Were bayonet charges seen as foolish by 1863?I get that it's a risky manoeuvre in any situation but they issued those things for years.
>>65065934Open field against arty? SureInnawoods against infantry mostly using muskets? Nah.
>>65065934>Were bayonet charges seen as foolish by the Russo-Japanese War>Were bayonet charges seen as foolish by the time of the Great War>Were bayonet charges seen as foolish in Milne Bay, the Battle of the Tenaru, the Battle for Henderson Field, or...You already know the answer. Why make this thread?
>>65065934Rebs did it all the time. The Prussians also stormed hills at bayonet point in 1870.
They were always a risky finishing strike, and the risk became greater as advancing technology increased rates of fire. Either the enemy breaks and you get to kill them as they route, or they don't and your assault force gets badly chewed up.
>>65065934No, it was the norm well into the 20th Century. Even in the 21st, there have been multiple instances so of unsupported infantry assaults succeeding with relatively little loss of life. It's all situational. It worked for Chamberlain because he had the momentum of gravity and the Confederate troops taking part in the assault had marched all through the night to reach Gettysburg and then had to fight their way past Sickles before they even got in sight of Little Round Top. They were already exhausted, Longstreet and Hood tried to get Lee to call off the attack for that reason. Seven months earlier, Chamberlain had led his regiment in the attack on Marye's Heights outside Fredericksburg and half of his regiment was killed by Confederate artillery before they even reached the top of the hill and other half were slaughtered by Confederate infantry who were passing pre-loaded muskets to the front rank to allow for a continuous rate of fire.
>>65065934No. Just a handful of years before the ACW, the French army decisively beat the Austrians in the Second Italian Independence War and they did it on the back on their bayonet focused shock tactics. The Austrians spent the war trying to use infantry fire based tactics, but were routed in almost every battle. The pre-war American Army (and so both the American and Rebel armies during the war) were organized along French lines. At that point in history, the only countries really basing their infantry around fire tactics were the British and Prussians (Austrians ditched it for shock tactics after their loss). Everyone else based tactics around the mass attack with bayonets. The failure of those tactics in the American Civil War was due to abysmal training, poor leadership, bad morale among the troops and officers. Like at Pickett's Charge, the basic plan was there to create the conditions for a decisive bayonet attack. However it was organized poorly, then the preparations were half done, and finally it was executed poorly and wouldn't have been able to be exploited. So, it led to a bunch of men walking face first into an enemy gun line.
>>65065994I like the "BAYONETS!!" scene but it does seem a bit overdramatised to me. It was a downhill charge too and any firepower would have trees to squeeze through.
>>65065934the doctrine was that a bayonet charge if properly supported and executed would force the enemy to yield their position or to break. since history had shown that when you carry out a bayonet charge the enemy was far more likely not to take it.men would stand and shoot at each other for as long as they have ammo before breakingbut if you present them with a bayonet charge they'll brake ergo the bayonet charge was the "humane" way of doing things.the problem being that you'd need to support that charge with skirmishers, tying down the flanks of the unit you are charging, artillery to soften them up ect.during the US civil war both sides held to this doctrine/tactics. however due to most of their armies being made up from raw recruits they struggled to pull it of. often the charging unit would stop and fire at close range. this would however leave them open not just to the return fire of the unit it was charging but to fire from it's flanks.as time went on fire became more deadly making a bayonet charge harder to execute successfully leading to the slaughter of WWI.
>>65066003>however due to most of their armies being made up from raw recruits they struggled to pull it of. often the charging unit would stop and fire at close range.I like this kind of detail. I know raw/veterancy is something that's talked up but not always certain what the consequences are.So like I know that the Union army struggled to make complex manoeuvres with raw recruits early in the war.
>>65066003>>65065999Both of you watch Paper Cartridges, right?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InvjDwDMCeI
>>65065934We were doing bayonet charges in Korea.
>>65066013If you want another fun fact about how badly trained ACW troops were, then you should know that both sides had so little marksmanship training that units with modern rifles had the same effective range as units still armed with smoothbore muskets.
>>65066018I'll watch this video but one factor that occurs to me that a soldier might be shit at aiming his rifle but if a bayonet charge is successful well he can't fucking miss can he.
>>65066035>well he can't fucking miss can heHe might.
>>65066030Wasn't most of that the terrible visibility conditions from tens of thousands of blackpowder weapons firing at once?
>>65066030Yeah I like that.I know also that the fire-by-rank thing is not as effective as it sounds because once the second rank crouches to reload they might not stand up again, if they aren't sufficiently drilled.
