Revolution War Era Tactics-other options

[First Shirt]

Actually, I think the Minie ball would probably be a huge advancement even in a musket. At the time, all rifles were one-at-a-time, hand built items. Bore sizes weren't standardized, and each rifleman had a pet load for his particular rifle, with a preferred patching material, a preferred powder charge, and a mold made by the gunsmith who built the rifle; there was very little that was the same from one rifle to another one; but you could load and fire Charleville musket balls from a Brown Bess; not accurately, granted, but given the accuracy standards of the time, probably good enough.

[JAG2955]

Actually, I think the Minie ball would probably be a huge advancement even in a musket. At the time, all rifles were one-at-a-time, hand built items. Bore sizes weren't standardized, and each rifleman had a pet load for his particular rifle, with a preferred patching material, a preferred powder charge, and a mold made by the gunsmith who built the rifle; there was very little that was the same from one rifle to another one; but you could load and fire Charleville musket balls from a Brown Bess; not accurately, granted, but given the accuracy standards of the time, probably good enough.

Giving the colonists (almost) rifle range and (almost) rifle accuracy out of a fast-loading, bayonet capable musket would certainly change the course of MANY battles. I think that might be the most plausible technological advancement in our situation.

[Jered]

Actually, I think the Minie ball would probably be a huge advancement even in a musket. At the time, all rifles were one-at-a-time, hand built items. Bore sizes weren't standardized, and each rifleman had a pet load for his particular rifle, with a preferred patching material, a preferred powder charge, and a mold made by the gunsmith who built the rifle; there was very little that was the same from one rifle to another one; but you could load and fire Charleville musket balls from a Brown Bess; not accurately, granted, but given the accuracy standards of the time, probably good enough.

All it would take is a different bullet mold, isn't it?

[Kommander]

And these mass produced rifles are going to come from where?

[Netpackrat]

And these mass produced rifles are going to come from where?

You wouldn't necessarily have to produce the rifles as such... The French were already supplying us with Charleville muskets, and the shallow groove rifling that is the principal difference between a rifle-musket that fires Minie balls, and a smoothbore musket that fires round balls, was well within the capability of the American gunsmiths of the time. You'd essentially need to set up a modification line equipped with rifling benches to get it done.

Producing the molds, and therefore the Minie balls in sufficient quantity might prove to be a bigger problem, since a mold for a hollow base, conical bullet is more complicated than one for round ball.

The biggest problem I can see with introducing new technologies is the fact that we were allied with the French at the time. We'd be handing them war-winning technology just in time for them to get it fully deployed with their forces for use in the Napoleonic wars. I would just as soon avoid handing them that kind of advantage, especially knowing that we're going to win our War of Independence anyway. I'd rather keep any such improvements under my hat, and prepare a very nasty surprise for the British when the War of 1812 starts.

[First Shirt]

And these mass produced rifles are going to come from where?

You don't even really need rifles, just a hollow-based conical slug. Better seal and a more efficient projectile gives extended range even without the rifling.

[Aesop]

I knew that we'd get some awesome ideas, but I was really focusing more on the tactics piece.

Introducing irregular/guerrilla warfare on a large scale across the colonies would have had devastating results to the British, and is would likely be the most feasible option to quickly change the course of the war.

I'm not sure how effective irregular warfare would have been in the Mid-Atlantic and Northern colonies. There, the British largely remained in the major cities (New York and Philadelphia, especially), leaving the Continentals largely free run of the countryside, but also depriving any potential guerillas of anything to target.

It was successful in the South, particularly the Carolinas. The militia there made it impossible for the Cornwallis to gain good control of anything beyond Charleston and Camden, although down there they did try. Outposts and small garrisons were constantly harrassed, until eventually Cornwallis realized he couldn't gain any decisive results there and moved the bulk of his force to Virginia.

I was thinking less of the French Resistance* and more of a CIA/ODA style assassinations/sabotage style irregular warfare. Officers would have been quartered in citizens houses, away from bases, lightly guarded. Slit their throats in the middle of the night. A few well-placed carcasses, human or otherwise, could either render a water source undrinkable, forcing the relocation of a camp, or even the deaths of hundreds. Counterfeit money and goods, sabotage infrastructure, infiltrate all levels of command. Less of "The Patriot", and more of "Assassins Creed 3".

