• @[email protected]
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    189 months ago

    The guns were quite accurate. They had rifling etc long before the Maxim gun.

    Being a top grade British rifleman required hitting a 3 foot wide target at 900 yards or something. That’s pretty fucking good without glass optics.

    They were slowish to fire, but they had paper cartridges that made it not too slow. Lower casualty rates probably have more to do with soldiers not being brainwashed yet, lots of people didn’t actually shoot to kill. Compare the casualty rates of the colonial campaigns where soldiers didn’t consider their enemy human.

      • @[email protected]
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        49 months ago

        I’m not a usian but I do know that in one of your various wars some dude bought heaps of pom guns but not the right bullets for them so they got some terrible reputation for being unreliable because the bullets didn’t work.

        The Baker’s was rifled, hence the name. I mean tbh from standing/crouching with ironsights on a real day it would be impressive today to shoot someone at 370 meters with one shot using a modern gun and these things were heavy as fuck. Idk specifically how that gun performed but we have a tendency to assume past tech was much worse than it actually was.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 months ago

        Um people in India were well equipped and organised at least, idk about the rest. Hell the 1857 war for indepence was using the poms own training and weapons against them but long before that the various and sundry kingdoms did alright.

        The British empire and their trade companies were just absurdly bloodthirsty and inhumane.