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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:02 pm

Being an amature when it comes to Zulu war history, one thing that strikes me with both Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift is the "low" Zulu body counts. Why was the body count so low, some say they fired 20.000 rounds at Rorke's drift and �only� 300-400 kills, many of them fired at point blank range..? And a Discovery program about Isandlhwana did test shooting with a Henry Martine claming that the stopping-power at 200-300 yards was 2 bodies, that said a shoot could kill (hit at least) two Zulu�s. And with the combine skill of the soldiers and the Henry Martini firerate / amount of ammo each soldier had, they calculated that the English �could� destory the whole 20000+ within an hour or so��calculated� is of course not reality as we know it. But why not more kills, were the English soldiers just average shooters? Did the Martinis really jam so much that entire lines were rendered to just a few shooters at a time? I don�t really get it�

For the first battle at Isandhlwana, I see it this way, the English were well trained in the art of shooting, had modern good accurate rifles, plenty of ammo and in my view more than enough men to repulse the Zulu�s. I played around with an ordinary desk calendar, one of those you might see at an office desk, all months and days shown (and in Sweden, each day has a person name attached to it.) on one page, that pretty much numbers to 365 names right. Even that "low" number looks pretty damn impressive to me, lots of names. So I took it one step further, addec 3 more calendars on my desk, now suddenly I had about the same number as English present at Isandhlwana. Looking at those beside each other, I can tell you 1300 names is a LOT, add to that a modern rifle and you have massive firepower, it seems IMPOSSIBLE that such a force could be overwhelmed. Played right, a square formation, with a much better distribution of ammo, more compact volleys of fire with 3-4 line deep, would the battle outcome have been any different? Personally I think so, try some computer game (Totalwar) or like I did with a calendar which shows all days of a year on one page, to get a feeling how many 1300 really is. And even more impossible to comprehend after this enlightning experience with the desk calender, 1300 English dead, what a BLOODBATH it most have been.

ps. I know the above sounds really amaturish, but it was a good way for me to try and understand how many 1300 men really is and what firepower they really possessed. I know of course that the events were very different that days, but playing around with the thought what-if, how-come was pretty interesting. Again, I'm simply a amature, trying to learn more about war history.

/Chiba2000 Cool

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:25 pm

Chiba

That's a perfectly sensible question & one that has exercised others (including me) who contribute to the forum. It has come up more than once in discussions and I think one of the best suggestions in answer to your post is to refer you to the piece entitled "Zulu Attack!" submitted by Bill Cainan. It appears to me to provide some pretty comprehensive answers.

You'll find it outside the discussion forum but on the rdvc site via the list of visitor services on the home site, listed left. Go to Pot Pourri and scroll down until you find it.

Incidentally, the 1,300 figure may approximate to the number of casualties on the British/colonial/NNC side but not to the number of M-Hs, which would, I believe, have been little more than half that number.

Peter

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 2:51 pm

I'd like to offer a few more observations- any or all which might answer that conundrum. The teenie is a wicked gun to fire when clean and worse when dirty (and they fouled very quickly). Its vicious recoil (and that's an overworked phrase) challanges the seasoned marksman not to flinch, jerk the trigger, turn his head and/or close his eyes in anticipation and my guess is that very few live rounds were fired in practice due to the notorious "economy" of the British military.
Another point might be the lobbing trajectory of the bullets flight. When the MH sight is set to 500 yards, the bullet arcs up almost eight and a half feet before it drops to the target. Obviously, most rounds fired at Rorke's Drift were near to point blank, so this might not have been a factor, but at Isandlwana? The rapid flow (or "ebb" if you happened to wearing a tunic) of that battle mitigated against range markers and must have depended on accurate "guesstimation" of the range to the target by the officers or worse of the men in the event of "independent" fire. Officers or not, it's a rare person indeed who can accurately judge a distance by eye! In spite of Kipling's Martini-Henry "bullet flying wide of the ditch", I imagine most rounds fell considerably long or short of it.
And certainly the smokey nature of black powder must be factored in. Incidently, can anyone enlighten me on the wind conditions in those two battles, as I don't recall having read any such reference? But unless there was a stiff breeze, particulary at Rorke's Drift, the British would have been firing into a blinding cloud of acrid smoke in hopes of hitting something/anything after just a few volleys. Add in the hospital fire and the darkness at Rorke's Drift and the gloom at Isandlwana and we might even be talking about what's called "sound shooting" by hunters in my neck of the woods ("deer/three, hunters/nothing!"). Refer to MacDonald's harangue to his MH armed troops at Omdurman for a striking example of the need for fire discipline in the days of black powder (and I concede that his men were also overly excited, but that might also apply).
I also read a reference, possibly apochryphal, that the Zulu learned that if one's shield were wetted and allowed to dry canted at a 45 degree angle, it was apt to deflect a Martini-Henry bullet if fired from beyond about 300 yards. I haven't tried that one, but if anyone else has, please let me know if it does! Of course I won't expect to hear from you if it didn't.
Lastly, albeit because of drugs, physical conditioning, faith in their "doctoring" for battle or whatever, it strikes me that a typical Zulu warrior could take a shocking amount of "killing". Didn't I read an account of a Zulu veteran of Isandlwana showing off nine scars from nine different wounds acquired there-- two at least that should have put him hors de combat (sp?). I understand that he was atypical, but there's nine rounds accounted for right there (almost half the contents of the two belt pouches), and he was only wounded.
Any or all or others! It seems that someone was thinking when the numbers of rounds carried in reserve by a battalion/regiment on active service was set.