*I know the French did these things too, but I'm thinking of them donning their armbands, shooting some guys, then melting back into the populace.

Exactly.
Every time a single soldier wanders off, he gets his throat slit.
Ditto for all officers.
NCOs, you behead, and leave the heads in public places.
Small detachments sent out on patrol outside town get scalped. (Let the natives take some heat.)
Double down: Tory farms get visits from the local tribes; rebel farmers are protected.
In all cases, the captured weapons and accoutrements get lifted and fed into the supply pipeline.

As for collaborators, night letters are very effective: "That's a nice business you have supplying the Tories. It would be a real shame if it, and your house with your entire family, suddenly burst into flames next week, wouldn't it?"

Human waste into military water points.
All brothel whores to be syphilitic plague carriers with active TB. Etc.

Arrange for barrels loaded in warehouses and onboard capital ships to be delayed incendiary timebombs.

The Royal Navy pressed men into service.
When they go ashore, arrange to press them back out, willingly or not.

Cut mooring lines and anchor cables. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Send provisions to ships: Poison the spirits, spoil the meat. Smallpox blankets: not just for indian trading.

Arrange a big party in town(s) for their HQ higher-ups and the local Tory big spender supporters. Burn it to the ground.
(AKA The Dirty Dozen: 1778).

For regular forces, standardize:
Put all the guys with accurate PA squirrel rifles together in cohesive sharpshooter units.
Put as many men as possible into small dragoon/cavalry units, and create Mosby's Raiders a century early. Run rings around foot-borne infantry, hit them ahead, then from behind, then from the flanks. Whittle them down every time they move out of garrison relentlessly.
Make every movement out of garrison like a walk though IED alley, or the return from Concord Bridge.
Deny them any safe areas.

Change maps, switch signs, cut roads to nowhere, send units to impassable terrain like cliffs with no exit, or into impassable swamps.
If a large formation can be lured into a forest, and then have it set afire around them, a win is a win.
Burn bridges, and then fortify the surrounding shores and nearest fords with grapeshotted artillery.
While they're busy dealing with that problem, hit them from behind, perhaps with falsely uniformed reinforcements.
And send another similar force back to their garrison town as well.
If you can get them to automatically shoot at each other on a regular basis, your work is done.
False flags works even better with ships at sea.


Send a powder wagon into their garrison, with crates of grapeshot and buckshot on the outside edge. Set it off at morning formation.
Smuggle swivel guns to strategic points in towns, and unload a barrel of buckshot on any passing formation.
Ditto for choke points like bridge approaches, crossroads, and fords.
If it can be placed inside a Tory house, double bonus points.
Send heavily-loaded sloops into harbor anchorages afire at 4AM.
(Why should jihadis get to invent the IED and VBIED?)

Intercept their dispatches.
Send false messages and reports: have strong garrisons requesting immediate help; let those overrun report all is well. Etc.
Send reports to the Home Country of troops deserting en masse, and dying in droves; send reports purporting to be from the Home Country that Parliament and the common man are turning against the war, and looking to abandon forces in place.
Start whisper/handbill propaganda campaigns.
Accuse lobsterbacks of the most outrageous atrocities, and spread the reports too far away to readily check.
Tar and feather recalcitrant collaborators.
Hang all captured enemy officers; brand the captured enlisted troops and send them to the interior to be released to Canada or the Caribbean colonies, and notify them if subsequently recaptured in North America they'll be hung too.

Sun Tzu meets Alinsky, by way of 18F School.
I would seriously consider dressing a company or two of fake regulars, to set them off in other colonies, and Canada, to perform fairly outrageous acts, and set those locals against the home country as well.

