Boss Out of Town wrote:
Slamlander wrote:
Killjoy wrote:
Graybeard wrote:
A tactical advantage to bow and arrow, by comparison, was that "indirect fire" was feasible.
And for a long time, the rate of fire was far faster with bow and arrow.
Tell that to the Zulus. The Brits, in that engagement only had muskets. They used volley fire techniques. Also, the musket easily out ranges the average bow.
Er . . . there are a lot of good examples that you can quote, but that isn't one of them. The relevant British-Zulu war was in 1879. The redcoats were using single-shot breech-loading Martini-Henry rifles, top-loading, lever action. At Rorkes Drift, with 60-120 men engaging each Zulu charge, they fired off 20,000 rounds in about 18 hours.
If you're going to be surrounded and attacked at 40-1 odds, it helps if part of your original assignment was to guard an ammo dump.
Remember gentlemen, Martini-Henry rifles are only as good as the men holding them. Untrained, ill-diciplined irregulars would have broken under such oods (and odds). It was the training, more than the gun, that won the day.
An interesting point to make is that the Martini-Henry were still to be found in the hands of Arab tribesmen in the gulf as recently as the early 1970s in places like Aiden and Oman.
This is true...just look at the Nepal Civil War that just ended less than a week ago. Many of the Maoist Rebels were using weapons from WWI & II along with some '50's era Chinese AK-47's. Even if a gun's almost a century old, it can still be deadly as long as it's maintained and ammo's still available.