"Peter Wieck" <pfjw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:51f86585-41b8-4d8c-9a48-0467d2cfe36c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The Winchester Repeating Rifle was made practical in 1873. The Henry
> repeater was patented in 1860, but did not reach _any_ troops until
> 1862, and even then the vast majority of troops throughout the war use
> single-shot cap-and-ball rifles.
Interesting post Peter. The British Army had rifle regiments
by the early 1850s. The King's Royal Rifle Corps was raised
in the American Colonies in 1756 as the 62nd Foot (The
Royal American Reg't)
> The Gatling Gun came in 1862, but in
> tiny, nearly meaningless numbers.
There was a British Army song that went:
"Pity the poor old hottentot.
We have the Gatling gun -
he does not!"
I think that the first British regiment to repace the musket with
the rifle was the 60th Rifles (circa 1854?)
> Then and now, the expression was that it took a man's weight in
> bullets to kill him. Today, that weight may be distributed more
> quickly.
During WW1, both the British and the Germans had
considerable success with marksmen (sharpshooters)
armed with small bore rifles. One shot (through the
centre of the forehead) was enough, when one of the
enemy was foolish enough to poke his head up above
the parapet.
The Boers had shown similar skills in South Africa
against the British some fifteen years earlier.
There is a famous photograph of an entire Bn
of British infantry laying in a shallow trench -
each man with a bullet hole dead centre above
the eyes.
By the start of WW1, the mchine gun, which the
British were slow to adopt, had made conventional
infantry tactics all but suicidal. But still, in 1914
the British swarmed out of their trenches at the
blast of a whistle, led by an officer brandi****ng
a revolver, a sword or an umbrella.
Iain
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