Skirmisher hit chances. Yes, we are going here

[Ivan Sorensen]

So has anyone sussed out a “reasonable” hit chance for the following situation:

A soldier on skirmish duty firing a smooth bore musket at a standing skirmisher 40ish meters away?

I can find plenty of data for firing range tests both historical and modern. They are usually quite high.
Obviously those rates would not be applicable in a firefight for all the reasons we understand (stress, confusion, weapon problems, firing into the fog with no particular target).

I can find plenty of calculations by historians comparing the amount of shots fired to the hit rates in battles. They are usually abysmally low.
However much of that fire is likely to have taken place at range, by volley and in similar circumstances where we would expect most of it to miss (and where “aiming” was often a bit dubious to begin with).

But when skirmishers came into contact with each other, they were expected to aim and fire fairly individually and would presumably be quite motivated to make sure the other guy could not aim and fire at them.

So has anyone sussed out what a rule of thumb hit chance might realistically be in the above scenario? (Again, in a skirmish environment, firing a smoothbore musket at a standing, individual target 40 meters away or so).

For that matter and as a follow up, has anyone done reasonable math on the actual, effective fire rates over a series of minutes while skirmishing?
Again we know what is possible in brief spans of intense firing and we can find what ammunition units used up over the course of hours or a whole day. That’s not the information I am trying to drag out of the whole thing 🙂

Cheers and appreciate any book suggestions, thoughts, speculations etc.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I believe that most skirmish vs skirmisher fire probably didn’t occur at a 40 meter range but at much longer ranges. I expect most of the skirmish line fought at 100+ meter range.  It might be range of the last shot fired before retiring but certainly not the first shot’s range: when you get to 40-50 meters you can be easily rushed by a bayonet charge before you can even reload. Even your buddy standing with the loaded musket while you reload won’t be able to stop them.  They retire if pressed.

 

Skirmishers facing formed troops unprotected by a skirmish line of their own can engage at very long range, (indeed they must) it would be up to formed troops to advance and close the range at which point the skirmishers would retire.

 

Forty meters is the range of formed lines in close combat volleys.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

Excellent point, that would be a good follow up question as well:

What evidence do we have of skirmishers engaging at particular distances and what was the typical range?

The joy of historical wargaming is that every question brings another question! 🙂

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Rifleman Costello and others wrote a bit about it.    Rory Muir’s  Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon is full of anecdotes collected, but even he states the record is nebulous.

Depending on the ability of the target to return fire, terrain, and visibility. the closest range noted was 40 yards by cavalry skirmishers with carbines and pistols against artillery gunners who lacked the means to shoot back.  While George Hennell describes fire at 300 yds for 3/4 hour at men confined in a narrow pass.  There is an anecdote of a french marksman deliberately targeting a British officer at 60-80 yards, causing the officer to ask one of his men to address the situation.(who refused being more interested in shooting a French officer as having more to plunder!)

 

I think knowing the general unwillingness of skirmishers to press forward  and open-order command control issues ( British light companies had extra NCOs and Lieutenants for this reason) means getting into short range where you could be rushed at by a man with fixed bayonet while unloaded would only occur if you were part of an advancing skirmish screen in front of formed battalions advancing.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

I’ll have a look for that book. Sounds interesting!

Though this still comes around to the original question:

At x range, in combat conditions, what was the actual, statistical chance of a skirmisher hitting another skirmisher 🙂

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

1/6 is a good number that feels right. 1/3 if the situation is optimal and 1/12 or even 1/36 when it’s  not.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[MartinR]

Given that skirmishing went on for hours, without catastrophic losses on either side, I would suggest that hit probability of a single shot is vanishingly low.

This would likely make for rather a dull game of course, so pick some to hit numbers you are happy with and go with those.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Whirlwind]

Ivan Sorensen wrote:

At x range, in combat conditions, what was the actual, statistical chance of a skirmisher hitting another skirmisher 🙂

My intial model would be something like:

50% chance of hitting a static standing target at 50m, assuming 1/round per minute (2 rounds in the first minute turn – but definitionally only the first shot would ever be at that 50%)

half that within each 25m additional distance from 50m

half that in basic combat conditions (target not static)

half that again if target actively trying to minimize their target profile

half that again if ~15% of the target or less is visible

divide by five if the shooter is under fire themselves (or threatened by cavalry or a bayonet charge).

reduction by 5% per shot fired (until rested for ~20 minutes)

I would also insist that some kind of morale check (whatever that looked like in a given set of rules) was taken to even get nearer than 100m, and than again to 50m or less.

This would still be a little generous to the shooter, but for RoM purposes, okay.

 

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Far too fiddly a calculation for my tastes.

