Cavalry in T2K

[rcaf_777]

What about using a horse cart or wagon for heavy weapons, see examples below

[kalos72]

When I think Cavalry from the Wild West...I see guys flying around on horseback firing their rifles as they ride. Might be mostly Hollywood there...not sure.

I will read through the board map and see about related discussions...

[kalos72]

Regarding the 10th man,my squads will need to be pretty independent.

I was thinking of a farrier type person and 2-3 "hands" to support 20-25 horses or something.

[kalos72]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Regarding the 10th man,my squads will need to be pretty independent.

I was thinking of a farrier type person and 2-3 "hands" to support 20-25 horses or something.

Ok so for the most part heavy weapons are out...what about 2-3 people and a farrier to watch 20-25 horses of the rest of the squad?

These squads will be long range patrols through particular counties in Texas.

[mikeo80]

What I have read about Civil War and the Indian Wars of the 1870's - 1880's,
seem to indicate that most of the time, cavalry was used for reconnaissance. J.E.B. Stuart was one of the primary officers fir this kind of work. It can be argued that the Battle of Gettysburg was a mistake because JEB went off on a Recon Raid, but did not keep General Lee informed of where he was and what he saw.

During the Civil War and beyond the cavalry would ride up, dismount, and engage the enemy. I have read that as many as 1 in 4 men were used as horse holders. The recovered evidence at Little Big Horn seems to bear this out. Custer and his men formed a long skirmish line. While the attacking Indians were at a distance, this was fine, the Springfield trap rifle had the ability to keep opponents at long range. Once the Indian fighters got closer, using terrain, the fire power of their repeating Winchesters and Henrys overwhelmed the 7th Cav. Of course being outnumbered about 9 -1 did not help.

My $0.02

Mike

[Gelrir]

For horse-holders who can lead the horses around, from the saddle, 1-in-4 or even 1-in-3 seems typical.

Managing a bunch of horses that never move might be possible for a 1-in-10 horseholder, I dunno.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Rmg...ers%22&f=false

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=253373

I seem to recall that the late 19th century Imperial Russian cavalry used 1-in-3; that is, one mounted guy, with an un-manned horse on each side of him. I think the Osprey book on the Russo-Turkish War mentions this.

As for mounted used of weapons: certainly pistol and sabre were the weapons of the U.S. Cavalry when mounted, in the early 20th Century. That's why each cavalryman was issued a pistol. I'm not sure if mounted rifle marksmanship was ever even discussed. The 1944 manual seems to presume that rifle usage will only happen dismounted, but I haven't read every page.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...PDFs/FM2-5.PDF

It's for an eight-man squad. Ah ha, a command on page 38: "To leave horses immobile": "All horses of one squad may be linked in a circle and left to the care of one horseholder". Of course, if you had 10-man squads, I imagine one guy could probably handle 10 horses.

--
Michael B.

[mpipes]

Your best bet is to read up on the German and Soviet cavalry on the Eastern Front in WWII. I do recall machineguns being part of their standard equipment, but I have no idea if they fired them from horseback. Carbines and SMG, yes. Those were fired from horseback. I know Soviet mounted cavalry overran German or their allied units on occasions. SS cavalry patrolled against partisans.

[stormlion1]

Use of Horses is a good idea as long as feed and supply chain is reasonably intact, even a lot of there care and feeding is easily doable in the field like feeding them and changing there shoes. As for the carrying of heavy equipment even that is doable if its broken down and carried by more than one horse. A Saw could be carried by a pack horse and its ammunition by two others easily enough. Not all gear was carried by individual horses after all. They had a supply train. Not sure of the numbers but I THINK I remember the 7th Calvary when they went off to Little Big Horn were supposed to have had at least a several supply carrying horses. Not that they went with Custer, I think he left them behind or they were with Benteen. He had the packs after all with the additional ammunition supply.
The big problem will be horse supply, quite a few will not survive the events that plague the world with refugees eating them, being worked to death, and general disease's and other factors like people hoarding there's to do things like travel and plowing fields. Even a Race Horse can plow a field if that's all that's available to a farmer and he will hide that horse when troops show up looking for a ride to draft.
Wish I still had that book on the 7th Calvary, it had a lot of details on the Calvary that operated during the Civil War and the Indian Wars.

[mikeo80]

Storm Lion, you are exactly correct as far as 7th Cav is concerned. Custer DID have a supply train. Relatively small, but as you said, extra ammo. In fact, the last contact from Custer was a note he sent. To quote from the note,

Benteen

Come on. Big Village.

Be quick. Bring packs.

W. W. Cooke

P.S. Bring Packs.

