 yards. Assuming the barn didn't move.
There is another overlooked aspect to that battle having to do with Winchesters and Spencers.
Very Senior Member - OFC
Which all distills down into very few words: Men equipped with repeating rifles, firing from defensive cover, will whip a force, advancing, in or out of formation, in the open, armed with single-shot rifles.
Hell, the Turks might even have won with those miserable clipless Krags.
TACTICS!!!!
Senior Member
On the SpanAmWar website there is a letter home from a Michigan volunteer who said his unit was sent to the front lines to reinforce a unit of regulars. The regulars wouldn't allow the volunteers into the line with them because they were carrying trapdoors and the regulars feared the Spanish riflemen and artillery would home in on the black powder smoke.
As for El Caney, the only volunteer unit there was the 2nd Massachusetts. The rest of the American forces were regulars, including the very professional 25th. The "American division" wasn't a division as we usually think of one. Lawton's division included four regiments plus some artillery. The Cubans were there in numbers as well, but were doing their own thing. There were really two fights that day, the first for El Viso, a stone fort that guarded the approach from the south. Then there was the town proper, which had two fortified blockhouses. So El Caney had to be taken twice. And you can't read about that fight without getting the impression it was kind of a clusterf**k. Lawton's division was supposed to roll right over El Caney and be on the job to support the right flank of the attack on Kettle Hill. One reason the advance was delayed at the bottom taking losses until the unit leaders basically decided to charge with or without an order from Command.
One place the soldiers of the world did get together without killing each other was the China Relief Expedition. An officer of the 6th Cavalry wrote a lot about it, some of his book used to be available online. I remember one passage where he says the soldiers and marines all passed around their rifles, and that the Krag was one of the favorites of the troops from the other nations, but that the Lee was not so well regarded. I'm thinking the soldiers like the Krag for the same reasons we do - a work of the machinist's art, a handsome rifle, smooth action, and the carbines were really nice.
Just a few random comments.
jn
Last edited by jon_norstog; 02-01-2014 at 09:08.
Very Senior Member - OFC
As the proud caretaker of an SRS-listed 6th Cav CRE carbine (70210) I'd be interested in more info, Jon. Thanks in advance.
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