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 3:06 am

Ooops! I spaced on the fractional math about the belt pouches--I should have said " half the contents of A belt pouch". Also, the MH has no windage adjustment on the sighting, although the British weren't exactly sniping, were they?

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:05 pm

The available statistical data for 19th century engagements indicates that, under combat conditions, rifle fire accuracy is greatly reduced by stress, confusion, excitement and other human factors not present at a target range. A 2003 study of combat in the American Civil War by Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, provides some interesting data: British studies of the Peninsular Campaign during the Napoleonic Wars indicate a general firing accuracy for British infantry averaging 0.30% to 0.50% of shots fired, though at the Battle of Vittoria it declined to 0.12%. By the Civil War and the widespread use of the rifle musket, accuracy improved but not dramatically. Senior Union officers who attempted to correlate infantry ammunition expended with enemy casualties suffered came up with the following figures for specific battles:
Gaines' Mill (June 1862): ca. 1.0%
Murfreesboro (December 1862): ca. 0.68%
Wilderness (May 1864): ca. 1.00% - 1.50 % (Confederate casualties incomplete)

Certainly the "old, steady shots" of the 24th enjoyed certain advantages over their Civil War counterparts: more professional training, better rifles, and an extended order that maximized individual marksmanship. Still there would have been a good deal of smoke after a while, the Zulus took cover and made the best use of available 'dead' ground, and there would have been the need for suppressing fire to prevent the Zulus' organizing for a frontal assault, all of which would have reduced accuracy.

I recall during my last visit to the Isandlwana Museum a statement on one of the exhibits there that the British are estimated to have expended 50,000 to 70,000 rounds of ammunition during the battle there (can someone confirm this?). If we average the figure to 60,000, and estimate Zulu casualties at 1,500 killed or mortally wounded, that would still mean a firing accuracy rate of about 2.5%, a significant improvement over Union infantry 15 years earlier. The actual figure for the companies of the 24th would doubtless be higher, given (a) the expenditure of ammunition by British mounted units, engaged in staged retreats and temporary defensive stands and thus more prone to inaccuracy, and (b) the number of relatively non-serious wounds suffered by the Zulus that remain outside the estimates of Zulu losses.

So the regulars of the 24th achieved an accuracy rate exceeding that of the standard Civil War battle, which in turn renders all the more remarkable the Zulu achievement.

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:01 am

In Adrian's "Rorke's Drift" book he says that it took the English 25 bullets to kill 1 Zulu...even at that close range...even with what it said above (good stuff), it's kind of strange to me.

/Chiba2000 Cool

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:08 am

Chiba,
"Strange" to me also. I find myself trying to justify math that to this day doesn't quite compute. Might we be dealing with a "hidden agenda" on the part of the powers that be? Maybe a play on the part of the representative from Birmingham to get the military to buy more bullets "just in case".
There were eight hits with eight rounds recorded at Ulundi from one marksman and that does seem a far cry from 1 in 25 hits or worse, one in more than 150 in the Crimea. Hey, we're not exactly talking about automatic rifles laying down a surpressing fire here!

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:22 am

Sorry gentlemen, in spite of theatrical presentations to the contrary the fact is that hitting an insentient target at 300-500 yds. on the range is an entirely different beast than hitting a human being who quite naturally tends to avoid being hit. The fact is the 19th century statistics presented earlier in this discussion are orders of magnitude greater than the 20th century statistics (I haven't seen 21st century numbers yet but I would imagine them to be actually 'statistically insignificant' except for the casualties involved). As counter-intuitive as it may seem, killing by firearm in combat is a great deal more difficult than it appears in 'first person shooters' or paint-ball games and is in fact a deadly serious buisiness. I don't mean to seem dismissive but if you'd 'been there, done that' the confusion wouldn't arise.