 

As well, I think even 50% as a base at fifty meters is way too high, except for maybe rifle armed chosen men.  I dare say most modern soldiers find it tough enough to hit more than half the time at 100m even with modern rifles.  My experiences on a range don’t lead me to believe the average musket armed soldier is going to be nearly that effective at even 50 meters.

Napoleonic skirmish fire is not a decisive tactic, it is a preparatory tactic.  A game of  two historical Lt companies or Voltiguers in skirmish line bickering without any formed battalion behind them advancing to spur movement, would just go on for hours, kill/wound only  a small number of men and not change relative position at all, and never see any one get close to one another much less mano a mano.  It would indeed be a boring game.

If you want it to be cinematic game, keep the math to a minimum, add charismatic leaders and maguffins to spur on the figs, and worry less about actual historical effectiveness.

Most games already do this with artillery, where the historical effects of a long barrage are compressed into one or two turns .  Players don’t want to sit for the historical two or three hours of the normal barrage just rolling dice.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

Just to keep people on track, the purpose of the thread was to try to suss out the historical values. Wargame weapons of course all hit on a 4+ at 24″ range 🙂

Do we have any reliable guesses as to rates of fire during extended skirmishing?
With accounts of men fighting for hours, obviously they were not sustaining 3 rounds per minute (between ammo running out and the muskets not standing up to that sort of punishment, so do we have any idea of what it may have looked like? A leisurely shot every minute or so?

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Skirmish shooting was not conducted rapidly, slow aimed fire was considered much more valuable.   the general tactic was one man of the paired team holds his fire until the other reloads so total rates of fire are a bit delayed by that process.  Too, even a light company in skirmish line, well ahead of the formed battalion  would keep a small non firing reserve of closely formed men  100 paces to its rear as a support, rally point and source of men to cycle in and out of the skirmish firing line.  Skirmishers were doing a lot of movement and command control was not as firm.  I would think 1 shot a minute would be a very high rate of fire for skirmishers in aggregate.  It might well be much lower if there is no imperative.  The average ammo allotment rarely exceeded 30 rounds and some skirmishers fought for hours on the line without resupply.

 

It would help to know if these mechanics are to support a larger game of battalions and light companies with 1/2 hour turns, or a smaller game of platoons, squads or individuals with 1 minute turns or less.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Frankly, finding the weights of historical values are always going to be “it depends”.    I have seen a lot of statisticians try to ascertain musket/artillery effectiveness down to a percentage point based on range/rate of fire/proficiency and I am sure that their formulas really cannot be totally accurate based on the lack of real data coming from vague anecdotes or faulty datasets (try getting an accurate casualty count for a battalion in a French army in Spain from a marshall more concerned about avoiding the displeasure of the Emperor!)..Game mechanics here have to be more ”artistic” than “scientific”.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

To clarify: I am not after game mechanics.
I think we are kind of talking about two different things here:

I dont really expect to find an exact percentage by yard table. That obviously cant exist. What I mean is this:

We know the highest bound of accuracy (range tests are pretty well documented), say around 50ish percent, and we know the lowest bound (total ammunition fired in a battle compared to casualties) which usually comes out to fractions of a percentage point.

So we have about a 50+ percentage point split of possible outcomes from “eh, fifty/fifty?” to “might as well not bother”. Thats a huge split.

A light infantry redcoat in North America spotting an enemy soldier over there by that tree must have had some idea of his chances of scoring a hit in that particular set of circumstances and whether the shot was worth taking (and WHEN it would be worth taking), especially since his life would depend on knowing this information.

Likewise people training, commanding and drilling light infantry must have had some idea about the effectiveness of their fire in typical circumstances that they could find themselves in.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I don’t think any but very practiced sharpshooters with rifles had even a remote chance in hell of hitting anything they aim at, unless at the closest range 20 paces or so. Even duelists at 20 paces missed more often than not…even if they took the steady unhurried second shot after the other guy missed.

 

The skirmishers at 50 yds are still far more likely to hit some poor slob or horse standing near to the original target than who they aimed at!  Mass of the target (lines of formed troops in close order) dictates more than range anything else whether a particular shot hits anything or not.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

You might well be right!

To actually talk game mechanics again, it would be interesting to have a setup where the hit chance was based on the number of potential bodies in the rough direction you were shooting.

Incidentally this also solves most swashbuckling questions: A lone hero racing off to do <insert thing here> is probably not gonna get hit, because shooting at the grunts over there is more profitable 🙂

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Likewise people training, commanding and drilling light infantry must have had some idea about the effectiveness of their fire in typical circumstances that they could find themselves in.

