Modern weapons in classic battles

A handful of SKS rifles and scoped bolt action hunting rifles, and a few pallets of ammo and a handful of trained fighters could have defeated nearly any army in history pre-1800

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Funny you should bring that up. Just the other day, I was watching part of Braveheart...and I wondered how differently Falkirk would have gone had the Scots been armed with '03 Springfields when the English juggernaut rolled in.

Apply to any set-piece battle from Waterloo to Gettysburg...and one can only imagine how history would have been changed with even a single rifle company so armed.

If someone was using repeating arms leaving brass on the battlefield you can bet that some others would pick up that brass, and shortly have a similar weapon using a similar system within a year.

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But could they do it in time to make any difference?

If Lee had taken the high ground at Gettysburg when he had the chance, this would be a much different country today. If he'd had a rifle company per division armed with Garands from the outset...Gettysburg would have never been fought.

Just for the record...and this is coming from a southern boy who calls the Civil War "The War of Northern Aggression"...it's probably a good thing that it went the way it did. England was watching closely, and was licking her chops at the chance to divide and conquer...and she would have.

Funny you should bring that up. Just the other day, I was watching part of Braveheart...and I wondered how differently Falkirk would have gone had the Scots been armed with '03 Springfields when the English juggernaut rolled in.

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What would have happened is they would have won that battle. Maybe a few others. Then the English with far more industrial capability and access to far more raw materials and resources, with a larger workforce, and with many more educated individuals to study the firearms and adopt the new technology would have fielded 10x the weapons in short time.
They would have probably also made the jump from that technology to machineguns after having an example of brass cartridges and such educated people long before the Scots living a lifestyle less inclined to technological developments.
Leaving the Scots with a much more powerful enemy. An enemy that rather than eventually absorbing the Scots may have just annihilated them.

Apply to any set-piece battle from Waterloo to Gettysburg...and one can only imagine how history would have been changed with even a single rifle company so armed.

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Similar story there. The north had most of the factories and industrial capability. If the south were given some superior technology you can bet that within a short time the north's factories would be pumping out something similar in far greater numbers.
This could actually have resulted in the north steamrolling the south with much deadlier weapons, massacring far more of the population than with the weapons available at the time.

That is what I was saying in the previous post.
Not only that, but who else would have a jump start with such technology? A place like Germany may have been the fastest to adopt and advance technology, like they already were. Only with a technological starting point much further ahead due to your sending more advanced weapons back in time to the Americans, they may have had much deadlier weapons by the time of WW 1 or 2. Allowing them to prevail where they previously had met stalemates.


Just helping one side at one time in history could drastically alter history, in many unpredictable ways.
Helping sides you had no intention of helping. Others in the world are not going to ignore the technology or tactics, and some may be much better at adopting it and improving it than the people you would have wanted.

You can find out the answer to some of these scenarios by looking at the historical records.
Google Omdurman.

IIRC, 10,000 Arabs killed to 48 British casualities.
Oh what a difference a few water-cooled Maxims can make.

Thermopylae. Sparta with a nuke.

This is an interesting thread, but allow me to point out something.

Nearly every war begins with modern weapons or strategies against older weapons or strategies. The Civil War began with Napoleonic tactics against the new rifled muskets leading to mass slaughter of formations in open fields. Both sides adapted and a new form of warfare using cover and movement was created.

WWI began with civil war era tactics and changed into static defense warfare primarily because of the machine gun, repeating rifles and massed artillery. Both sides adapted.

WWII began with the German combined arms strategy of "Blitzkrieg" against opponents using WWI massed troops and static defenses. Both sides adapted.

Warfare is always an adaptation to new weapons and tactics. Perhaps that's the one constant lesson - the winner is the one who adapts to the new conditions the best.

Destroyermen series: Into the Storm, Crusade, Maelstrom, and Distant Thunders

Written by Taylor Anderson, a gun-maker, is a story about several WWII destroyers swept into a wormhole that takes them to a primitive sailing culture.

Very good read, sci-fi heavy...

re Custer/GreasyGrass river

MasterofMalice,
re:
Could one single M60, with a competant gunner, have turned the tide for Custer?

back in my gaming days, I ran a set of scenarios where Custer's 7th was armed with various things including the stuff they turned in just prior to the debacle.
(Spencer carbines and a few Henry's).

It was a point of fact later borne out by some new archeology in the late 80's and early 90's Custer's biggest problem was he ignored or underestimated the opposition.

It appears from the archeology there were over 3000 Souix, Cheyenne etc and they had repeating weapons vs breechloading single shots.

