Modern weapons in classic battles

[MASTEROFMALICE]

I've always had a fascination with "what-ifs". I even have the books titled "What If?" where historians give their opinions of what could have happened and what the aftermath would be.

Well some years ago a movie came out where two modern fighter jets went back 50 or so years and went up against WWII-type aircraft.

My real hypothetical would be, how much havoc would even ONE modern weapon have caused even 150 years ago?

Imagine one single M2, with that rate of fire and sheer penetrating power, up against the lines of troops at Gettysburg.

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

At the battle of Thermopylae, would the Persians even have tried to advance if they started dropping from 300 yards as a result of AK fire?

If the Colt 1911 had come out just 40 years earlier, what could a competant gunfighter have done with one extra round and a much quicker rate of fire?

I'd be interested to hear anyone's opinions or theories (since that's all we really have to go with.)

 

[Samuel Adams]

Read "The Guns of the South" and other books by Harry Turtledove.

 

[MASTEROFMALICE]

That's a really cool looking book and I'll pick it up.

But it kind of goes beyond what I was thinking. Clearly an entire army equipped with modern weapons would have won.

I was thinking more along the lines of a bare minimum to turn the tide.

For example: The Custer scenario. One M16? One M60? One M2? An Apache? Mortars? A fire team? Squad? Company?

 

[zxcvbob]

"June 25th, 1964 - or, if you prefer, June 25th, 1876. The cast of characters in order of their appearance: a patrol of General Custer's cavalry and a patrol of National Guardsmen on a maneuver. Past and present are about to collide head-on, as they are wont to do in a very special bivouac area known as the Twilight Zone." --Rod Serling

 

[TrapperReady]

I would wager that many land battles fought before 1900 could have been turned with one or two well-manned crew-served weapons. Heck, a handful of Motorola Talkabout radios could have helped turn the tide in many instances.

 

[MASTEROFMALICE]

Think rate of fire.

30 aimed shots per minute from an M16 vs, what, 2 shots a minute from a musket?

 

[leadcounsel]

Well, weapons still overheat, malfunction, or/and need ammo. After the shock of the "boomstick" even an M2 can be overrun given enough enemy fighters.

The US stormed Normandy and took heavy casualties. The surviving Germans later said their guns just overheated and they couldn't shoot targets quickly enough because there were so many.

Obviously modern weapons would turn the tide, but it would probably take several.

 

[Cymro]

Think about how the weapons of his day could have changed things for Custer.

Imagine if they had brought along the Gatling guns that they had available.

 

[Thernlund]

Imagine one single M2, with that rate of fire and sheer penetrating power, up against the lines of troops at Gettysburg.

It'd make a dent to be sure, but I don't think it would turn the tide.

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

Now there you may have something.

At the battle of Thermopylae, would the Persians even have tried to advance if they started dropping from 300 yards as a result of AK fire?

Oh yeah. Even one AK would have been a huge help for the Spartans. However, all other things being equal, the sheer number of Persians would have still overwhelmed the Spartans I think. Xerxes would have pressed them forward no matter what.

If the Colt 1911 had come out just 40 years earlier, what could a competant gunfighter have done with one extra round and a much quicker rate of fire?

Unlikely to alter the outcome. A skilled revolver shooter can fire just as quickly and accurately as any auto shooter. Number of rounds would not likely affect the outcome as the fight would be over in about 3 or 4 shots. I predict the revolver shooting winning as he is more likely to be a more skilled marksman in an Old West-type of setting. My prediction is based on the idea that the revolver shooter is more likely to be an "old hat" at it, whereas the auto shooter would more likely be a newb.


-T.

 

[rcmodel]

Tom Horn was taken captive after a jail break while armed with a "modern" auto pistol he took from one of the jailers.

He couldn't figure out how to take the safety off!

I imagine he would have been a little harder to corner with a SAA Colt in his hand!


As for Custer?
What if they had all been armed with 1866 Winchesters?
It had already been out 10 years, and the magazine held 15 rounds!

That right there is over 4,000 rounds before they had to start reloading the magazines the first time.

rcmodel

 

[Deleted member 66305]

Read "The Guns of the South" and other books by Harry Turtledove.

Anything by Turtledove is excellent.

The 1632 series by Eric Flint is great, too.

For more fantastical reading, the Nantucket series by S.M. Stirling is a lot of fun.

 

[TallPine]

How about a scoped 30-06 on top of the wall at Helm's Deep ?

 

[tmajors]

Well some years ago a movie came out where two modern fighter jets went back 50 or so years and went up against WWII-type aircraft.

Was The Final Countdown. Wasn't just two aircraft, was the entire aircraft carrier USS Nimitz going back to just before Pearl Harbor. Debating if they were going to stop it or not. Decided they were going to but then they got sucked back into modern times just before preemptively striking the Japanese.

Here's one for you though. What if the zealots at Masada had some decent firearms against Governor Silva and the 10th Legion?

 

[highorder]

Well some years ago a movie came out where two modern fighter jets went back 50 or so years and went up against WWII-type aircraft.

that was a good movie!

It was titled "The Final Countdown" and envolved the USS Nimitz transported back to Pearl Harbor before the attack.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/

 

[tntwatt]

I think an effective sniper with a 50cal would have made the most difference if allowed only one modern weapon.

 

[Cosmoline]

The shock and awe factor would be much greater than the actual impact on a battle. But it would decrease with the time period in question. We know from history books how stone age people react to even primitive smokepoles, but a few M1's at some massive Civil War battlefield would probably not get noticed until after the dust cleared and someone pulled it off you. By that time the battles were horrific meat grinders, not tribal displays of prowess.

