ARMS OF PRECISION. (From the Times,)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVI, Issue 1242, 9 August 1859, Page 2 (Supplement)

ARMS OF PRECISION. (From the Times,)

The appearance of an article on Rifled Guns in a periodical like the Edinburgh Review is a new indication of the importance which that subject has now . acquired. As in most cases of the like description, the prevailing impression left on the mind by the exposition of what is going to be done is one of utter ,' astonishment at the fact that it should have been left undone so long. In this instance, too, the circumstances are such as to make the matter more wonderful than ever. Though we are irresistibly carried to the conclusion that till now we never knew what gunpowder could do,, and though military tactics will perhaps be revolutionized by the results, it happens, nevertheless, that ,not a single new element or principle has betn discovered. Everybody- has been long aware that firtarins, especially for purposes of warfare, were imperfect in the extreme, and also that this imperfection could be materially diminished by the adoption of grooved or rifled barrels. We had acquired also evidence of the best possible kind touching the actual effect of rifled gun* in military operations, for the Americans em- [ ployed these weapons against us nearly a huirlred years ago, in the War of Independence, and to such good purpose that our casualties rose terribly above the average scale. Yet, though we had thus obtained every neces«ary suggestion, it was not until very recent days that we *et|to working the subject out. Our \ army has but just been equipped with En field rifles, and riflle ordnance is only coming into use at this moment. The retrospect taken by the reviewer of the now ex-> ploded system is entertaining in the extreme ; indeed, if the statements did not rest on unimpeachable records they would be utterly incredible. About one-and-twenty years ago the most scientific corps in our army —that of the Royal Engineers— was employed to ascertain and define the real properties or capabilities of the genuine' old "service musket I'—that1 '— that weapon which had carried the British soldier through so many fights, and which, be it never forgotten, high military authorities most tenaciously endeavoured to preserve. So a body of officers went to work at Chatham with all the appliances necessary for the precise establishment of facts, and this is what they discovered : — They discovered that, as to the distance a regulation musket . would carry, nothing more certain could be inferred than that it might be 100 yards or it might be 700 yards, according to the elevation of the piece. At no deration, however, wis there less than 100 yards < variation in its possible range, and at some elevation I this difference exceeded 300 yards. So much for that ! primary point. Then came the point of accuracy, on which the revelations were still more astounding. At a distance of 150 yards a target about twice as high and twice as broad as a man could, with very careful shooting, be hit three times out of four. Beyond that distance, notwithstanding that the musket was fired from a stand, and every precaution employed to insure steadiness and success, the results were nil. Nothing could be learnt at all, except that the target was never hit and the balls could never be found. The mark, was made twice as wide as before, but of 10 shots at 250 yards not one struck, and when the distance was increased to 300 yards it became clear that the experimentalists might as well be firing at the moon. For the practical result of this famous investigation we will quote only a single specimen. In a manual or guide-book for the British marksman, founded on the above data, a soldier was directed, in firing at an enemy 600 yards off, to aim 130 feet above him ! so that hostile armies, like gentlemanly duellists, might perform the ceremony of fighting by "firing in the air.' Upon the whole, as far as we can make out from the figures before us, it seems that if a soldier armed with the old firelock were placed at the bottom of JLudgatehill the chances would be about 500 to I against his hitting St. Paul's. It will, of course, be asked how, if this was the case, the musket ever did any execution at all ; and we suspect that, in point of fact, it was almost harmless exceptat very close quarters, within point blink range. when volleys were delivered, as occasionally happened, at' pistol-ihqj distance the effect was fatal, but other- , wise the result of musketry fire was perfectly insigniti- ... cant, and known to bo so. The reviewer reminds us __ that, according to military calculations, it took the ' weight of a man in lead to kill him in battle, meaning that so many bullets would have been expended befo re one hit the mark. As a more practical illustration of the facts, it is. related that the French certainly fire"? away 25,000,000 cartridges in the Crimea, whereas *: Is not 40 much as imagined that they even hit 25,00 Russians. We are much disposed, indeed, to believev c that the musket, as employed up to the present time, was a less deadly weapon than the old English longbow. Our ancestors were not used to throw away 999 cloth-yard shafts out of 1,000, and for the simple reason that they were taught not only to draw the bow, but to hit a mark. Look at the contrast between the old archery practice at " the butts '' and the " blank cartridge ' drill of modern days, where a man's training consisted in his being taught to aim at nothing without a bullet. 'What would have become of the old English infantry if'archers Had been merely shown how to draw their bowstrings to their right ears without any arrows or any mark to aim at ? , If but 100,000 men could be now marched out in England possessing as good a command of the rifle as their forefathers had of the bow we might laugh ,at the 4 very notion of invasion. There is not the least reason why this should not come to pass. Mr. Whitworfh declares that he will make a rifle send a ball into the Very muzzle of another rifle at 500 yards' distance, the exact counterpart of Robin Hood's famous feat of sending one arrow into the centre of a target and splitting it with another. We have greater facilities th <n any othei country for this species of excellence. We have, the best. of manufacturers, the best of instruments, and a decided national turn for using them. ( The common excuse for a poacher is, that a man can't keep his hands off a gun ; but sportsmen do not ac- ~ quire their proficiency by firing away powder without •hot" "All we want is practice, and practice .would make even the old musket formidable. At Bunker'*hill the Americans were armed, not with rifles, but with fowling- pieces, and the execution they did was owing merelj to, the system of making every shot tell. Putnam told his men to fire at the English as (hey would fin at anj thing they wanted to kill, and he anticipated with his, practical sagacity the very principles of our modern musketry schools. The aim was to be different according as the Americans could distinguish . the waistbands, the faces, or the buttons of our advancing Grenadiers, and the consequence was that we left more men before that fatal breastwork than we had often lost in a pitched battle. Two very similar illustrations of the case occurred in India. The artillery of the Sikhs in their last war with us was so terribly .effective,. and the, sabres of their horsemen inflicted ■uch dreadful wounds, that some curiosity was felt about the source from which they procured weapons of such unusual power. Upon inquiry it was found that the guns were old guns of our own, patched up for use, and the 'swords our own cavalry sabres. All tßut the Sikhs had done was to sharpen the latter carefully, keep them in wooden instead of metal scabbards, and " hit hard ;" while, as to the cannon,. they- simply took care to ascertain their range, and -not' throw 'away a •hot. , - if the modern arms of precision enable us to send -one bullet in three, as appears to be calculated, or even one in ten, to a given mark, war will indeed be something .tremendous ; but such remits are^iomt-what problematical We know wfia! has been done by Americans -with revolvers, and a story told the other , dajf in our columns of the Royal Engineers in ludia furnished still more recent evidence on the point before us. About 100, men of this corps were surrounded in one of the forts in the Oude country by vast numbers .of the enemy. Each man had a Lancaster rifle and 60 _ rounds of ammunition, which, was all expended. After ..thtt rebel* had beeif repulsed .90 dead bodies were found

under' the walls," and it is reasonably infixed that others, as, well- as A the wounded, had beert^frheajoff.' Perhaps we may reckon that 300 shots told" out oT the 6,000, or one in 20, which is a very high proportion ; but it muit be observed that in this, as in most other of the examples produced, the rifle has been used by troops posted behind walls or earthworks against as. kailants close outside. Whether the same effects can be secured on a large scale and in the field of battle is another question. Heavy deductions, we suspect, must be made on the score of precipitation, smoke, and other obvious impediments, but enough will remain, after all, to change the aspect of modern warfare, as, indeed, the essay of these arms in the Crimea and in India has already proved.