Again I'm sorry but I feel it really needs to be said.

Best

Michael

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 5:33 am

hello

over the years as a South African police member, i have witnessed many shooting scenes, and i have noticed that even with modern day firearms, our best members use many shots per hit rate.

i recall a shooting where a firearms instructor from a flying squad unit (generally better trained and armed members) used 145 rounds for 1 hit during a high speed car chase.

Real life shooting combined with stress, smoke , return fire,fear etc is considerable harder

i have read articles where the Americans were using up to 200 000 rounds per vietnamese killed, and during ww2 the allies used 25000 rounds per axis killed.

http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_guide/full_details/Conflict/programme_699.php

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:44 pm

One can't argue with the numbers (one can, but is unlikely to prevail). Still, modern military theory of "surpressing fire" and the 20th century philosophy that a wounded enemy is a more desireable goal than a dead one would seem to me to contest our applying small caliber/full-auto statistics to the reign of the Martini-Henry. 'Nam wasn't exactly a prime example of frugal military economics, was it? To paraphrase Kitchener (seriously out of context) at Omdurman- with its Maxims, lyddite, and magazine rifles a more "modern" battle than Isandlwana: "Cease fire! What an awful waste of ammunition ... to give them a good dusting!"
I wonder are there any available figures for other battles contemporary with Isandlwana and involving the same hardware-- Ulundi for example? Or Kambula or Gingin...? Abu Klea possibly?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:13 pm

Perhaps this will offer some insight, from "A Widow-Making War" edited by H. Whitehouse and being the letters and diary of Capt. (later Major) W.R.C. Wynne, RE who's company along with the Buffs and mounted troops engaged the Zulu left horn at Nyezane the morning of 22 Jan 1879 :

"The number of officers and men of the Royal Engineers engaged were:-
Officers, 4, viz: Captain W. Wynne. Lieuts D C Courtney, Main, and Willock.
Sergeants, 6. Rank and file, 86. No. of rounds expended, 1,850."

He also relates that firing commenced at 150-250 yds.

The above accounting for approx. 20 rounds per man in the space of about an hour by the RE coy. and does not include an accounting of the rounds expended by the rest of the column that was engaged nor the guns, which seem to have been particulary well served that day. Total estimate of Zulu killed by all arms involved was something over 400 though the column didn't tarry long there thus were unable to offer a more informed casualty count.

I realize what a hurdle it seems for most people's understanding that so few rounds slam home. Perhaps it would be easier if you look at it from another perspective; if, in the history of firearm warfare, every round found it's mark we would be left with very short conflicts and very few survivors. Thankfully (or not depending on one's perspective) that is simply not the case.

Best

Michael

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 2:29 pm

Interesting comments there in that last para Mike. You know from what I've read about "modern" battle is that only a small percentage of an army is ever engaged with the enemy during battle at a particular period of time...that is I guess 20% do over 80% of the fighting under the circumstances. (of course this was much different in the AZW). Makes you think about outcomes in WWII if an entire army had 75% or more shooting at once!

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:27 pm

Martinis have unreasonably become intertwined into fokelore here and we must step back and look at facts as they appear..even today.
I shoot 30-50 rounds through an 1875 Mk11 (upgraded 1) Martini Henry every Sunday morning, over a 60-90 minute period. I fire a .468" 90% lead, 10% plumbers solder 480 grain slug. This is paper patched to .472".and propelled with military load of 83-85 grains FFG Black powder.

We can examine the "problems"
a) Fouling/ recoil
b) overheating
c) Rounds that have become damaged
d) Effective ballistics and penetration

The service rifle of the time fired a similar load, exept the paper patch boxer round was nominally .452-.454" with the paper wrap, to the rear of the slug was a beeswax wad, designed to atomise when fired thereby lubeing the bore.

Accuracy does vary, at 120 yards with my rifle the twisting action of the rifling causes the bullet to fly high and right by approx. 10cm due to the clockwise twist, this was rectified often by the armourer who actually made a groove revision to the rearsight to compensate for this. (The Lee Met / Enf .303 was adjusted at manufacture). I fire low and left to compensate. The man in the field would know his guns "vices" and would compensate. Part of the training a man went through was distance judging, his officer who was calling the shots should have been even more trained on this, however human error, with the rifleman not lowering his rearsight when the renage closes will be over 400cm out at 300-200 yards.

