Were the Americans issued pitchforks as their primary weapon during the American Revolutionary war? It looks like it was at some point as a training weapon, but I can't find evidence so far. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they were issued pitchforks since they were poor at that time.
>>65117752No army has ever issued pitchforks. Even peasant armies, they just showed up with them. American militia did have a preponderance for gay squirrel rifles because that's what they had on hand. Not great for infantry action of the time, but will still fuck up someone's pre-penicillin days.
>>65117752Americans used French weaponry extensively, like the Charleville musketAlso, daily reminder that the Continental Army, the French and the Spanish won the American Revolution, not the militias
>>65117758>squirrel rifle>gaykys>>65117774I call this "the pendulum of revisionism". People jerked off militias for decades and everyone wanted to be Mel Gibson in The Patriot but now the redditcuck "UM ACKSHUALLY" crowd is out in force to pretend militias didn't actually exist. No room for nuance.
>>65117758Would a squirrel rifle be better or worse than a Brown Bess? I heard during the start of the war, some units were still issued muskets, which makes the fact some of its vets would live to see the first atomic bombs going off all the more jarring.
>>65117774>not the militiasA friendly reminder that the militias had such a widespread reputation of being unreliable cowards that Daniel Morgan used this against the British at the Battle of Cowpens and almost annihilated their entire troop.
>>65117803A brown bess would let someone reload while in line formation on a battlefield, whereas a rifle takes a lot more doing. Someone born in 1776 would be over 160 years old when WWII concluded. Is this the state of zoom zoom education?
yes farmers with pitchforks are solely responsible for america winning the war of british aggression fpbp tbqh imho
>>65117823>annihilated their entire troopQrd?
>>65117840>A brown bess would let someone reload while in line formation on a battlefield, whereas a rifle takes a lot more doing.wtf is this bullshit? where did you pull this out of your ass from?
>>65117803
>>65117849Even with no patching and undersize balls, fouling would be an issue for small caliber rifles.
>>65117752Pikes and other polearms were definitely used but I highly doubt pitchforks were issued.>>65117787>No room for nuance.Yeah the truth is a lot of pieces came together to make the American Revolution happen. A good fucking chunk of it was all the powers ganging up on Britain in the aftermath of the 7 years war but ignoring the contributions of militias is just fucking retarded.>>65117803Brown Bess is much better. Far sturdier for starters so you can easily beat someone over the head with it without breaking and being .75 cal means if you got say cartridges from a French or Spanish musket as their balls are typically .69 cal you can practice tap loading and easily achieve faster fire rates at the expense of accuracy. Rifles of that era typically had much smaller and more specialized ammo taking much longer to load.Also not sure how someone from the American Revolution would survive long enough to see atomic weaponry?
>>65117851Okay, you can use a calculator. How many Revolutionary War veterans lived to be centurian-and-a-halfian?
>>65117851Anon confused the 1st American Revolution for the second one.
>>65117854fouling is an issue for both
>>651178723/4 of an inch a larger tube to get residue on than 1/3 of an inch.
>>65117803>Would a squirrel rifle be better or worse than a Brown Bess?the fact that smoothbores were standard in military use until the Minié ball should be a pretty good indicator>a rifle is going to be much more awkward to ram your shot down than a smoothbore>the only way around this is to use undersized shot relative to the bore, to the detriment of your ballistics (defeating the purpose of using a rifle in the first place)>this means that while a rifle might let you engage at a significantly greater distance, by the time you've got your second shot ready to go, the enemy has had time to continue advancing into smoothbore range, where they have advantage by rate of fire
>>65117846>Militia have a rep of immediately running away the moment a battle starts (See the Battle of Camden)>Morgan knows this so he creates a plan where he puts the militia out front, as the first line against the British like other commanders have done.>However he orders them to only fire two shots and then retreat>The British see this and think they earned another rout like the Battle of Camden.>The British charge after the militia and headlong into Morgan's regulars who took up defense on the hill and rain volleys down on the British.By the end of the battle, the British suffered a 84% casualty rate.
>>65117752wWhat are you talking about, you posted evidence. That guy has a pitchfork
>>65117959Good point, but it's a little guy in present day and not a big guy back in the days
>>65118122Funny you should mention it
>>65117752Maybe some local militia did that a bit for town defense for a lack of having enough guns or something? You jab someone with a pitchfork and that's sort of like jabbing someone with a bayonet but you can't shoot.The actual Continental Army though had proper military muskets. Some which were of varied origin and size, mind, because they had to source some foreign surplus, but generally they were something you could fight with reasonably well.>>65117758>American militia did have a preponderance for gay squirrel rifles because that's what they had on handA gun is a gun, after all. Those would probably be smoothbore guns though, as rifling costs money, and smoothbore is enough for squirrel.>>65117803Are you stupid?
>>65117787>but now the redditcuck "UM ACKSHUALLY" crowd is out in force to pretend militias didn't actually exist.supporting revisionism just because it makes the 2nd amendment look more important
IIRC the actual lowest rung were guys showing up with tomahawks as the militia law was loose and only required sone kind of weapon to be owned. When things got serious though everyone had some kind of gun.
>>65118853In the early days they would take and use anything they could find.
>>65118858My favorite tidbit is that early on a lot of Artillerymen in the continental army were sailors/pirates because they were the only ones available that knew ballistics.
>>65118866That's not entirely uncommon. For a lot of the time if you needed someone who knew their way around artillery the most readily available source of expertise was the navy. Hell even in WW1 the USN were the ones operating the railway guns not the army as they were the ones that knew how to use them.
>>65117752Pitchforks weren't issue but leftover pikes from the English Civil War where shipped to the colonies for use by the milita. Most ended up seeing use a trench spears and cavalry lances.
>>65117774>not the militiasFrancis Marion would like a word.
>>65118135
>>65118925I dunno about that. The English Civil War was from 1642 to 1651. And the American Revolution was 1775-1783
>>65119419I'll concede that they my not've been from the actual English Civil war. However, it turns out that short story that one anon wrote about nations sending mil-surp to their colonies on Mars to fight proxy wars was actually not far off from reality.
>>65117752bro in the wrong team dude
>>65117752>>65118925>>65117758Pitchforks would have been issued, but not as weapons.Pitchforks are a necessary tool for caring for livestock. You use them to handle hay, which is literally everywhere in a pre-ICE society.Gotta feed the horses and cattleGotta muck the stables (also necessary for manufacturing gunpowder)Gotta build and then break apart hay bales.the fact that pitchforks are okay for poking people you don't like is purely incidental. the reason angry mobs and occasionally soldiers carry them is because they are literally everywhere.>>65117803Rifles before the advent of the minie ball were not suitable for linear warfare because the rate of fire is too low.
>>65117855The anon mentioning atomic bombs is probably confusing the US civil war with the US revolutionary war. The last US civil war vets died in the 1950s. The US civil war was also a transitionary era between smoothbore muskets and rifles.
>>65118843See, this is exactly what I mean
>>65118843Post your gun
