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USA vs Britain Colonial War

yesterday i saw this movie "The Patriot" and field battles were fought by lines.
The enemy shot one burst of bullets, and the enemy stand up without moving, just waiting the bullets to come, then was the enemy's turn to one burst of bullets, and the first on to shoot would do the same, not move and stand up waiting to get shot..
i don't know if u understand me but i think this is just the worst tactic ever..even in the castle ages, the tactics were better..
what i saw in the movie was the reality or just some movie exageration?

Nope, that's how they did it. Get in lines and hope you don't get hit.

Great movie, btw.

people must have been really stupid

In retrospect, yeah, it's dumb. Thats why the British started losing a lot of the colonial wars, to the Boers and such. Can't deal with Guerilla Warfare. But at the time it was the height of military technique.

In a few hundred years people will probably think that the strategies we're using now are brutally retarded.

18th century warfare was done this way for a number of reasons. The most important was that the accuracy of the firearms at the time was abyssmal.

The firing lines were used to concentrate as much fire as possible in a given region to maximize the damage. When you can only fire at most 2 rounds a minute, it makes sense, though you do take heavy casualties.

War itself never makes much sense.

MrS

quote:

Originally posted by MrSquirrel 18th century warfare was done this way for a number of reasons. The most important was that the accuracy of the firearms at the time was abyssmal. The firing lines were used to concentrate as much fire as possible in a given region to maximize the damage. When you can only fire at most 2 rounds a minute, it makes sense, though you do take heavy casualties. War itself never makes much sense. MrS

^^ Exactly
Another reason they liked this structure was that there was no method of controlling troops without structured formations. There obviously were no radios or anything, so if you let the troops out of your sight who knows what they would do. Using the line type formations allowed commanders to keep a close eye on their troops.

And the reason the Brits had so much trouble in the Boer war wasnt really their fighting system, it was more that the Boer's had bought the most up to date weaponry available. I believe they had breach loading rifles at the time, where the British were still using barrel loading guns.

ok..so let's assume lines were the best strategy, why would they calmly stand up without moving or crouching waiting for the enemy's burst?
that's pure suicide..

quote:

Originally posted by RenderedDream ok..so let's assume lines were the best strategy, why would they calmly stand up without moving or crouching waiting for the enemy's burst? that's pure suicide..

Because there is a thing called "discipline".

And like I stated before, the accuracy of the weapons was abyssmal...they were just as likely to be hit by a bullet low to the ground as standing up. A lot of wounds of the era were leg wounds where a dropping bullet hit them. And at the time, a leg wound was just as deadly as a gunshot to the head, just a lot slower.

MrS

the surface area exposed if crouched is a lot lower than the surface area exposed standed up
in my opinion..it's just waiting for death..
if i were commander or something i would come up with other strategies, like building forts or embushes (like mel gibson did to save his son in the bushes)

ya this type of fighting was really stupid.

The sad thing is, that when the Civil war came around in America, they still used this type of fighting technique.

As people above said the guns being used where the type that you just pointed in the general direction and fired... Spray and pray as us Counter-strike addicts like to say.

However, when the Civil war did start the technology of guns had improved dramtically. The rifles were far more accurate. This type of fighting with the men in lines led to thousands of deaths.

In the US Civil War, most of the country's young male population was completely wiped out by 1865 using the tactic of "standing there and praying you don't get hit."

In WW1, they at least "advanced" to using trenches, but they still had to charge on the enemy lines and face being cut down by the other side in order to gain any ground. I'd say my Great Grandfather was lucky to have lived through that shit.

yep holding the lines was due to the discipline they developed in training. Well that and if you were to break formation and run in the face of enemy fire, you'd be shot for cowardice. so i guess it was do or die.

WWI had an even more horrible strategy, the new technologies such as machine guns and trench warfare confounded the generals. so they began devising different techniques, they included the idea of the slow walk across the no man's land. bascially the whole regiment or unit would slowly walk across the no man's land while tring to attack the enemy positions, you know as opposed to charging the enemies position. needless to say many were brutally slaughtered this way.

i believe futuristic wars will be fought on video games or something like that =D

Its all about the demise of infantry in the field of combat. WW1 was so bad that we (the British) invented tanks to break the stalemate. It didn't really work, but by WW2 tanks were good enough to ensure that infantry were made redundant. Today what aircraft and artillery don't kill, tanks do, and infantry are just for mopping up and urban fighting.

i think the commanders from british/usa war were plain stupid, they were just giving away their army..the most numbered army would win, resulting in catastrophic casualties
i don't understand how that was acceptable

The thing that you have to remember about this time period is that it was very elitist, the rich Aristocrats were in charge, not because they were skilled generals but because they had come from a family of generals, especially in the case of Britain, also they had a high sense of 'honour' and 'duty' and were of course highly patriotic which lead them to do some rather stupid things

Actually, until the lat 1800s, the casualties from such an organized type of war were a lot lower than you might think, typically running about 10-25%. When breach loading weapons guns with clips and better accuracy started showing up, this style of warfare became obsolete in a big hurry.

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