I began to doubt the gattling guns would have helped as the other issue was the left flank of the 7th folded up like a house of cards (per Indian reports and the archeology).

Using a Gulf War I infantry scenario with 240's M16a* and line of sight comms only the best we ever got was

exactly what Custer got. When you have 200 or so people with only the ammo they can carry vs 3000 with terrain knowledge and hyped morale.

It's plain ugly.

What's irritating about the mess (Custer's 7th v Sitting Bull/Crazy Horse and Gall) is that the Fetterman massacre was in IIRC 1866.

Custer literally should have had better sense.

woerm

The Spanish Versus the Mexicas.

Firearms seemed to be only part of the equation ...

The horse, the steel blade, and the dogs (i am not taking the germs into account) had more influence in how things played out on the battlefield than the cannons.

If anyone cares to read the accounts ... the dogs even had rank and salary.

I vote for Montezuma warriors w/ scoped .22 rifles.

The mobility and the attrition because the infections to the Spanish would have been epic.

woerm said:

Custer literally should have had better sense.

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A cavalry office named Grattan once claimed that with one field piece his unit could wipe every Indian off the Great Plains. When a Mormon's sick cow was appropriated by Indians, the Mormon went to complain to him, and he took his cavalry off to the Indians and demanded they give the cow back. It was dead, unfortunatly. The Indians offered a horse in compensation. That didn't work, so they offered two. That didn't work, and Grattan's men opened up with one volley of rifle fire and killed one Indian, the chief, unfortunatly.
The Indians responded with one volley of fire from their rifles ... and killed Grattan and every man with him.
Now ... Custer might have blown it at Greasy Grass ... but I like to think Grattan takes the cake with THAT idiotic blunder!
As for what Custer COULD HAVE used at Greasy Grass???

A phased plasma rifle in the 40 megawatt range.....

Better planning and coordination on the part of Custer, and General Terry would have helped....if Terry's column hadn't blown a river crossing, and one of his companies not gotten lost, they might have arrived a day earlier, and things would have been very different.
I have always wondered how much advantage the terrain gave to the Indians, who made use of it with their bows and arrows, flinging them in ballistic arcs over hills onto the cavalry.
The Indians repeaters sure helped, as well as the fact the 7th was equiped with single shot rifles with cartridges that often jammed.
I suspect most any type of modern semi auto or full auto would have helped Custer.
But what would have helped him more would have been if the expedition had been run better over all.

I personally wouldnt like to be resonsible for giving any troops any modern weapon because some of us might not be here today.

Two Apache gun ships sitting at "stand of distance", can change the course of battles even to this day! Imagine them in any era before now!

Hell, any of today's armored vehicles placed out of era would have been almost impossible to take down.

Speaking of armor, modern body armor/Kevlar would probably be the third biggest thing to change almost any past battle, IMO.

Still 2 Many Choices!?

I have always wondered if a company of trained men with M1 Garands had been made available to Washington at the battle of New York. With support from a couple of 105's, of course.

Consider, 5 rounds a minute was considered high rate of fire in that day and time. The range of ship's artillery wasn't all that much by modern standards and had no high explosive shell.

Seeing this thread title I thought "Oh crap, another armchair quarterback." However like a vulture I sometimes get drawn to things I perceive to be muck. However once I started reading I quickly discovered there were some actually interesting and original hypothetical here.

I think a great demonstration we can actually see is in the movie The Last Samurai. The fictional movie actually portrays a very possible situation. At one point in the movie the Samurai (Armored Cavalry) charge an emplacement of Gatling guns. The results of course are predictable, but it is does make a good point.

Quantity has a quality of its own. Superior arms can (and are) overrun by superior numbers.

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Very true. The Spartans at Thermopoley could have been armed like mall ninjas, but they would probably have lost to superior numbers.

the logical answer, then is a superior quantity of superior firepower. An example being arming everyone at the Alamo not with rifles, but RPGs.

grass, as in Greasygrass

RE:
Tommygun,

I have always wondered how much advantage the terrain gave to the Indians, who made use of it with their bows and arrows, flinging them in ballistic arcs over hills onto the cavalry.

A lot:

The grass was from reports at the time ranging from waist high on the hills to shoulder high in the valley.

That was one reason the Souix/Cheyenne, etc were able to maneuver with more or less impunity.

The 7th Cav more or less couldn't see the battle field very well once they were off their horses.
(within minutes per Indian accounts)

The Indians were firing from deflaide(sp) positions at guys wearing blue uniforms in waist high grass. Note also it was July (brown grass), and all the weapons were blackpowder. so add rolling clouds of smoke from fires set by Reno's men in the valley and from the gunfire.

