Gettysburg, Day Three - The Bombardment

Comments · 64

• TO

  @tomncj · 1 year ago

  Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander is a great source of information on Day 3 artillery.  In it, he does discuss ammunition with Longstreet.

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• MI

  @michaelsnyder3871 · 1 year ago (edited)

  McGilvery was not in Hancock's chain of command and had the power to refuse orders from Hancock that conflicted with his own chain of command, which was Hunt (senior artillery officer on Meade's staff) to Taylor (actual commander of the Army's Artillery Reserve) to him. Case shot was in fact, "shrapnel" shells. The case shot, like explosive shell, was fused by time, the time being relative to the distance travelled by the shell in that time. The Borman fuse used by the US artillery was a lead disk with a powder train curled inside the disk. The gunner determined the time from a table for the shell that was either a page carried by the gunner or on a poster fixed on the interior of the lid of the limber. He then pushed in the square on the disk labeled by the number of seconds of the powder train. The fuse was on the outer face of the shell and was lit by the flash of the gunpowder that flowed around the shell in the space provided by windage. This fuse was reasonably reliable at 75%. Confederate fuses had a failure rate of over 50%. If the fuse didn't work, the shell became a lightweight solid shot, which could still do damage, just not damage to the intended target.

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• RO

  @robrussell5329 · 3 years ago

  The issue with the fuses seems to be consistent with the larger issue of Confederate manufacturing inferiority to that of the North.  One more reason why the South never really had a chance.

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• PO

  @popsrock6622 · 3 years ago

  Thank you for giving this most famous battle in The Civil War the detail it deserves! Well done sir! 🫡🇺🇸

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• JO

  @joecahill1994 · 1 year ago

  Hard to believe that Henry Hunt is as unknown as he is. He was the artillery commander in what was possibly the most famous artillery duel of all time, and he was the victor!

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• FR

  @FrancisSullivan-j7t · 2 years ago

  I Gain so much Knowledge  of these Battles..GREAT WORK!!! SUBSCRIBED

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• LE

  @LeopardSix · 2 months ago

  There is usually very little discussion of the heavy smoke hanging in the hot and humid air on the third day. This is true here, too.

• DA

  @dadsongs · 1 year ago

  Thanks for this. I would still be interested in knowing what the Union artillery's pre-charge effect was, in case I missed hearing about it here

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• RO

  @RobertR-u9b · 2 years ago

  I cannot imagine Lee not being informed about his shortage. It was a doomed attacked.

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• BU

  @burrellbikes4969 · 1 year ago

  Learned a few things here. Lee seemed to want to emulate tactics which Napoleon utilized at certain battles, such as Borodino. However, Napoleon had multiple hundreds of guns, which enabled him to fire all along the line. Lee dis not have those numbers, so had to focus fire revealing the location of the attack. Also noted how far forward the batteries in front of Pickett are on the map. Seems awfully out in space. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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• LE

  @LeopardSix · 1 year ago

  One of the longest-running myths of the battle is that all of the rebel guns overshot their targets.

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• GE

  @geek49203 · 11 months ago

  I call "bullsh*t" on that fuse thing.  1)  The Confederates had shot guns for 2 days in Gettysburg, presumably from the same fuse source.  I'm pretty sure that they'd have noticed the issue by then.  2)  It's not unusual for an entrenched side, awaiting a human wave attack, to hold onto ammo prior to attack.  Why?  Well, because it's harder by far to hit an artillery piece at a distance than it is to hit a huge mass of troops from a shorter range.  So it's also possible for the CSA folks to have a difficult job in spotting and hitting the enemy's artillery, especially after the smoke set in (and it's a good chance that the winds moved from West to East, covering the Union lines).

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