 

you would think that, but they probably didn’t.  The light troops  started to  get some special training during the Napoleonic wars but compared to the training and initiative of the modern soldier, the Napoleonic soldier and their officers, even light troops, could appear rather amateur and ad hoc in their approach with limited opportunity to practice shooting.  This is why poachers and civilian hunters were valued, particularly if rifle armed.

Too the quality of the weapons was hardly good, more weapons had warped barrels than straight, in addition to the ricochet issues within the barrel caused by windage in a smooth bore.  Even an experienced marksmen working with a weapon he knew well, still had to deal with variance in powder quality, ball size and shape, and generally knew quite well his chances of getting a hit on a particular target were slim. i reckon less than 10% chance at best but he also knew that the guy shooting at him probably had no better a chance of hitting him!

some officers understood general ineffectiveness of skirmish fire and gave orders to restrain an overcommitment of troops being sucked into skirmish fighting, but some units (including veterans) actually looked upon skirmishing as a relatively safe way to “do their part” and didn’t give a fig if they hit anything or not.  Just firing a musket down range made a noise and looked intimidating.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

The Danish drill manual I am digging through (from the 1860s admittedly) has some notes on ranges at which troops should be permitted to open fire (with the text hinting that these were ranges beyond which fire would not be effective), but is pretty thin on what it was expected said fire would actually do other than, presumably, bother the enemy.

This is with rifled firearms, but it states that in open order at over 400 alen (about 200 meters) only the best men should be permitted to try a shot. Below that, each man fires at his discretion “but only if there is a possibility of a hit”.

An interesting anecdote is that if a moving unit needs to shoot at something or a single target is sighted, such as an enemy scout on horse, the officer was to have a single man fall out, take the shot and then get back in the ranks.
It does not discuss that any further but the same principle is applied in a couple of cases so it might make sense that as you say a given body of men may have one or two who were pretty accomplished shots from prior experience, but it would not be worth having the whole unit waste a bunch of powder if they would not be likely to hit anything anyways.

Looking at “best case” scenarios, I wonder if there is documentation out there for what hunters might have expected (a weapon they know intimately and which may well have been better quality, careful aiming but typically only one chance to make the mark).

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Ivan Sorensen wrote:

You might well be right! To actually talk game mechanics again, it would be interesting to have a setup where the hit chance was based on the number of potential bodies in the rough direction you were shooting. Incidentally this also solves most swashbuckling questions: A lone hero racing off to do <insert thing here> is probably not gonna get hit, because shooting at the grunts over there is more profitable 🙂

 

Yeah, a lot of skirmish games require a level of accuracy that didn’t reflect reality, we watch a lot of cinema and the biases from that affect our sense of what is correct.  During the Horse and Musket period the concept of aiming at individuals at range was not something they thought much of.  It required rifles and better yet cartridges such that you didn’t burn your face when you were taking an aimed shot from gases out of the vent hole, to get a real benefit from aiming and a lot of shooting was only rudimentarily aimed.  Sometimes early muskets didn’t even have sights!

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Ivan Sorensen]

Some WW2 games have you roll for X number of men instead of per man, which might act a solution. 10 men in a “turn” representing whatever time interval may not be 10 chances to make a mark, it may be 2-3 chances to make a mark at whatever odds seem reasonable.

Essentially saying that over that period of time, the unit took a dozen pot shots and of those, we might find 2 that could do something.

In skirmish games we already do this anyways for eras with repeating firearms, so it is just taking that to its logical conclusion.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Even good hunters often relied on a shotgun-like “ball and buck(shot)” load to get a hit on a deer.

 

1860s start to see sharpshooters really come into their own.  Ranges are longer, accuracy is better even with muzzleloaders and rate of fire improves with percussion caps and minie balls are such that the rifle need not be any slower in its RoF than a smooth bore (and is even better later with rifled breechloaders.) It’s at this point you start to see the skirmish line start to be the necessary dispersed formation of attack and maneuver  because the rate of accurate fire is so high, and the kill zone to be crossed so much deeper, (artillery has seen improvement too) that massed formations become less useful due to excessive casualties and soldiers start to dig in.  The sharpshooter was the best tool to get a dug in enemy.

 

 

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

An interesting anecdote is that if a moving unit needs to shoot at something or a single target is sighted, such as an enemy scout on horse, the officer was to have a single man fall out, take the shot and then get back in the ranks.
It does not discuss that any further but the same principle is applied in a couple of cases so it might make sense that as you say a given body of men may have one or two who were pretty accomplished shots from prior experience, but it would not be worth having the whole unit waste a bunch of powder if they would not be likely to hit anything anyways.

There is also a command control aspect.  If your whole battalion or company stops moving and starts to fire, it can be next to impossible to regain control of them and get them moving again.  This is why some battalions were ordered to advance with unloaded weapons.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

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