How did Civil War people estimate range?

Just think about your own experience if you played football in high school or later. You probably knew 10 yards, 40 yards, 90 yards. You didn't ask yourself how you knew. You didn't question your knowing. Daily experience just made it so.
What is true for you was true for many back then.
 
Part of estimating range is knowing the size of some object in the distance. I have found, that if I hold my hand fully outstretched in front of me, the width of my left thumb is visually the same as a 12 feet length at 100 yards. A dime held outstretched is about 6 feet. So if I see a man standing at some unknown distance, I assume he is 6 feet or nearly so... I hold up my thumb. If his height is half the width of my thumb, or dime-size, he is 100 yards. If he is 1/4 the width, he is 200 yards.
 
Things are not much different between the civil war period and today.

Simple fact is "a mil is a mil is a mil', always has been, always will be.

One inch from your eye is 50 mils. Or one finger from your eye is 50 mils.

(the average finger is 1 inch wide).

A common trick was to take something like a pencil or stick and cut measured notches 1 inch a part. Hold it 20 inches from your face. The notches are 50 mils apart.

Often one would tie a 20 inch string to the pencil or stick and hold one end of the string in your teeth to get a quick accurate 20 inches to the item with the notches.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The average soldier is 18 inches shoulder to shoulder, (we use 19 today, people are larger then they were 150 years ago).

We measure the front sight width of the front sight. Lets say its .075 wide.

Super impose the front sight on an 18 inch target and see if its the same width, small or larger then the target.

Divide 18 by .075 (or the width of the front sight) and you get 240.

So if your .075 is the same with as the target looking over the sights your target is 240 yards. If the front sight is twice as wide as the target its 480 yards. If its 1/2 the size of the target its 120 yards.

With a tad bit of practice, one can easily estimate the range to a known size target by the relationship of the front sight to a target.

Think about it, remember the old zero range for the M1 or M14 was 250 yards.

The average width of the M1 or M14 front sight post is .076. The target used then was the e-silhouette with was about 19 inches wide.

19/.076=250.

Nothing new under the sun, just fancy gadgets that measure the same thing.
 
"I read some years back that "surveyors" between Colonial times and the Civil War paced off parcels of land by foot, even in mountainous areas, and today checked out with GPS units, were mere inches off true measurements, even with thousand acre parcels of land."

My Father was a civil engineer and registered land surveyor in Pennsylvania. I did a lot of field work with him over the years. He was EXCELLENT at estimating distances.

As often as not he was accurate to within a yard or two at distances as great as a half mile.

I helped him survey many areas of Central Pennsylvania which had originally been surveyed in the early 1700s. Some of the surveys were extremely accurate, others were not so much.

We surveyed one farm area that hadn't been surveyed since it had originally been laid out in the 1740s (same family was still on the land). All of the traditional boundaries were still there, stack stone fences, creeks, etc....

And all had been missurveyed 250 years before and were WILDLY off.

That one took a long time and some court work for the owners to sort out.
 
I AM AMAZED !!! DO NOT ANY OF YOU READ HISTORY ?? HAVE YOU NOT EVER READ OF THE CIVIL WAR SNIPER DUELS THAT WERE OUT TO HELL AND GONE ?? Yee gads......
Have you not ever read of the Confederate General picked off standing in front of his tent with a picked, planned shot ?? At a mile.......
Have you not EVER read of the Union officer General SEdgwick?
The ignorance of the new whippersnapper generation is appalling.
You know, the world did not begin the day you ignoramouses were born.
And so it goes...
 
Are you suggesting that some of us are unaware that General Sedgwick misunderstood the size of an elephant?
I'm surprised no one cites Billy Dixon's shot at Adobe Walls, even if it did come after the war. ;)
 
Same thing for small arms fire. I believe John Huff could have hit Jeb Stuart, using a fence as a rest, with his pistol, at 80 rods (about 400 yards). Given how many years and battles John Huff had fought, and that he was an exceptional marksman, sometime exceptional shots are made.
Click to expand...

Actually, Jeb Stuart was shot at fairly close range, apprx 15-30 yards. He had just overseen the repulse of a dismounted Union cavalry charge and was doing some shooting himself. As the Union troopers retreated Huff turned and nailed Stuart with a 44. Probably an Army Colt. Huff was known to be a very good shot, but this particular shot was nothing jaw-dropping.
 
I must admit it was a surprising and interesting read the day I learned that riflemen were able to suppress and sometime wipe out artillery positions during the civil war. Shots of a mile happened often enough that they were not entirely uncommon.
 