Modern people, even shooters, tend to underestimate the technological advances made from the late middle ages to the 1870's. All muzzleloaders and to some extent all BP firearms tend to get lumped together, but there's a world of difference between a line of men with matchlocks in 1660 and a line of men with rifle muskets in 1860. Not to mention the devestating power of artillery even before modern explosives.

I suspect modern COMMUNICATIONS and TACTICS would have a much greater impact than a few modern weapons. The ability to talk directly to line officers from some central command center would have averted countless missteps and allowed much better coordination. Not to mention the ability to coordinate artillery with ground assaults, which could have been unbeatable if anyone had been able to pull it off during the Napoleonic or CW battles. Such a thing was impossible using runners and primitive signals though.

The use of modern intensive training and squad-level tactical deployments instead of archaic lines would have had a huge impact as well, even with 19th century rifle muskets. But their thinking hadn't evolved yet, and it would take millions in the grave before it did.

Imagine one single M2, with that rate of fire and sheer penetrating power, up against the lines of troops at Gettysburg.

I can imagine not being able to see much of anything after the first volley or two and spraying rounds into the smoke like everyone else. It wouldn't have changed any outcome unless you hit Chamberlain on little round top with an '06. And lord knows the CSA boys were trying to do just that with some rifles as accurate as any Garand.

 

[jerkface11]

How about a B52 at Gettysburg.

 

[mole]

I've wondered things like this several times.

At the battle of Thermopylae, would the Persians even have tried to advance if they started dropping from 300 yards as a result of AK fire?

There were a few thousand other greeks there as well. What if 1000 of those other greeks where English warbow shoots? Arcing heavy war arrows over the greeks into the lightly armored persians at 200 yards would have been a serious problem for the persians.

What if the Confederates had a small but highly trained unit (like the German stormtroopers) but armed with sks carbines?

 

[Beatnik]

Also regarding the War for Southern Independence: there are museums here in Virginia which have bullets which fused together after colliding in mid-air, and 12" trees which got severed from small arms fire. I agree that you'd have to get a lot of high-capacity, high fire rate weapons to change things.

I'm trying to think of battles and I keep coming back to Agincourt - an actual case where a much larger, more heavily armed force was beaten in part because the smaller force had fairly sophisticated long-range weapons. Well, that, and lots and lots of mud.

 

[Treo]

How about a scoped 30-06 on top of the wall at Helm's Deep

Who would have been on it Legolas or Gimli?

Custer had the option of taking Gattling guns but he disregarded them.

Think how the battle might have played out had he simply waited a day for Terry to show up w/ the infantry and the artillery?

 

[Checkman]

I think that modern radios and modern artillery would make more of a difference. The Persians would have found themselves under heavy bombardment before they even left their staging area.

And a couple batteries of MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) would have shattered the Union line and given Pickets soldiers a walk. If I remember correctly a battery (4 or is it 6 trucks?) of MLRS can cover an entire grid square. Which I believe is 1,000 square meters. Or perhaps one truck can cover 1,000 sq meters and a battery can cover several thousand. Well anyway it's a lot of firepower.

Even in WW1 if the British soldiers had been equipped with modern radios and if the British artillery knew todays Indirect Fire techniques they might have prevailed in 1916 in the Battle of the Somme. It's even possible that equipped with ww1 artillery pieces the radio and indirect fire control could have made that technology very effective. Kind of like if you went back to a Cholera outbreak in the 1700's and showed them how IV's, effective sanitation techniques and efffective quarantines could have cut the effect of the epidemic by half - or more.

I believe they would have sustained heavy casulties, but one of the things that emerges when you read about the Somme is how close the Brits actually got to really breaking through sections of the German line a couple if times (contrary to the popular myth).But the soldiers couldn't pass on the information to the higher command. So artillery barrages didn't happen, or they fell onto the British soldiers which had the effect of breaking the British attack.Or reinfocements were not brought up to exploit the breakthrough and consolidate the gains.

Anyway it is fun to speculate.

 

[Treo]

If I remember correctly a battery (4 or is it 6 trucks?) of MLRS can cover an entire grid square. Which I believe is 1,000 square meters. Or perhaps one truck can cover 1,000 sq meters and a battery can cover several thousand. Well anyway it's a lot of firepower.

How about one speil loaded w/ DPICM will cover one full grid

A speil is the full basic load of an MLRS

 

[lacoochee]

Also try the Lost Regiment Series by William R. Forstchen.

Synopsis:

A Union Regiment from the US civil war is swept through a portal built by an alien race to a planet a long way from Earth. Luckily for the regiment, there are other humans here, unluckily, there are also three tribes – or hordes – of alien human-eaters. The whole plot of nine books is concentrated round wars between the humans and the aliens.

The technology and weapons they use continue to evolve as the series progresses.

 

[Tommygunn]

Custer had the option of taking Gattling guns but he disregarded them.

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.
Custer didn't care too much for Gatlings. They jammed often, they were transported in caissons which occasionally broke loose from horses when going up hill, plowing down other cavalrymen, and some of the parts were a bit to fragile.
They are also a line-of-sight weapon. The area where Custer died was hilly with coulees breaking up the landscape. This gave the Indians, with their bow and arrow a great advantage when used as a mass attack. Arrows can be projected over a hill, while firearms don't have this advantage.

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

A speil is the full basic load of an MLRS

Do you mean "SPLL" which is pronounced like "spill"?