Talk:Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

Contents

[edit] 400 to 800 yards? Not likely....

"The performance of the regiment can be demonstrated by the story of Rifleman Thomas Plunkett of the 1st Battalion, 95th Rifles. Plunkett, armed with a Baker rifle, shot the French General Colbert at a range of between 400 and 800 yards during the Peninsula War"

Ummm...400 to 800 yard shot?? 800 yards is 2,400 feet at the maximum. This flintlock rifle's combat range was 100-200 yards, with a possibility of hitting a horse-sized target reliably at 300. Past that? Doubtful, very doubtful. I doubt the ball would even go 2,400 feet. I own a good quality working reproduction of the Infantry Rifle (its real name), shoot it quite a bit in the manner they did back then. 100-200 yd accuracy is realistic.

95thfoot, 8:58 PM, June 3, 2007.

This page has a detailed discussion of the historical records — there are no eye-witness accounts that give the actual range: [1] David (talk) 01:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plume colour

The article states that the Rifle Brigade wore a green plume.

Is this correct? I thought the RB plume was all black - hence the nickname "the sweeps".

As far as I remember, regular British Army rifles regiment plume colours were as follows:

Scarlet & Black - King's Royal Rifle Corps
Green - Royal Irish Rifles (later the Royal Ulster Rifles)
Black - Rifle Brigade
Black - Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)

Cheers, Rifleman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.132.159.170 (talk) 21:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flogging abolished

While agreeing that both the 95th and the 60th had an enlightened attitude to use of corporal punishment well ahead of the times, 'Black Bob' Crauford made notorious use of flogging during the Corunna retreat.

Flogging was certainly imposed on the 95th during the Peninsular Campaign, though probably much less in the 95th and the rest of the Light Brigade than in the main infantry units of the line, where unquestioning and automatic obedience was critical to the drills of massed infantry formations. Cheers, Rifleman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.132.159.169 (talk) 18:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] proposing a move

I propose this article is moved to Rifle Brigade (United Kingdom) due to its generic form--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This is indeed ambiguously titled. Perhaps instead of resorting to the country suffix, the article could be moved to the original definite title: i.e. The Rifle Brigade. It was moved to its present title due to perceived incompatibility with WP:NCD; however, the regiment was officially designated The Rifle Brigade. I do have reservations as that would disrupt the consistency of the current naming practice for unit articles (avoiding the definite). Aha! Moving the article to the official (minus the definite) Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) would eliminate ambiguity and preserve consistency. Thoughts? SoLando (Talk) 10:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, sure. I just need the title for the Rifle brigade article as a unit organisation. I could have used Rifle brigade (unit), but it seemed needless--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 12:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't a section in brigade suffice? I recommend retaining Rifle Brigade as a diambig' page as there are articles on the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and Liverpool Rifles (once titled the Liverpool Rifle Brigade). Alternatively, Rifle Brigade could function as a disambig-cum-article...Regards, SoLando (Talk) 12:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
No, this is for the Russian/Soviet rifle troops, where the infantry Arm was called rifles, or rather 'shooters', but commonly translated as rifles. So there will be an article on Rifle platoon (Soviet Union), Rifle company (Soviet Union), Rifle battalion (Soviet Union), Rifle regiment (Soviet Union), Rifle brigade (Soviet Union), Rifle division (Soviet Union) and Rifle Corps (Soviet Union). These will explain the structure, development and use of these in combat, and not deal with actual unit entities. Maybe I have to disambiguate my planed articles--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 13:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Do you believe that selection of planned pages would be viable as independent articles? Consider consolidating them into a single article, perhaps Rifle unit (Soviet Union). Maintaining distinct articles for unit levels as low as a platoon from a country perspective would be irregular when they could be assuredly integrated into articles like Platoon , Company (military unit), etc or expounded on in a Structure of the Soviet Armed Forces/Organisational history of the Soviet Armed Forces, á la Structure of the British Army, without compromising presentation and comprehensiveness. Certainly, Rifle Brigade should be converted into a disamig' page irrespective of the direction chosen. Regards, SoLando (Talk) 16:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone object if I move the existing British article to Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own, freeing up this space for a disambiguation page? Also, I believe that SoLando is right, and a Structure of the Soviet Army is the way to go. Buckshot06 (talk) 21:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
No objections from me. Buckshot, I've been monitoring your discussion with Mrg and I want to affirm my support for the aforementioned Structure of the Soviet Army (or Armed Forces if you don't believe its scope to be impractical and excessively grandiose) - it is the ideal option. Mrg, a series of articles documenting the structure of multiple incarnations of a military should surely not be considered a pre-requisite for the existence of an article on the Structure of the Soviet Army/Soviet Armed Forces; after all, there is no Structure of the English Army ;-). Two to three paragraphs detailing Imperial Russia's military, with appropriate red linked {{main article}} wouldn't be problematic and may induce someone to create these articles. SoLando (Talk) 23:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
The article has been moved and the redirects cleared in preparation for Rifle Brigade's conversion to a disambig'. That was tedious in the extreme; I really should use AWB :-). Regards SoLando (Talk) 15:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tactics

There's a bit of silliness about tactics in the article in its current state. I've put a fact tag on the unsubstantiated claim that it was considered dishonorable to aim at an individual — it wasn't practical to aim at an individual with a musket standing in line, because (a) the musket wasn't very accurate, and (b) after the first volley, black power smoke would obscure targets — I'm pretty sure that all skirmishers (not just riflemen) picked individual targets, because skirmishing wouldn't be very useful with random firing. There's also a sense in the article that skirmishing with rifles was somehow an advance over conventional line tactics, rather than a supplement to them. Skirmishing couldn't replace the battle line until the breach-loading rifle came into widespread use in the 1860s; until then, the line of battle was pretty-much the most effective formation for serious fighting because of the huge firepower it could throw out, and even riflemen would come into the line after the initial skirmishing was finished. David (talk) 01:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)