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.
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