Did Victorian(-era) British officers knowingly fire their revolvers at targets clearly out of range?
score:4
Accepted answer
As the saying goes, put enough lead in the air and you are bound to hit someone.
In the era of black powder muskets, fire was done by formations of troops against formations of troops. That is still the most effective way to use machine guns today. An US field manual gives the range of the M249 as 600 m for point targets, 800 m for area targets. Wikipedia has slightly different numbers, which only proves that "effective range" is a fuzzy concept.
to come to the era in question, the aimed range of a Webley revolver against a point target may be a couple dozen metres, but the bullet will travel and remain lethal for hundreds of metres. And if it doesn't hit the enemy one was aiming for, it might hit the one to the right or left, or the one standing behind him.
The Mk.I webley fired a 17g bullet at 190 m/s. Hatcher's Notebook (found on Google Books, I don't have the source myself) gives 1,300 yards maximum range if the weapon is fired at 35 degrees.
Last but not least, a bullet whizzing past might make the enemy duck.
More post
- 📝 Why were brothels legal?
- 📝 Information on first stages of road formation between villages and towns
- 📝 Why is the city of Armenia in Colombia so named?
- 📝 How were the borders of the Holy Roman Empire established?
- 📝 Did Nazi Germany use chemical weapons on the battlefield?
- 📝 What does 'des' mean in ancient Egyptian?
- 📝 In the 18th c., did/would China accept gold from Europe as trade payment? Why / why not?
- 📝 What would the Arch of Titus have looked like painted?
- 📝 Where was the Turkish Navy based in July 1914?
- 📝 How did Allies secure southern flank during "Race to the Rhine"?
- 📝 How could an Englishman be forced to fight for Austria-Hungary against his will during WW1?
- 📝 What percentage of households in Sweden in the 1990s only had over-the-air TV?
- 📝 Why does the US have states?
- 📝 How did the elite maintain the status quo throughout the British Colonies of North America?
- 📝 What was the ratio of French to English speakers in Upper Canada before and after the American Revolution?
- 📝 Did Japanese officers refuse to engage in kamikaze attacks?
- 📝 Are there any historical examples of (non government-approved) fake news having a strong effect?
- 📝 When did prostitution become illegal in the United States and why?
- 📝 What explains the large number of US Security Council vetoes between 1970-1991?
- 📝 Why are Vikings singled out for raids in Britain and Ireland when records may indicate most raids were by local rulers?
- 📝 How would an American returning from international travel prove his citizenship before 1914?
- 📝 DNA results of Amarna dead?
- 📝 Morse code is a ternary human-optimised code, is there a binary, non-machine optimised code?
- 📝 Can anyone find an image of Henry Bolingbroke's Sovereygne Feather Seal?
- 📝 Was Winston Churchill really responsible for the 1943 Bengal famine?
- 📝 Has there ever been a peaceful overthrow of a dictator or monarch?
- 📝 Why is the consensus that WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and not July 7, 1937?
- 📝 When were the heresy laws abolished in England?
- 📝 What does King Henry III have on his lap in this illustration from a Matthew Paris chronicle?
- 📝 Did Muslims swear by "the beard of the Prophet"?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did Victorian(-era) British officers knowingly fire their revolvers at targets clearly out of range?
- 📝 Did Continental Army officers wear wigs or keep their hair white like their British Army counterparts?
- 📝 Would Victorian era British soldiers wear their short sword bayonets while wearing uniform when off duty?
- 📝 Why did officers fire revolvers with just one hand, while wielding a sword in the other hand despite being too far away to use swords?
- 📝 Why did Civil War officers tell their men to "aim low"?
- 📝 Did Victorian parents raise their children "sexless" to prolong innocence?
- 📝 Why did some colonies of the British Empire have their own currencies?
- 📝 What did 'bookseller' cover as an occupation on British census documents during Victorian times?
- 📝 How did Victorian British conservatives resolve the tension between valuing tradition and spreading empire?
- 📝 What is this Victorian era British Uniform? Royal Horse Artillery?
- 📝 Did the House of Representatives during Meiji Era exercise their powers?
- 📝 How did the British and French train their troops during the colonial eras?
- 📝 What is this Victorian era British uniform?
- 📝 In the 1920's, why did the German government fire working women if their husband was employed?
- 📝 How much did revolvers cost in Victorian England?
- 📝 Did the British screw Lee Kuan Yew over by withdrawing their naval presence earlier than intended?
- 📝 Why did the British scuttle the u-boats surrendered after WWII?
- 📝 Did ancient peoples ever hide their treasure behind puzzles?
- 📝 Where did the Romans store their cash?
- 📝 Why did Greeks and Romans dilute their wine?
- 📝 How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union name their strongest bomb Tsar Bomba?
- 📝 Did Roman unmarried men have a preferred hand and finger for wearing their seal ring?
- 📝 Did the end of the British Raj in India create an economic loss for Britain?
- 📝 How did Nazi Germany produce such an impressive portfolio of officers for WW2?
- 📝 How did early adopters of the automobile fill up their cars?
- 📝 Why did people have so many children in Victorian times?
- 📝 Were Russians in the cold war era USA discriminated against for their ethnicity?
- 📝 Did any British working class men have the vote before 1918?
- 📝 Given their reputation for fighting to the last man in the Pacific, why did 700,000 Japanese troops surrender in Manchuria?