Fact is I fire in a thin shirt in the summer, OK it is not "field conditions" but recoil is recoil, The Martini does have a kick, but providing you pull it into your shoulder it is not that bad, you do not have to flinch once you are used to it. accuracy is better when lying down, or resting prone across a bench (or mealie bag), standing, accuracy is less as you tend to loose the bead a little easier.

The fouling is a problem, however recoil is not really noticably exaggerated even after 40 rounds, the problem lies with periods with no firing, my rifle leaves a greasy oily deposit when fired, which hardens with the heat of the bore,shooters in the USA swear by a "blow tube", simply by blowing down the barrel, moisture in your breath "re-activates" the deposit acting as a natural lubricant, also, the beeswax wad on the original round added to the lube each time a round travelled the bore, the paper patch also has a cleansing effect. Also remember the original round was not as tight in the barrel as modern loads.

After 20 rounds the barrel heats up considerably, whereby a "heat haze" eminates from the barrel which does affect sighting, the barrel does get so hot you would not want to hold it bare handed for long, but it then cools if no round is fired for a few minutes. Smoke is a problem, which does disperse slowly on a still day, whenever I have been to Isandlwana there is always quite a breeze, but we do not know what it was on the day so we cannot actually say if smoke was a major issue.

In the trials field testing of 1871 a Martini round went clean through a 75mm 3" oak plank (temple & skennerton Martini Henry Treatise vol 1), and a sand filled bag at 400. Somehow a cowhide sheild I cannot see would offer any protection, except that is the shield does hide the carrier from view, you could easily hit the shield but miss the man. In the trials Martini rounds were distorted and deliberately damaged, but if it would chamber, the explosion would then fire-form the brass back into shape. If the round was not immediately extracted though chamber heat would soften the brass, which could cause fragmentation of the base and sides.

What I have not tried is someone running toward me with a stabbing spear, I have ten to fifteen seconds to reload, I am fumbling to break the twine and tear open a paper packet, my pulse is racing and my hand shaking. Would I hit him, or will he get to me?. I have been pounding the enemy at 300 yards over a dropped rearsight, I have excelled at Hythe in my competition in 1874! so why can't I hit the bloke now?, Therein lies the answer to the failures, not of the Martini, but the man who holds it.

Neil

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 2:06 am

Points taken and well expressed, Neil! I'm ashamed to admit that none of my MK II's has ever seen a round chambered by me, so I'm gladdened to read your savvy input.
How good a shot was the average private soldier? FranklyI don't see him as knowing the muzzle from the butt of a rifle before he "took the Queen's shilling" and little enough training with it afterward. That being said, I see the Martini to be the apex of the hits/shots-fired evolution of the genre (with the possible exceptions of the Lee-Metford and Long Lee in their single-shot breechloader mode). Before it was sheer inaccuracy (although the Snider was no slouch in that department) and after it was sheer fire-power when the magazine feed began to be exploited. And was the lack of windage on the sight an issue, even at a massed target?

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 2:14 am

Remember they were shooting black powder ammo, which fouls the barrel very much, and they did not have any time to do any cleaning..... Two very big problems that they had were the barrel fouling, and the "cook offs", that is, chambering a cartridge and fire by itself before the trigger was pulled, due to the heat of the chamber. While I do not know it for sure, I do believe the volley fire by ranks suffered plenty of interruptions due to barrel fouling and cook offs, to a point in which in some cases, you could hardly continue shooting when the order was given

I shoot black powder (1874 45-120, 34"barrel Sharps replica) and hit metal rams at 500 meters with iron tang sights. Of course it is not the same shooting targets at the shooting range, as shooting the enemy running to you in overwhelming numbers. Also, after every shot, I have to use the blow tube (6 - 7 blows) to keep powder deposits soft, otherwise accuracy would diminish greately.

Most likely, Martini-Henry bullets were made of almost pure lead, with traces of other metals. Even if it contained some tin or antominy I can assure you that any human being hit would have an horendous wound, the bullet deforming quite a bit. Also, these calibers had tremendous penetration capabilities, especially in soft targets, and were lethal at very long distances. During the Adobe Walls battle in 1874, Billy Dixon shot a Kiowa warrior at a measured (after the fact) of 1,538 yards, or nine-tenths of a mile with his 45-90 Sharps.

By the way, barrels do not cool so fast, after being really hot. Try firing a sub machinegun or an assault rifle full auto (which I have), and then touch the barrel after a few minutes....I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT !
While Martini Henry's barrels probably did not heat up as much, after shooting the rifle a few hundred times (in rapid mode), barrels and chambers did heat up a lot, and there was no time to let it cool down.
Cheers !