Custer also did away with his heavy weapons. He refused a battery of 2 - 3 Gatling guns. (there are records of both numbers, so hard to tell.)

All the weapons of the 7th Cav consisted of the Springfield Trapdoor Rifles and Colt revolvers. Custer even ordered the troops to NOT bring their sabers.

My $0.02

Mike

[Apache6]

"Calvary units" are sexy, especially the all female 2d Tennessee Cavalry Regiment formed out of dedicated horsewomen from Shelbyville Tn, the home of the Walking Horses. (They were never very successful in combat roles, they were noted as being exceptionally competent in policing and as great ambassadors, and were able to "talk down situations, where traditional units would have 'gone kinetic.' Formed in summer of 2001, the regiment had 10 squadrons, 3 in each of 3 Battalions, plus one retained as the Regimental Cmdrs direct asset. Each Squadron had 4 Calvary troops, each consisting of a Cmdr, XO and 4 10 woman squads, and small HQ, including a supply/blacksmiths wagon. At first they were armed with a wide range of civilan arms (shotguns, lever actions and bolt actions) over the winter of 2001, they were rearmed primarily with "9mm sten type SMGs, manufactured in the Middle Tennessed State University factory in Murfreesboro. At the same time a 14 woman, 60mm Mortar squad was added to each Squadron.

Despite being sexy, they are not going to have much combat power, and their value will be in reconnaissance and screening, cavalry roles, they may have to fight, but they are not going to be able to defeat equivalent units. This has been true all the way back to at least the Civil war.

- In the US in the 90s you are going to work very hard to gather together enough men who are really familiar with horses, I think that their are more females who really like horses then men (thus the 2d TN Cav above).

- Most people today, even if they own horses, don't realize how much work it takes to keep a horse functioning as a mount or a work animal. Most Americans, and I expect Western Europeans, of the 90s would be ill qualified to maintain horses, and this would result in EXTREMELY high loses of horses. This would be made worse by the fact that the horses of the period would have 'grown up' as pets, not work animals. I remember reading something about pampered horses that had worked in a brewery in Germany who were drafted as artillery animals during WWII, none of them survived the first winter in Russian.

- I had a friend who was big into both Civil War reenactment and "cowboy action shooting." He had two horses who were 'gun trained," I know Police Horses are as well, but most horses are going to spook at gunfire, and some horses cannot be 'gun trained.'

- Having listed why horses are not ideal for combat, I will add that they are going to be invaluable for courier duties, and for pulling loads. I have a horse, in the combat train, of my Marine "Company" I posted here earlier, but it mostly hauls a wagon and is sometimes used to carry messages.

- I think there would be lots of reinventing the wheel, or actually of reinventing the horse pulled plow and horse harnesses. Making these are not completely lost skills, but they are not widespread either.

- As some has said before, a lot of horses (and dogs, cats...) are going to get eaten the first winter after TDM. That will make the survivors more valuable. The question is are surviving horses used to bred more and trained for pulling plows, or organized into offensive units. I think that their will be examples of both. Farmers will vote for the first plan, military for the second.

- OK, now I've got a new adventure idea. A 'just returned from Europe unit,' infiltrating on foot to 'recover' (rustle) horses and cattle from a New America controlled county in order to bring them back to Smithville in time for the spring planting. 2 of the adventurers are experienced horseman, the rest not so much. Could be fun role playing. I can see a stuborn but brave stud horse becoming an invaluable NPC. Herding dogs would also be useful.

- Oxen, will become much more important as work animals. Your artillery pieces are as likely to be pulled by oxen as horses. That is a skill that I think is likely very close to being totally lost in U.S., though I know of one group of Oxen that are plow trained at Historic Williamsburg near Norfolk VA

- No I don't have ADHD; why do you ask?

[stormlion1]

Troops shooting from the back of horses are not going to be very accurate no matter what the old westerns show. Just wait a lot of ammunition really so the best use of Horse Calvary is to ride them to the destination, dismount and leave one man holding the reigns of four of five horses and send the rest forward in a line. That way the horses don't get spooked by gunfire, the horses are both protected and available, and any pack horses will be nearby carrying additional ammunition. The interesting thing will be the entire process being reinvented by survivors and people with little real knowledge of horses and horse warfare.
Making a wagon for supply's is easy to say, but actually making one will be much harder and the option of cheating by using a cut down truckbed or some such will be a option. But that's all heavy metal there and horses will quickly tire out requiring longer breaks than normal. Building a wooden wagon is an option, if one has blueprints or better yet an example to copy but unless you have power tools that's a long drawn out process. Just curing the lumber will take time!