The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I'm up to Shiloh.  I used to have a computer game (DOS) that played Shiloh.  It seemed to be fairly realistic, if simple, but was a good way to understand the terrain and troops involved.  Johnston of course adopted a rather strange battle formation, I gather everyone wanted to be the next Napoleon, and he was late getting into position due to rain and then off into battle that morning, or it could have been worse for Grant.

I had not realized the Grant and Halleck problems.  I'm also kind of marveling at the resiliency of the Confederacy in being able to assemble an army and go on the offensive in the west at that point after having lost much of Tennessee.

Somewhere I've got the Readers Digest version of the "maps" volume of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.  There are some in there by Jedediah Hotchkiss.

He was a hell of a cartographer.  Did fantastic work given the limitations of his day.

I've done some drafting on the board in my youth on linen with ink.

oh yeah well can you load a musket and fire in under a minute

The British army had ample supplies of gunpowder circa 1805 and were trained to fire 4 times a minute.  Other European armies could manage only 3, at best.  Imagine marching up under fire to 60 yards from your opponent, volley firing once, and then charging with the bayonet.

The British were devastating in line formation of they got close and their adversaries knew this.

I think 3 shots/minute was the standard for the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

They were firing of course Minie balls (which aren't balls) and had percussion caps (which as noted could be forgotten).  The British Brown Bess was powder and ball in a wrap that you chewed the end off, run most of the powder down the barrel, spit the ball into the barrel, ram the charge, replace the ram, place some powder in the primer position, unless it was a flintlock.

Napoleon did not like rifles because they were slow to load, for accuracy they wrapped the ball in a piece of leather and the rifling made ramming the charge difficult apparently as the clearance was very tight to get the ball to spin.

And of course the Northern cavalry later was given "repeaters" in fair numbers.

Full metal jacket.  Yeah, I've heard "Wad cutter" and "hollow point" and "FMJ" and "armor piercing" and "ball and some I've forgot.

Tank rounds have similar diversity, probably more so.  I'm on a tank Facebook thing where guys argue incessantlly about the best tank and the best round.

I think modern tank rounds are either discarding sabot or HEAT.

And a sabot is a wooden shoe.