"Aiiiiiii...m....fiiiiiiiiiiii..a"

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Which is why muskets didn’t have sights.

Boru

Matchlocks had sights fer crissakes...

And they were accurate?

[downbeatplumb]

‘Ready...point the business end of your weapon in the the general direction of the bad guys and hope for the best...fire!’

Boru

Some sequences used "level". Marksmanship with smooth bores was not a thing.

Or "present". 
5 shots a minute for a brit, 3 for the French. 
We used lines while they fought in columns so we made better use of manpower.

---

Matchlocks had sights fer crissakes...

And they were accurate?

No that's why you had to have a mass of men together. 
Only the rifles had any sort of accuracy and they were a bugger to load.

[Deesse23]

...Jihadi-like soldiers ...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just checking. A friend had a TVA .57 caliber muzzle-loading rifle. I only fired it once, too tedious.

[onlinebiker]

Matchlocks had sights fer crissakes...

Fair enough, but matchlocks weren't used in the so-called 'Seven Years War'. By that time, the British and French had removed them from service, as flintlocks were more reliable.

Boru

You missed the point.

Matchlocks were the very first guns.

And many if not most had sights.

So sights have been around as long as there have been guns.

And actually - flintlocks were not more reliable. They are more accurate than a matchlock due to the more predictable lock time. (Lock time - interval between trigger break and powder ignition.)

[Peebothuhlu]

Matchlocks had sights fer crissakes...

And they were accurate?

For a certain level of 'Accurate' yes.

You wouldn't be hitting anything standing behind you, generally, (Barring some sort of weapon failure).

But 'Accuracy over distance' was a known thing, sure.

Rifling was also a 'Known thing'. There were/are wheel locks with rifling as well as primitive breeches.

Like everything military, it all comes down to the "Cost per unit" level of finances.

Which were an especial sort of bugger in an age before industrail mass production. Why match locks were converted across to flint locks, were converted across to percussion caps when they could.

It's not that the cartridge didn't exist. (1810 is a number that comes to mind for a fellow putting something like that together.)
It's that "New fangled technology is too expensive to waste on the average foot slogger." mind set which seems to have been a round forever.


Also when every nut, bolt, rivet etc MUST be hand crafted by a skilled profesional/craft's man?

The powers that be have always been into not spending even penny's more than they thought they had too.

[Abaddon_ire]

Just checking. A friend had a TVA .57 caliber muzzle-loading rifle. I only fired it once, too tedious.

In those days, one's life depended on reloading rapidly. They got surprising fast at it.

And the objective was not to aim at a particular target at all, but to create a "hail of lead". Bound to hit something if one hurls enough lead down range, hence the mad mass formations of troops. 

Makes sense in context of the time and technology. Seems utterly nutty from a modern perspective. "Skirmishers" were an attempt to work around that.

[onlinebiker]

Matchlocks had sights fer crissakes...

And they were accurate?

They can be.

I have taken deer up to 100 yards with a smoothebore.

Granted it wasn't a front stuffer - (blackpowder muzleloader) but a 12 gauge. But the physics are the same with both types.

The same accuracy could be gotten by a skilled rifleman with any smoothbore.

I have not had much success hunting with blackpowder. It simply is not as reliable as a cartridge gun. But under controlled condition even smoothbores can get reasonable accuracy for the ranges they were designed to be used.

---

Just checking. A friend had a TVA .57 caliber muzzle-loading rifle. I only fired it once, too tedious.

In those days, one's life depended on reloading rapidly. They got surprising fast at it.

And the objective was not to aim at a particular target at all, but to create a "hail of lead". Bound to hit something if one hurls enough lead down range, hence the mad mass formations of troops. 

Makes sense in context of the time and technology. Seems utterly nutty from a modern perspective. "Skirmishers" were an attempt to work around that.

I have never heard any claims of "a hail of lead" attributed to muzzleloading weaponry. (Except field cannons). AK47s are more in that vein of thought.

They call it "spray and pray".

[Abaddon_ire]

And they were accurate?

They can be.

I have taken deer up to 100 yards with a smoothebore.

Granted it wasn't a front stuffer - (blackpowder muzleloader) but a 12 gauge. But the physics are the same with both types.

The same accuracy could be gotten by a skilled rifleman with any smoothbore.

I have not had much success hunting with blackpowder. It simply is not as reliable as a cartridge gun. But under controlled condition even smoothbores can get reasonable accuracy for the ranges they were designed to be used.

---

In those days, one's life depended on reloading rapidly. They got surprising fast at it.

And the objective was not to aim at a particular target at all, but to create a "hail of lead". Bound to hit something if one hurls enough lead down range, hence the mad mass formations of troops. 

Makes sense in context of the time and technology. Seems utterly nutty from a modern perspective. "Skirmishers" were an attempt to work around that.

I have never heard any claims of "a hail of lead" attributed to muzzleloading weaponry. (Except field cannons). AK47s are more in that vein of thought.

They call it "spray and pray".

You think AK 47s were an option in the era of muskets?

Good luck with that.

[onlinebiker]

They can be.

I have taken deer up to 100 yards with a smoothebore.

Granted it wasn't a front stuffer - (blackpowder muzleloader) but a 12 gauge. But the physics are the same with both types.

The same accuracy could be gotten by a skilled rifleman with any smoothbore.

I have not had much success hunting with blackpowder. It simply is not as reliable as a cartridge gun. But under controlled condition even smoothbores can get reasonable accuracy for the ranges they were designed to be used.

---

I have never heard any claims of "a hail of lead" attributed to muzzleloading weaponry. (Except field cannons). AK47s are more in that vein of thought.

They call it "spray and pray".

You think AK 47s were an option in the era of muskets?

Good luck with that.

Do you get up early to give you extra time to come up with these erroneous conclusions?