>>65066061also if the front rank loads while the rear rank shoots, all the moving around by the front rank might get in the way for the rear rankto my understanding it was more typical to fire by platoon rather than rank
>>65066056Well going by paper catridges video then it is due to the incredibly unforgiving ballistics of the rifled musket. If you set your sight on the wrong setting then you are going to miss everytime you fire at long range targets. The actual effective range of both the smoothbore and rifle musket in the hand of the typical conscript or volunteer is 100-150 yards since within that range you can just point and shoot and have good chance of hitting anywhere on a human sized target. And even then the hit rate was still very poor due human aiming error and other battlefield conditions. Only at very close range like 30 yards or "Don’t Fire Till You See the Whites of Their Eyes" do you gain 100% hit rate.https://youtu.be/UUmeV1e8aJQ?t=1178The only way to exploit the long range advantage of the rifled musket is to have your men hit the firing range and practice shooting at long range targets and get better at range estimation. And that will become very expensive the more men you have in your army so usually only specialied sharpshooter units had the actual knowledge in how to exploit the rifled muskets advantage. As far as I know only the bongs spent the time and money in training everyone in marskmanship with the rifled musket.
>>65065999>The failure of those tactics in the American Civil WarThey didn't fail. The rebel yell is as famous as it was because it often accompanied concealed mass infantry assaults, like at Chancellorsville and Chicamagua. The issue was that generals didn't always set themselves up to exploit the success of an infantry shock attack, see Stones River, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Gettysburg day 1.
>>65066018My nigga. I have to make a pilgrimage to his shop one of these days, even though I do not shoot bp
>>65065934They were still effective at taking land because guys don't want to be stabbed and there was still that perception that you were unlikely to actually get fatally shot up until WWI. Like there were 9,000 men at san juan hill and only about 200 were killed so psychologically there is a much bigger threat of death when there's a bayonet charge. Most of the officers in the civil war were retards who were doing things based on napoleon even though they had rifles instead of muskets, or at least the north did and the eastern US isn't a bunch of flat farmland that has been farmed for the past century plus like yurop was at the time.that said the rebels didn't use them as much because they didn't have the numbers, it's harder to threaten someone in a spear fight when you are outnumbered
>>65066543>The rebel yell is as famous as it wasIt was famous amongst rebels, not the people that you claim were culturally impacted by it. It's mostly just another CSA myth that southerners made up to make themselves feel better about badly losing the Civil War.
>>65067124What would a loss by the CSA look like that you would not categorize as "badly?"
>>65067134Many nations have lost wars but continued to exist
>>65066018yes, but I'm also a Kriegspiel/German unification autist, my dad is also a pretty big Napoleonboo.the tism runs in the family and it's honestly a miracle none of us have trooned out.
>>65067134One where their military accomplishments gave them leverage at a truce table to partially achieve their war goals, rather than the war ending by waves of unconditional surrenders and full capitulation and the mercy and benevolence of the victors the only limit on the terms of the peace.
>>65065934Anon, how about you get a bunch of angry bearded men less than a football field distance away from you to charge you with sharpened steel when you can maybe scrape 3 rounds a minute, come back to us with your answer?
>>65067124Nah I've read Ambrose Bierce's memoirs. The fight against revisionism has come full curcle to the point where now the side that won is making the retarded claims. Reminds me of Vietnam war apologists who claim the US never suffered a tactial/stratetic defeat throughout the war.
>>65066000Still incredible risky as they had to maintain a cohesive and effective mass while charging down a forested hill while simultaneously making a flanking maneuver.
>>65065934>I get that it's a risky manoeuvreit's not actually that bad. you can look up kill counts from most major historical battles. I don't think a lot of guys were aiming/trying to actually kill people. it's like the korean war report where only like 8% of guys used their iron sights when they shot. most guys in historical war would have died of starvation, exposure or illness/infection and when fights actually happened very few men actually died in the battle unless they routed and got cut down by cavalry or something while retreating
>>65066030yeah that was why the NRA was invented
>>65066035I think a lot of them just weren't aiming. dudes didn't aim even up through korea and the bong armies famously didn't actually aim>muh bayonet lug sights>muh level orderthe sergeants would yell at them for taking too long to aim because they cared more about rate of fire
>>65066056I think a lot of guys just didn't aim due to poor training, not wanting to kill someone, those muskets were heavy as shit and they were drilled to shoot fast and reload fast, not to shoot accurately
>>65069259The reasoning for a bayonet charge was basicallly a step by step process of going down from worst to least worst options.Stand and get shelled by artillery is the worst. Maybe you need to do this to counter cavalry.Getting into a short range exhange of musketry is the next worst, it is not decisive but produces casualties at a rapid rate.Then we get something that only really appears towards mid-19th century, long range volley fire. It means few casualties, but uses up lots of ammo. It is also not decisive.Then we get to the bayonet charge. It will cause casualties like a short range exchange of musketry, but it will be decisive and thus end the bloodshed.This was generally accepted truth in the first half of the 19th century i.e. postnapoleonic period, though the closer we get to the 1860s the more cracks appear. The Austrians learned several times that firepower had become too heavy to actually push through a charge, and the Prussians first codified the idea that it was possiblle to win decisively through fire superiority in a short range firefight without needing a bayonet charge.At the same time, longer range accuracy also increased, by 1866 volley fire by well trained troops was deemed 'accurate' out to something like 900 meters in various French manuals, and by the Austrians and Bavarians too.The ACW is really the odd one out in this context, it basically fell back to tech and tactics more than 50 years old. The reasons, of course, are logistics and production, but I guess that is why the European observers were often appalled. They had probably seen better technology in action a few years earlier in Italy, or observed better trained British troops fuck up some Indians.
