Category: Arms & Armament
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Rifles against artillery
Bill Adams sent me an interesting graphic he scanned from a period book and has agreed to let me post it. Widely published and commented on the time, it shows the results of a test conducted at the British musketry school at Hythe in the mid-1850s. Thirty riflemen who did not know the distances involved […]
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Who Killed Uncle John (and John Reynolds)?
A popular activity for the Civil War buff is trying to figure out who killed certain generals. To help I have posted my article “The Killing of Uncle John” that originally in Civil War Times in June 2006. In it I look at the contemporary and eyewitness accounts of the death of Major General John […]
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Short Takes
Three men in Southampton County, VA (near Hampton Roads) have been arrested for desecrating a Civil War grave site. Kyle Sinclair Burks, 21, of Drewryville, Aaron Richard Howard, 20, of Courtland, and Justin Thomas Rainey, 23, of Franklin, have been charged with attempted grand larceny and violation of a sepulcher, both felonies, said Robert Morris, […]
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Slope Dope
Whaaa? Bear with me, we’re not talking about something really exotic here. Consider the following account from the Battle of South Mountain (Boonesboro for you Confederates). The report is from the the 107th Pennsylvania, part of Duryea’s brigade, which was attacking up a steep slope toward Turner’s Gap against Robert Rodes’ Alabama brigade. in compliance […]
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The Lone Marksman
As a followup to my previous post about a present-day marksman in Afghanistan, I am posting (with his kind permission) Gary Yee’s article about a lone marksman at the Battle of New Orleans and the effect he had. Gary, who will be coming out with a sharpshooting book of his own shortly, is one of […]
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A Rifleman At War
There’s a lot of ongoing controversy about the effect of the rifle in battle, but there’s no question that in certain times and places an individual rifleman can have a powerful effect. One such example comes to us from Afghanistan: During the battle, the designated marksman single handedly thwarted a company-sized enemy RPG and machinegun […]
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Origins of the Rifle-pit
One of the most common features of the Civil War battlefield was the rifle pit, especially in the last two years of the war. Yet this feature was unknown in Napoleon’s time. As the name suggests, the rifle pit’s introduction coincided with the widespread use of the rifle, and can be dated to the Siege […]