You are assuming that the men firing the minie bullets had received the proper training for back sight adjustment and range estimation like modern soldiers get. You are also ignoring the parabolic curve of the bullet that the Americans, French and English knew about before the war but it seems the Americans, despite the knowledge, did not train the troops for these things (other than specialist sharp shooter units). I have shot my Springfield repro with minie bullets at targets at 75 yards using only the front sight and missed it every time. But when I used the adjusted back sights I hit it.

Thus, as Earl Hess has shown in his recent book, the rounds either flew over the intended targets or fell in front of them. Some managed to hit the targets. But when it has been shown that it took 4000 rounds to wound one man and about 7000 rounds to kill one man in the Civil War, that it God-awful shooting no matter how you slice it (ratio of casualties per ammunition expended). Paddy Griffith and Brent Nosworthy have shown that Civil War combat ranges varied between 80-125 yards based on their analysis of reports in the OR which is well within effective smooth bore range. SLA Marshall's analysis of World War 2 infantry combat ranges were about 125-150 yards with far superior rifles and trained troops - the rifles, while still having the parabolic curve, fired somewhat flatter trajectory due to higher powder charges and the troops were taught to overcome that with range estimation and sight adjustments. Yet by 1944, the Germans and Russians moved away from regular rifles and went to shorter range assault rifles (the STG-44 for the Germans) and submachine guns for the Russians, built and delivered en masse and issued to the troops. Their doctrines changed to suppressing fire and walls of fire at the typical infantry ranges of the day rather than long range killing by rifles (the Germans left that to their amazing MG 42).

Soldiers of the war did indeed change to rifles when they could if they could get them because they had bought into the idea that the weapon could kill at the longer ranges. Indeed it could - but the soldiers were not trained for that by either army as neither side wanted the expense of training rounds. Hence the findings of Griffith that I reported already. So they went along with the belief that they were killing men by banging away at each other when most of the rounds were missing their targets as I stated above.

I have seen CS ordnance reports in 1864 and lots of buck and ball rounds were still being called for in infantry units. Was it because that was all the weapons that unit could get? Maybe - although 500,000 rifles were imported into the Confederacy according to Ordnance officer Caleb Huse's report. As the book "Seeing The Elephant" The Raw Recruit At Shiloh" showed, many men preferred the power of the buck and ball round and what it could do. Again, it had higher muzzle velocity than the minie rounds did and fired a true flat trajectory.

Greg Biggs