TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Earlier this year I posted some excerpts from an Army study (once classified Secret) from the early sixties, “Operational Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon,” which was instrumental in the military’s decision to adopt the smaller caliber M-16 rifle. Other militaries did essentially the same study and came to the same conclusions, adopting reduced power […]

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I’ve been reading Matthew Spring’s new book on the British Army in the Revolutionary War, With Zeal and Bayonets Only. It’s an excellent look at how the British actually fought during that conflict, and I may do a full review in the future. One thing that Spring does very well is to analyze how the […]

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I’m going to take a step backwards here into the Revolutionary War, both to get a perspective on infantry tactics and to get a feel for how the landscape affected them. I’ll also address another issue, that of weapon effectiveness, particularly the rifle, during the war. There are those who, with good reason, maintain that […]

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