Kevin Elliott wrote: > 2) rifled muskets were not effective because of the ponderous reload > time (I don't have precise figures, but the number 1/6th-1/10th the > rate of fire of a smoothbore musket comes to mind)
There isn't that much difference in reload times - say 30 seconds for a Kentucky rifle, as opposed to 20 seconds for a Brown Bess musket, for well-trained troops. However, if you are in a volley line and waiting for the last man to reload before firing a volley, that's a lifetime. Remember, you are standing up to reload! Putting a few men armed with rifles in a line of musketmen, they would seem useless, or worse, a liability. Before I get flamed about those figures, may I point out that modern black powder flintlock rifle shooters can and do shoot about one round a minute, without trying to fire fast - a hotspot on the barrel can cause the powder to cookoff unexpectedly, so they service the bore and touch hole between shots, which slows them; but this isn't so important on the battlefield when risks can be taken. It is said that Simon Kenton could reload his Kentucky rifle in 12 seconds. The world record Springfield reload is about 6.5 seconds, a Brown Bess will take a bit longer than a Springfield. At first glance the rifle was a better infantry weapon, but pitched battles at 300 yards just didn't happen - and smoke obscuring the battlefield made aimed shots difficult after a few volleys. Muskets weren't usually aimed, just pointed in the right direction - musketmen were sometimes told to close their eyes when firing to prevent injury from pan flash. In volley fire it isn't really possible to aim - for aimed fire you need to fire when the rifleman is ready, not on command. The superior accuracy of a rifle is no use if you can't or don't aim it. The time taken to aim also slows the rate of fire over an unaimed weapon. Another problem was that early rifles weren't optimised for battle or use in an army. It was often difficult starting the ball down the barrel, which can slow reload time - there's a tool to do it, and you then use the ramrod, but if the rifle/ball/patch combination is right you can start the ball by hitting it with the ball of your hand, and the ramming can be quite quick. Rifles were seldom fitted with bayonets, important to the tactics used at the time - fire a volley or two, then a bayonet charge while your opponents are reloading. They were also too fragile to use as a close quarter club. Rifles weren't standardised either, so ammunition and parts couldn't be shared and the riflemen had to cast/roll their own balls. Rifle balls need to be more accurate than musket balls. Rifles take more training to use as well. But I think the main reason that rifles didn't play a bigger part, apart from the usual military inertia (google Ferguson rifle for a British example of this), was the simple lack of rifles, and their cost. Many men fighting in the Revolutionary War didn't have any firearms at all. -- Peter Fairbrother