Check out a topographic map of the battlefield.

it looks like a washboard.

I doubt Custer had command and control of more than the five or six guys right next to him.

woerm

Two Apache gun ships sitting at "stand of distance", can change the course of battles even to this day! Imagine them in any era before now!

Hell, any of today's armored vehicles placed out of era would have been almost impossible to take down.

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You are forgetting something very important.
Those things all consume very large amounts of fuel.
A tank consumers huge amounts of fuel.
.6 mpg for a modern main battle tank and depending on the terrain possibly even worse.

Where are you going to get fuel? Are you going to bring your own refinery and start drilling?
Because even if you get the oil you won't be able to do much with it without a refinery.



Are you aware how many maintenance man hours are involved in a helicopter?!
An Apache under a perfect estimate has many hours of maintenance per hour of flight, and that is with people who know what they are doing while working on it.

Real world numbers can often be 10-15+ maintenance man hours per hour of flight.
You would have a lot of hangar queens very quickly.

Here is a story about using them in southern Afghanistan, where the Apaches supposedly took 32 maintenance man hours per hour of flight!!:
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Apache.html

Our information comes from Ed Macy's book, page 45: “[The Apache] needed thirty-two man hours of maintenance on the ground for every hour flown

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Helicopters also burn through a lot of fuel themselves.




Military machines use massive amounts of fuel, and some take very intensive maintenance.
A combustion engine pulling a massive 60-70 ton armored vehicle with enough torque to go over obstacles on tracks is thirsty.
There is also few cleared roads back in time, and those that did exist were a lot narrower before automobiles.
For example huge portions of the US which are now sparse were also covered with dense forests and swamps back then. Very thick forests which would make armored vehicles difficult to deploy.

Most modern military vehicles come with a lot more people than those operating them in combat. It takes teams of people who maintain them for a living to keep them up and running between fights.

I think it would be a lot cooler ( if no one else has said so yet, ) if a Geneva Convention required any and all Armed Combatants now, to be equipped ONLY with Arms and accessories and ancillary support materials etc, which were in use in or before 1859.

Heavy fines in international Court for anyone and their COs caught cheating.

Hmm....

During the Finnish Winter war, give the Finns Dragunovs instead of Nagants.

They already had the 7.62x54R stocked and supplied.

Simo Häyhä might have an even greater kill count...

1889 - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain

Another "what if" book series is Eric Flint's "1632" about a small town in West Virginia coal mining town that gets swept back to Germany inthe year 1632; in the middle of the 30 year's war. The Americans got involved in the battle, driving through the middle of it with several big mining trucks, full of guys shooting their deer rifles from the bucket of the trucks.

Don't know if anyone mentioned it but - Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time series. Modern New Englanders from Nantucket in the Bronze Age.

Voimakas said:

During the Finnish Winter war, give the Finns Dragunovs instead of Nagants.

They already had the 7.62x54R stocked and supplied.

Simo Häyhä might have an even greater kill count...

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... and night vision!

... and unlimited coffee.

Had Custer brought the Gatlings, the effect they'd have had would have been to slow down the 7th Cavalry's progress. The "Terry/Gibbon" column would have been able to meet up with them (they'd lost a day do to poor decisions by General Terry) and ... maybe ... maybe ... maybe the end would have been different.

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A wise man once said, "If Custer had taken the gatlings, he'd be alive today -- down in some gullie in the Little Wolf Mountians, cursing and swearing and trying to get those *&^%$ gatlings up the other side."

In this debate I have occasionally asked "pro-gatling gun" proponents to assign the gatling guns a mission -- and have yet to find one who knows how to assign a mission to a machine gun (Gatlings were classed as machine guns.)

The Gatlings were heavy -- almost as heavy as field artillery pieces, which were rarely used in mobile indian warfare. Those particular Gatling guns were in caliber .50-70 -- nothing at all like the flat shooting machine guns of modern times, and hence with very limited grazing range (a machine gun's stock-in-trade.) They were pulled by condemned cavalry horses -- which makes them somewhat less than "highly mobile."

It's hard to see what the Gatling guns would have contibuted, other than a little sport to the indians who would have probably over-run them before they could unlimber, or attacked them from their unprotected rear or flanks.

As for the Gatlings slowing Custer down, you have a point. But the most likely result would be for Gibbons to hit the indians first -- and Gibbon's forces were smaller than Custers and even less well-trained. The probable result of that would be we'd be talking about "Gibbon's Last Stand."