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re: Civil War time travel question/debate
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:47 pm to Topwater Trout
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:47 pm to Topwater Trout
quote:
if one side had todays weapons it would have been a slaughter...right?
If going by the re-enactment yesterday I would say yes, guess that is why I brought it up having this convo with a friend yesterday, but I'm not very knowledgeable regarding Civil War tactics and all that stuff, people in this thread know alot more about it than I do.
But I just imagined yesterday a dude going all Rambo with a machine gun on those guys and pictured a slaughter. The sheer numbers now have me second guessing myself, but I have enjoyed reading all these. Hah.
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 12:50 pm
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Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:47 pm to upgrayedd
quote:
Seems like you're basing this on the premise that the SEALs will be lined up square with the artillery batteries and won't move.
I'm basing this on the premise that a force of about 90,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry will be able to corral a force of 100 seals into a set and confined space.
If the seals try to break into small groups or even singles they will do damage but will be hunted down and killed.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:49 pm to Darth_Vader
so all the soldiers fighting in the civil war were fighting on ground that they knew?
I think with all the map technology available today and the fact they have all taken geography would help give them a good "lay of the land" prior to going to war.
I think with all the map technology available today and the fact they have all taken geography would help give them a good "lay of the land" prior to going to war.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:49 pm to Topwater Trout
Federal counter-guerrilla operations were successful. They didn't fully catch or capture them because they didn't really need to. They were fighting the standing regular army and those victories were going to win or lose the war. The northern strategy was to simply harass the southern guerrillas enough to make them irrelevant to overall outcome of the war. In this hypothetical scenario the whole war would be fought in a guerrilla manner and I was providing evidence that they absolutely knew how to fight like that back then.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:52 pm to Scream4LSU
Yep and my reasoning is if they caused that much havoc with the weapons they had at the time the seals would be even more destructive and disruptive.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:52 pm to NWarty
quote:
But who's to say that you already know the enemy's positions and can bring your own mortars to bear?
I'm not saying you gotta kill everything, but you cause enough confusion on the enemy's artillery positions, the fire support plan for the enemy commander goes out the window.
Counterfire wouldn't even be an issue since your measely 60mm mortars can out-range most stuff on the enemy's side.
I believe the original premise of this thread was the SEALs only had their small arms. Now if you give them the standard M224 60mm mortar in use today, they will be able to send a roughly hand grenade sized projectile out to a range of about 3,500 meters. This is far less than half the range of thing like the 10" parrot gun which had a range of 9,000 yards and fired a projectile weighting 300 lbs (that's well over twice the size of a modern 155mm HE round BTW).
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 12:57 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:54 pm to Topwater Trout
quote:
so all the soldiers fighting in the civil war were fighting on ground that they knew?
You were talking guerrilla forces which almost always fought on terrain they hailed from before the war.
quote:
I think with all the map technology available today and the fact they have all taken geography would help give them a good "lay of the land" prior to going to war.
you cannot negate someone's intimate knowledge and familiarity of the land by having a good map and taking geography classes.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 12:58 pm to Darth_Vader
I might have missed that about only small arms, I was under the impression that got their full MTOE.
A Parrot rifle, at least the 10lb "field" howitzer wouldn't be so effective, but I'm sure that General who got a hole blown through his chest at Kennesaw would disagree
97lbs for a M107 HE projo ;) (four square standard weight and lot)
A Parrot rifle, at least the 10lb "field" howitzer wouldn't be so effective, but I'm sure that General who got a hole blown through his chest at Kennesaw would disagree
97lbs for a M107 HE projo ;) (four square standard weight and lot)
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 12:59 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:01 pm to Darth_Vader
quote:
I believe the original premise of this thread was the SEALs only had their small arms.
Correct.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:01 pm to Topwater Trout
Merely a nuisance to the conventional army. When they went head to head with the anit-guerrilla forces it was at best a push and over the duration of the war had them running. So if you take the conventional army of 500K and organize in a similar fashion you then have a problem for the seals. The generals of the day were not stupid. These were top graduates of the point and knew how to make adjustments. If the enemy was predominately using a specific tactic they would do the same and have superior numbers to do it with.
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 1:02 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:05 pm to Scream4LSU
Yes, but you're talking about a change in doctrine/revolution in military affairs which is like trying to turn the titanic after dealing with a force that is much more technologically advanced.
An RMA/doctrine change would be incremental as technology progressed as expected or a not-so-huge-leap. Unlike a plasma rifle showing up in Afghanistan from Taliban dudes 100 years in the future. Doctrine wouldn't change overnight. Not after a sudden and cataustrophic arse kicking.
An RMA/doctrine change would be incremental as technology progressed as expected or a not-so-huge-leap. Unlike a plasma rifle showing up in Afghanistan from Taliban dudes 100 years in the future. Doctrine wouldn't change overnight. Not after a sudden and cataustrophic arse kicking.
