WWI Statistics
I was shooting last weekend at a military range. I was shooting my WWII Lee Enfield No 4. Having done a lot of practice at home (using a deactivated rifle) I shot a 4 inch group at 100 yards. The best I have ever done. It got me thinking. I know that with a WWI SMLE (the service rifle for the British) I can reliably hit a man sized target at about 300 yards.
This gives you some idea of the potential losses at war. The record for number of shots hitting a target with a service rifle of this type is 37. That includes 2 full reloads of the magazine. I won't use that as the basis of my calcs as that is the upper end of capability but I can reliably shoot every 4 seconds say.
If you have an enemy charge at 100 yards I would guess it would take about 16 seconds to cover the 100 yards under fire and in battle gear etc. Ignoring the effects of artillery and machine guns I would estimate that I would be able to hit 3 or 4 enemy soldiers in that time. Lets stick with the 3. What that means is that for every 100 yards of distance between your trench and the enemy trench you would need 4 men to leave to get one to you. At 300 yards you would need 10 men to leave the trench for each one that would make it to the other trench to fight. It means you need a 10 to 1 number advantage to actually even reach the enemy. This may explain the mass over the top charges used by the ignorant generals in WWI. Purely a numbers game.
Obviously there are lots of other factors, visibility, smoke, weather, firing under fire etc. But it does give a real view of why so many died. Now just add in the machine guns and hey presto you have the devastation of WWI. But even without them, the odds were not great.
Now of course we have more accurate semi-automatic and automatic rifles. These are more accurate but probably do not, under WWI circumstances, help much as you typically need 2 shots to take down a enemy with modern smaller caliber weapons. You still have to move targets and shoot again. In Vietnam the stats for a US sniper were 1.2 shots per kill. For the rest the average was around 50,000 rounds per kill.
It is hard to make any judgments about such statistics as it is impossible to imagine what it is to actually like to fight for your life in those situations. But the glimpse of how easy it is to take down a man at 200 or 300 yards with a rifle which is over 50 years old is a real eye opener. Perhaps if more people had a go and thought about things in this light we would have more respect for our armed forces and be less likely to jump to combat so readily.
With my Nagant sniper rifle I could probably be hitting a man at 500 to 600 yards ever 5 seconds. Work out those statistics for yourself. Not pleasant.
This gives you some idea of the potential losses at war. The record for number of shots hitting a target with a service rifle of this type is 37. That includes 2 full reloads of the magazine. I won't use that as the basis of my calcs as that is the upper end of capability but I can reliably shoot every 4 seconds say.
If you have an enemy charge at 100 yards I would guess it would take about 16 seconds to cover the 100 yards under fire and in battle gear etc. Ignoring the effects of artillery and machine guns I would estimate that I would be able to hit 3 or 4 enemy soldiers in that time. Lets stick with the 3. What that means is that for every 100 yards of distance between your trench and the enemy trench you would need 4 men to leave to get one to you. At 300 yards you would need 10 men to leave the trench for each one that would make it to the other trench to fight. It means you need a 10 to 1 number advantage to actually even reach the enemy. This may explain the mass over the top charges used by the ignorant generals in WWI. Purely a numbers game.
Obviously there are lots of other factors, visibility, smoke, weather, firing under fire etc. But it does give a real view of why so many died. Now just add in the machine guns and hey presto you have the devastation of WWI. But even without them, the odds were not great.
Now of course we have more accurate semi-automatic and automatic rifles. These are more accurate but probably do not, under WWI circumstances, help much as you typically need 2 shots to take down a enemy with modern smaller caliber weapons. You still have to move targets and shoot again. In Vietnam the stats for a US sniper were 1.2 shots per kill. For the rest the average was around 50,000 rounds per kill.
It is hard to make any judgments about such statistics as it is impossible to imagine what it is to actually like to fight for your life in those situations. But the glimpse of how easy it is to take down a man at 200 or 300 yards with a rifle which is over 50 years old is a real eye opener. Perhaps if more people had a go and thought about things in this light we would have more respect for our armed forces and be less likely to jump to combat so readily.
With my Nagant sniper rifle I could probably be hitting a man at 500 to 600 yards ever 5 seconds. Work out those statistics for yourself. Not pleasant.
posted by So long and thanks for all the fish at
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