Heavy artillery in siege positions and such would have known the precise distance to any point within range.

Field artillery was a different matter. Civil War battles were massively chaotic. More often than not field pieces would arrive on the field and swing into position with the horses in a lather. The captain would make a quick guestimate of the range based on experience and shout a command. He would sit on his horse and watch through field glasses and make adjustments as needed. Most shots were inside a mile with the target more or less in sight so fancy estimations weren't needed even if there was time to use them.

Captain Dilger comes to mind as an example of an excellent gunner. His battery raced onto the field at Gettysburg and rapidly began firing at the confederates. Dilger personally aimed a shot that disabled a confederate cannon. Or so the story goes.
 
Jack Henson guestimated, and was good enough at it that he killed over 30 men with his 50 cal muzzle loader. Many a Yankee officers died on the deck of a boat going against the current of the Cumberland river. He had a place he laid in wait that was ranged to be over 800 yards from where the ships would be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hinson

I read a book about him a few years ago.
 
"I believe John Huff could have hit Jeb Stuart, using a fence as a rest, with his pistol, at 80 rods (about 400 yards)."

Since 80 rods = 1,320 ft / 1/4 mile / 440 yds. (16.5 ft = 1 rod) that'd be a good shot for a rifle. Revolver? I kind of doubt it. ;)
 
Have you not ever read of the Confederate General picked off standing in front of his tent with a picked, planned shot ?? At a mile.......
Click to expand...

Pure fiction. See William Edwards' book, Civil War Guns, where Mr. Edwards debunks that myth.

The ignorance of the new whippersnapper generation is appalling.
You know, the world did not begin the day you ignoramouses were born.
Click to expand...

Res ipsa loquitur.
 
Their used to be a formula that I don't remember completely but if you could see his legs he was X yards away, if you could see his head he was Y yards, if you could see the face he was Z yards away.
It was a good estimate.
 
"THEY USED TRIANGULATION."

Triangulation is good if you have the time and equipment needed to take the measurements.

You need at a minimum a measuring device (if it is of a known length, even a piece of rope will work) and a device to measure the angles.

Then you need to be able to run the computation which, while relatively simple mathematics, still was likely beyond most of the infantry soldiers of the time.

Triangulation would have been a tool used primarily by artillery and engineers, and would probably be most useful when estimating the distance to a fixed point, and less useful on a fluidly moving battlefield.

As others have noted, most soldiers would have simply guessed at the range based on personal experience.
 
Range estimation? Practice. Hunt varmints. Practice. I don't so much any more, but in the past, I saw a deer or whatever and I immediately was thinking "how far is that?" It starts with a football field and looking at the size of things at that distance and going from there.

Things have changed since laser range finders have become common place.
 
Field maps helped a great deal. As often as possible the distances to reference points were known. This made it easier on the big gun crews. When it came to direct rifle fire the variables got greater. The great volume of smoke would have made well aimed shots all but impossible at times. Was not uncommon to have friendly fire because of no visability. Often scimishes were so close that bayonets and buttstocks was the deciding factor. They hadn't gotten past the European style of warfare yet and still faced each other enmass often at close ranges under 100 yards. Had to be suicidal and brutal."The firstest with the mostest" was the way. After the first volley, there could be no distance.
 
I must admit it was a surprising and interesting read the day I learned that riflemen were able to suppress and sometime wipe out artillery positions during the civil war. Shots of a mile happened often enough that they were not entirely uncommon.
Click to expand...

That's why artillery evolved from direct fire to indirect. The Civil War changed a lot of the ways we fight.
 
From a British Musketry Manual circa 1859

Regulations for Conducting Musketry Instruction of the Army

Here's a partial excerpt of the drill.

"...for this purpose men should be placed in front of the squad at measured distances of 50 yards apart, from 50 to 300 yards for the first practice, and afterwards from 300 to 900 yards. The attention of each volunteer should be directed to the appearance of these men, and of their features, accoutrements, &c., at the different distances; they must remember the distance at which the smaller objects become indistinct or invisible. Each volunteer should be called upon to explain to the instructor what he sees; the explanation should be in a low tone of voice, in order that the rest of the squad may not hear."
Click to expand...

I have another book that describes a similar drill. For instance, making out the facial features, seeing the buttons, seeing certain accoutrements, etc.

Artillerymen and other trained people could also use sound to estimate distance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top