>>65065934It was difficult to rally your troops for a bayonet charge unless it was absolutely necessary. If your troops could shoot it out instead, they'd much rather do that. The sharp stick is mankind's oldest weapon, and convincing someone, or yourself, to dive upon a sharp stick is exceptionally difficult for a human to do. Try it yourself, affix a sharp stick to a wall and run towards it-- your deepest instincts will nix the idea before you even start running, even if you don't intent to land on it. I'd say that most of the bayonet charges that occurred were seen as a necessity in an absolutely desperate situation. If anything, I'd wager the more poorly thought-out and foolish bayonet charges that occurred probably happened very early in the war.
The only form of decisive action that a body of infantry - be they 21st century American or 1st century Roman - is capable of carrying out unsupported is closing with and destroying the enemy in close combat. Even with modern small arms the fight isn't really over until you've stepped over the other guy's corpse. Hand weapons were just the first - and remain, ultimately, the final - tool used to do it with. What we do with semi or automatic rifle fire today was done with blades before self-loading firearms became the norm.
>>65066439>And even then the hit rate was still very poorI think there are some "studies" that even during the civil war buck and ball had a higher hit probability than rifles at certain ranges
>>65069667even by the spanish American war you still had like 9,000 men at san juan hill and like 200 total deaths
>>65069716they were always going to be effective when guys didn't have repeaters and ranges were short because the other side could only get 1 or 2 "aimed" shots in your general direction before one side said fuck that and broke. It wasn't a desperate or dangerous maneuver
>>65069833>It wasn't a desperate or dangerous maneuverA silly thought.
>>65069867they were a common thing to do and again, go look up the cas numbers from old battles. unless there were cavalry to cut people down as they fled a lot of battles had a pretty low number of deaths and the other guys were only getting 1 or 2 poorly aimed shots at you during the charge. your odds as an individual guy getting fatally wounded or maimed in a battle at the time weren't that high
>>65069782The fighting ranges in teh ACW were extremely short, often under 30 yards with buck and ball from smoothbore muskets not being uncommon.This is one of the factors that puzzled European observers, they had long since accepted that if you got that close you must charge.Though in 1866 there was at lest one battle when tehAustrians put this to the test and pusehd a charge through into a Prussian line, won the melee and the battle but ended up with so many casualties from Prussian fire that they were unable to advance further or fight another battle, so clearly firepower was going up in lethatlity.
>>65066003one of the things that also made bayonet charges riskier in the civil war was the minie ball, which pushed the effective engagement range of a line company out much farther than musket balls out of a smoothbore.If it takes about 20 seconds to reload a musket (or a muzzle loading rifle) from a trained and drilled section, then you can run somewhere between 60 and 100 yards before they can shoot again. If the engagement ranges are 100 to 200 yards, this is pretty doable. If the effective engagement ranges are 200 to 400 yards, this is a whole lot harder.(they had rifles for hundreds of years before then, but it takes longer than 20 seconds to force a full sized ball down a rifled barrel, the minie ball didn't take much longer than a regular sub-caliber musket ball because it was also sub caliber on the way in, but not the way out)
>>65069911I'd argue the killzone did not actually increase in range appreciably relative to the smoothbore era because of how silly the trajectory is past a point. Rather the existence of sights and the mechanical accuracy increase made the old killzone (50-150yds) much deadlier overall.
>>65069911By the 1850s the French and Austrians were using muzzle-loading rifles and trained companies could fire 3 rounds per minute out to around 700m, with enough accuracy to hit an enemy formation or column.This obviously required training for officers and NCOs to estimate ranges, for troops to set sights and correctly manage the reloading (which as you said was still more complicated than loading a smoothbore)
>>65069259>>65069506>aiming is a myth and 99% of soldiers shot their weapons into the skyS.L.A. Marshall's numbers have been confirmed utter ass-pulls for decades but pseuds love parroting them like they're fucking gospel
>>65069259nah they were trying to kill people. they just didnt aim all that much and generally just fired in the direction the enemy was at.
