Category: Strategy & Tactics
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The Battle for the Bliss Farm at Gettysburg: July 3, 1863
The Battle for The Bliss Farm: July 3, 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg by James W. Durney Gettysburg is the most studied battle in American History, Noah Andre Trudeau in “Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage” apologized for adding to the weight of books on the battle and called writing about Gettysburg a cottage industry. […]
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Infantry Hand Weapon Study Available
Earlier this year I posted some excerpts from an Army study (once classified Secret) from the early sixties, “Operational Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon,” which was instrumental in the military’s decision to adopt the smaller caliber M-16 rifle. Other militaries did essentially the same study and came to the same conclusions, adopting reduced power […]
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Late 19thC Infantry Attack
I came across this illustration of an infantry attack in the late 19th Century, specifically in 1892 at the famous British Army School of Musketry at Hythe. Established early in the century the school served to “train the trainers” of the army in rifle shooting, and you can see from the inset the various types […]
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British Books on Tactics I
I’ve been reading a series of book on tactics from both the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars as a background for my ongoing study of Civil War tactics. Part of this is to try to determine, as British military pundit Paddy Griffith had it, if the American Civil War was another Napoleonic war. How much, if […]
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White Death
A quick look at the world’s most successful sniper, Simo Häyhä of Finland. During the brief Russo-Finnish “Winter War” of 1939-40, Häyhä was credited with killing an astounding 500 Russian soldiers before he was wounded. In spite of being hit in the jaw with an explosive round he survived the war and lived into his […]
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Those Rainbow Trajectories
Commentators on the rifle musket have made much of its so-called “rainbow” trajectory that made the rifle ball travel in a much higher arc than than today’s rifles due to its slow muzzle velocity. However, a lot of misunderstandings have also crept in. Most pundits seem to have looked at the illustration in Jack Coggins’ […]
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More on Battle Ranges
Last week I looked at a study by a serving US Army officer, Maj. Thomas Erhart, about the need for longer range infantry weapons in Afghanistan. While looking at some of the supporting material I came across a fascinating study the Army conducted in 1960 (once classified secret) that led directly to the introduction of […]