Firing animations

[TheRomanRuler]

Historically musket didnt have "kick back" as many modern weapons.. Also i like`d to see front line kneeling when unit shoot, like in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24gQKRF9aJ0
At 2:53
If that just is realistic, its russian propaganda movie, but know its going off-topic. SO:
-front line kneel when unit shoot together
-no kick-back

And sorry for my english, and historical information, im expert in times of Rome, not Napoleonic era..

(once again too long message..Its justwaste of time..all of us time.. )
Thanx for any help

[panzer 4]

v.good example u provided, another common misconception is that the musket was terribly inaccurate and couldnt hit at 100 yards. actually the french military did a test in 1810 and found that at 100 yards, an unaimed volley would have 53% of bullets hitting their target. obviously this doesnt mean 53% of the regiment would die, cause some poor (really poor) lads would get hit by up to 4-5 bullets :S

[DunkFunk]

firing a musket i assume would have similar kick to modern shotguns than rifles. In the video they are shooting blanks.

Tests are nice but after the first volley accuracy would severly drop because of the smoke they produced. A common tactic especially of the french and surprisingly the british was to fire 1-2 volleys then charge. Musket balls had an awful drawback in that sometime they just fell out when the musket was levelled to be shot ( as you have to aim slightly down for kick) on top of this if you allow for misfires ( 10-30%) at any one time and you can see where muskets get their reputation for innacuracy.

As far as i know any rank fire apart from the first 2 ranks had disapeared and after the first volley it was hard to stop men from firing and we get the sought of fire at will thing we see in game.

[panzer 4]

yes, the test was only a one unaimed volley

[emperor77]

Well this is what i found after googling for a minute

http://www.americancivilwarforum.com...ets-17228.html

"I have fired lived from a brown bess flintlock musket. Very odd experience. Fire, pause as spark is communicated from frizen to pan to charge (not long, fraction of a second but distinctly noticeable compared to modern arms), then the recoil and the audible whooosh of the subsonic ball going down range. The recoil is quite powerful but maybe not quite as sharp as say firing an AK or the like."

[TheRomanRuler]

ok, thanx for info.

[Stilgar CG]

For an in-depth discussion on musketry see this link http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/in...etry_firefight

[Centurion90]

As a historical reenactor, I must say that muskets have a greater kickback than many modern weapons (except for those of high caliber). There is almost no kick when firing blanks, but a full load of buck & ball + 80grains of 2ff powder can undoubtedly leave a shoulder bruise after about fifteen rounds. (For reference, I own and frequently fire a .69 caliber 1842 Springfield smoothbore musket.)

[Ryangreenleaf]

Nobody used kneeling firing except in square. It was an idea that was deserted bc it was hard to get the kneeling front line to move.

[[SVK]Jakob]

Yes but kneeling you have a smaller profile and are less of a target. According to Napoleonskaya, it was not employed much by the French.

[emperor77]

Somehow i imagine Brits kneeling a lot, given that they were constantly outnumbered they would want to get as much fire power as possible?

[DunkFunk]

Ya the thin red line comes to mind

[bloody bill]

I have fired many black powder rifles from flint to rifled springefields. They have a slight kick but not as much as a 12 guage more like a 20 guage. I have also read reports about armies shooting a cleaning round through the gun every 10 shots because the guns get so dirty. Modern black powder is very dirty but it is also very clean compared to the poor quality of powder used in the Napoleonic era.

[TheRomanRuler]

Yeh, i also think there isnt almost any kick back. And in game it looks like they shooting with cannon!
So is there any mod that change that?

[Gordon Highlander]

I don't understand how you think there is no kick. I have fired the British Brown Bess musket used in the Napoleonic Wars, and it can cause bruises in your shoulder after repeated firing. It kicks like a mule. Mind you, it is a .75 caliber gun! (that is bigger than the modern Barret sniper rifle!)

[panzer 4]

ooo so if you have, can u give us insight on its accuracy, say at 100 yards cause there are so many different sides of the story. but so far i have found that most of the sources say accurate at 100 yards and devastating at 25 yards (so 75-50 yards should be deadly)

[Gordon Highlander]

My honest opinion is that at 100 yards a soldier would hit the target one or two times out of ten. At 25 Yards I would say one in three musket balls would hit a target. Mind ou soliders were trained with their weapons differently in every army during this time. The French and Russians were trained more with the bayonet. The army with the best shooters of the time, was the British who's line infantry were very skilled shooters, and even more so with their light infantry. The Prussians with their Schutzen are a close second. Those two armies were known for their ability to form thin lines and hold their ground, while there enemeis preffered close columns en masse.

[KO|Druid]

. The French and Russians were trained more with the bayonet. The army with the best shooters of the time, was the British who's line infantry were very skilled shooters, and even more so with their light infantry. The Prussians with their Schutzen are a close second. Those two armies were known for their ability to form thin lines and hold their ground, while there enemeis preffered close columns en masse.

JUst a sidenote...
-French were, from 1803, highly trained in both shooting and bayonet..Napoleon famously made it so.(exception of a short period of conscript armies later on)

-The British had the best training but skill with aiming isn't a consideration at range with a musket besides aiming on or below the crossbelt to counter the upkick & coolness of loading procedure in battle. Their strength in defensive battles was having more muskets to bear over the same frontage (2 ranks for confident troops)

-Russian tactical commanders preferred assault or open area musketry (in which they usually were inferior the French enemy) in order to famously not be deployed near areas where the pressed men could desert.

-Massed columns? I only know of a few examples of this by the French (Waterloo fiasco being the one everyone is aware of.) The famous attack column or column of divisions (2 company front also but with company 4&5 placed with further formation evolution in mind), unless at closed distance (seree), was a relatively open formation used primarily for it's maneuver and fast formation evolution properties.

-Many refer to the use of columns but are stuck on the French revolutionary armies and, in much later conscript army years, but then these were still proper columns (not massed in any real sense) but used, due to lack of evolution training, with great success, at least early on, vs the static Ancien Regime style armies

[panzer 4]

hmmmm, i guess the only way to test musket accuracy is if we just get a bunch of people fire at a target roughly their size at 100 yards

[KO|Druid]

Here you go..these chaps have done it for us with surprising results..

http://www.youtube.com/user/cdsadler

Besides the fact that these guys are not in battlefield conditions, the Brown Bess is surprisingly accurate at 100yds, even though after very few shots, the barrel is very hot- the heat haze alone making targetting almost impossible.

* Also note the upkick of the musket. This would suggest that the well-trained infantry of the era, who were trained to fire relatively low, had great superiority in effectiveness over ill-trained counterparts.