And set every ship captain at liberty to pillage their bases and shipping in the Caribbean relentlessly. (No colonial income is a major PITA in the 18th C. for the English Crown.) Deny them any safe port or income this side of the Atlantic.
Encourage actual pirates to do the same. Like barracuda, they'll smell blood well enough on their own. So will the other European powers, without the needless attempt to draw them onto our side.
Pass counterfeit English pounds and sterling in their other colonies (and in England if it can be arranged) by the bushel; arrange for local sabotage of all export and import goods, and any warmaking materiel. Send British forces in the colonies entire shipments of muskets with soldered touch-holes, spiked cannon, eccentric off-sized balls, and waterlogged powder casks.

Do everything that William Donovan and the Dulles brothers would have done if they'd had the OSS and SOE up and running in 1775.
Then go up by a factor of 10.

[Vonz90]

You guys realize that nothing would have to change to win, because we did win.

Technology aside, I'm not sure there is a lot of tactical changes that would have made a difference. Going rouge like Aesop suggests would not necessarily have produced positive results. When the Brits got nasty it actually drove a lot of fence sitters to our side, it is entirely possible that us getting nasty would have driven them back the other way. One thing that hurt the Brits was that they were mostly reluctant to organize the loyalists into militias, this was particularly stupid because early in the war there were as many or more loyalists as revolutionists - even at the back end of the war the discrepancy was not great.

If the loyalists were forced to start organizing to defend themselves, it is entirely possible that the Brits would have been able to leverage that to their benefit.

In the end, I think Washington was exactly right in the strategic sense. All we had to do was keep not loosing, and eventually the war was going to be too expensive for the Brits to continue. With that strategic landscape, the tactics and technology of the situation are entirely secondary.

[Aesop]

Why drag out a war for seven years you can end it successfully in one?
WOLVERINES, baby.

It's equally likely that given the option to fight, or switch, most loyalists would choose the latter - exactly as they did eight years later, without a hiccup.
History records no Tory Exodus in 1783.
And it took another 87 years before folks got riled enough to step up to a civil war, and that only reluctantly.
The chief reason no British loyalist regiments were organized, is because they would have been vastly undersubscribed.
As Paine pointed out, there weren't many men at all with 3AM courage, and the overwhelming number here were on the revolutionary side, after long and considered reflection.

Turn the amp up to 11, and shorten the duration.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Note that the last 5 centuries of war see shorter durations, and more decisive victories.
The notion that there are gentlemanly rules of conduct amidst a war is quaint, but ultimately nonsensical.
There may be levels to which we will not stoop, but moderation in the ultimate prosecution is a foolish handicap.
The effort wants lightning, not a swarm of fireflies.

[Greg]

Why drag out a war for seven years you can end it successfully in one?
WOLVERINES, baby.

The other guy gets a vote. The British were fighting a restrained war as well. What happens when *they* take the gloves off, too? Alternate history where you assume only your side gets to do anything differently is retarded.

It's equally likely that given the option to fight, or switch, most loyalists would choose the latter - exactly as they did eight years later, without a hiccup.
History records no Tory Exodus in 1783.
And it took another 87 years before folks got riled enough to step up to a civil war, and that only reluctantly.
The chief reason no British loyalist regiments were organized, is because they would have been vastly undersubscribed.
As Paine pointed out, there weren't many men at all with 3AM courage, and the overwhelming number here were on the revolutionary side, after long and considered reflection.

Turn the amp up to 11, and shorten the duration.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Note that the last 5 centuries of war see shorter durations, and more decisive victories.
The notion that there are gentlemanly rules of conduct amidst a war is quaint, but ultimately nonsensical.
There may be levels to which we will not stoop, but moderation in the ultimate prosecution is a foolish handicap.
The effort wants lightning, not a swarm of fireflies.

Of course the revolutionaries were handicapped by the fact that they wanted the colonies to be both free and *intact*. I believe they understood collateral damage very well, and deliberately attempted to minimize it, at least among 'civilized' men. See what Washington did to British-sympathizing Indians to understand that he certainly had the ruthlessness and determination to do everything you mention, and more, but chose not to.

I believe they were quite glad to not provoke the British into going Sherman. Remember, many of the British senior officers were politically sympathetic to the stated aims of the revolution, sometimes you want to leave well enough alone.

It is also as well to ask yourself what would have happened later, had our revolution been conducted by men so willing to act as if the ends justified ANY means.