Firing in WSS

[Coppelius]

Good to know and welcome from me, too, Coppelius. I'm thinking, however, that the angle of oblique fire will be limited, depending on file spacing and number of ranks. In the later SYW era, I vaguely recall that ranks positioned behind the first standing rank took one half(?) step to one side (right?) to allow their muskets to poke through the gaps between the files in the first rank. In practical terms, this means that the ability of those in the second & third ranks to swivel their guns to left or right will be limited by the distance between the heads of the guys in the first standing rank. There was a big debate (probably more than one over the years) on TMP about a year back on this very subject.

Not to be a bore with this Nosworthy thing (you should see people flee from me at parties!), but here's another quote: "Unlike the French, who were deployed in four or five ranks, the British were deployed in three ranks which were brought closely together. The fewer number of ranks and the fact that the men were not directly behind one another, but "interlocked" meant that the soldiers were more readily able to swing their weapons a little to the right or the left to achieve oblique fire. This was impossible for the French infantry, given the number of ranks and the distance between each."

In my games, I prefer to highlight national differences where I can find them, and to err on the side of exaggeration over non-inclusion. But that's just a personal preference. A lot depends on the ruleset, of course, (and, as Aksu says, the level of complexity you're comfortable with) but if you have a situation where a French battalion can only fire at half-strength (due to some obliqueness between it and its target), a Brit could fire at full. Where the French could not fire at all, a Brit could fire at half, etc.

Thanks for the welcome, everybody! This looks like a cool site!

[Hwiccee]

I think that to a large extent this is a wargaming problem and not a real life problem. As Chad mentions real ranges were so short and unit frontages long. Add in the long continuous lines of the period, units facing up to each other, etc, then I think that this was not a real problem.

On the ability of platoon fire/rank firing to fire obliquely. Westmarcher (and presumably the TMPer) is right that there would be a very limited ability to 'swivel' because of the presence of other members of the unit. This 'swivel' distance would not differ much (or at all) between different fire system, but it would be greater in the WSS era as file spacings were bigger. Even so we are not talking a very great angle of fire.

To fire obliquely at any kind of real angle what they did was take a section of the line and move forward out of the line, turn to face the target, fire and then go back into line - understandably this would greatly reduce the rate of fire. LeBlond/Nosworthy are right that you can't do this with rank firing but this misses the point, you did it by firing by file or firing by division if you normally fired by rank. These types of firing effectively moved part of the line out to fire and platoon firing units could use them as well. In addition platoon firing units could move the platoon out instead - there was little practical difference between these.

[Sandinista]

You could just reduce the fire arc from 45 degrees to 22.5 degrees (just another fold of a sheet of paper)

cheers
Ian

[FierceKitty]

You could just reduce the fire arc from 45 degrees to 22.5 degrees (just another fold of a sheet of paper)

cheers
Ian

Beautifully put; I challenge anyone to forget that way of working it out.