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To: koan who wrote (19712)	9/1/2006 2:44:33 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78408

Commanders were unwilling to do that before the era of radios, as it was too hard to keep track of them and at the end of the day know if you were winning or losing. Some battles of the CW, particularly the Battle of the Wilderness ended up being fought that way, but often if a command got into small groups it got rounded up one by one by the opposing army's larger and more cohesive ones.

To: koan who wrote (19712)	9/1/2006 3:09:54 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78408

What Lee had to do, is get his artillery in place and in range, knock down the fences and the stone wall. Lay down smoke for his charge and support it by flanking cavalry. But he knew it was a hopeless cause. He was perhaps resigned to the outcome, and was saving his guns for the inevitable sieges. What the CW proved was that even with single shot rifles, massed infantry charges were wasteful in the long run even where they succeeded. The misuse of artillery lost Lee that engagement and ultimately ended the war that much faster. The other thing the CW underlines is that wars are won by logistics, not by battles. The Confederates lacked the resources to supply their lines. Their navy could not compete. If they had perfected an armoured gunboat with a 12 knot speed, the war would have ended in a stalemate and suing for peace. A steam electric submarine would have had a great effect, even if they only had a dozen of them. It was within the range of that era's technologies. The north had a battery electric motor operated Gatling gun which they never deployed. Three of them would have won the Battle of Gettysburg in an hour. Thinking wins wars, not guns. (The Confederates demonstrated a non guided ballistic missile at the end of the war. It was supposed to have had a 60 mile range, but probably never flew more than six miles -- (it did fly out of sight.) It may have actually flown non ballistically, predicting the longer range than is possible with those days' propellants by a pure ballistic device. It was supposed to have been one stage, but earlier Chinese rocketry had two stages. If it were two stages its range could have been in excess of 15 miles with black powder.) EC<:-}