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 1:09 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:05 pm to Darth_Vader
quote:
You were talking guerrilla forces which almost always fought on terrain they hailed from before the war.
I was talkign about fighting guerilla style warfare against the armies.
quote:
you cannot negate someone's intimate knowledge and familiarity of the land by having a good map and taking geography classes.
Soldiers fighting on land they didn't grow up on would be at a bigger disadvantage than people of today.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:09 pm to Topwater Trout
Not sure what the mathematical calcs would be but these guys are force multipliers, right?
What's the standard modern US infantry equivalent to 1 SEAL? 3:1, 10:1, 20:1?
What is the modern US infantry equivalent to a standard Civil War era infantryman? 1:1, 1:5, 1:10?
What's the standard modern US infantry equivalent to 1 SEAL? 3:1, 10:1, 20:1?
What is the modern US infantry equivalent to a standard Civil War era infantryman? 1:1, 1:5, 1:10?
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:10 pm to upgrayedd
I'm sure the JANUS nerds at Leavenworth could tell us
We once re-fought the Battle of Little Bighorn in the simulation. Was incredibly entertaining
We once re-fought the Battle of Little Bighorn in the simulation. Was incredibly entertaining
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 1:11 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:13 pm to upgrayedd
good questions...i am sure it has been calculated
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:18 pm to LasVegasTiger
quote:
quote:
this is another reason this thread sucks...Seals vs. the N or the S? They are all our ancestors...why the frick?
You do realize time travel doesn't exist right? It was a random dumb drunken bar debate, damn.
Do they also realize that our ancestors are from England and Germany as well. not like we haven't fought wars against our ancestors before.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:21 pm to NWarty
Wouldn't be sudden or foreign. They were doing it already and it would just be scaled up. I'm not sure anyone is giving credit to the intelligence of these commanders back then. The British were fighting in squares during the revolutionary war and the Americans who derived tactics from the French and Indian War knew immediately how effective guerrilla warfare was and adopted it immediately almost "overnight" as you say. Good ole George Washington used unconventional guerrilla tactics throughout the whole war. The raid on Trenton/Princeton were all guerrilla. Again nothing new.
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 1:24 pm
Posted on 3/31/14 at 1:27 pm to Topwater Trout
quote:
I was talkign about fighting guerilla style warfare against the armies.
And I promise you, 100 guerrilla, no matter how bad-arse would not win the Civil War for either side. In fact, due to their better ability to use horses, many of the Confederate guerrilla forces would have posed a bigger problem to Union forces than this fictitious SEAL force.
quote:
Soldiers fighting on land they didn't grow up on would be at a bigger disadvantage than people of today.
And the people of today (in this case the SEALs) would be fighting in a totally foreign landscape. You'd be surprised hoe much the countryside, especially in the area where most of the major engagements of the Civil War was fought, has changed since the 1860's.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 2:04 pm to Darth_Vader
quote:
Darth_Vader
Why would there be a battlefield? How would the opposing army know how many SEALs they were up against? Also, the SEALs wouldn't have to kill every enemy combatant. The people of the civil war times would give up when they saw an iPhone, they'd think they were fighting aliens/wizards.
Posted on 3/31/14 at 2:18 pm to Epic Cajun
quote:
Why would there be a battlefield?
If a force of 100 SEALs wanted to win the Civil War, they'd have to defeat the major field army of whatever side they opposed. So long as the opposing side had major armies in the field, the war would continue. That's why there would be a battlefield. To win the SEALs would have to engage and try to destroy this field army.
quote:
How would the opposing army know how many SEALs they were up against?
With good cavalry work, the size of the SEAL force would be pretty well established in short order. At least to the point they would realize they were facing what they'd consider to be a small guerrilla force of approximately company size (roughly about 1/4th of a standard infantry regiment give or take).
quote:
Also, the SEALs wouldn't have to kill every enemy combatant.
Correct. But to defeat either of the major opposing armies in the Eastern Theater to the point the war would end, they'd have to inflict such losses that army was no longer an effective or coherent force that was unable to extract itself out of whatever situation the SEALs put it in (the SEALS would have to trap the remnants of the opposing army). To accomplish this the 100 man SEAL team would have to kill or make casualties probably somewhere around 50,000 men and then somehow trap the remaining 40,000 or so against some natural barrier like a river. And all this will have do be done while the SEALS are simultaneously under fire from hundreds of cannons (many of which are far out of the range of their own weapons) and also being harassed and chased by anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 cavalry troopers, on top of the fire of tens of thousands of infantrymen.
Now if you can tell me how they will do all this, I'll accept that yes, 100 SEALs could win the Civil War.
This post was edited on 3/31/14 at 2:22 pm
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