Talk:Regiment of Riflemen

Milhist

There are some grammatical inconsistencies, the one that springs out is the nonuniform use of dates (dmy or mdy). In the Pre-war section, It is not entirely clear whether the companies of riflemen were from the regiment or part of the irregular Georgia forces. The article on the Seminole Wars does not refer to a separate "Patriot War of East Florida". --Lineagegeek (talk) 21:49, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I cleaned up the incorrectly formatted dates and changed "riflemen" to "the regiment" in the Florida paragraph, providing a note from an already cited ref. The "Patriot War of East Florida" came from a hatnote on Patriot War; I fixed that. I think the placement of Seminole Wars#Patriot War on the Seminole Wars page could stand a re-look, but that's a different -- although related -- subject.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 01:19, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

G'day, Jim, good work so far. I have one suggestion: in the War of 1812 section, a lot of paragraphs/sentences begin with the same construction "On [date], ..." If possible, I suggest trying to varying the language that you use here. That will help smooth the narrative flow out a little. Anyway, thanks for your efforts. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:44, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I reformatted into actions by leadership with Forsyth broken by one of those acts of stupidity our amateur generals seemed to be so good at. The eformat left me with one very long paragraph. Please comment. In other news, I was thinking of building a navbox for rifle formations -- which I notice the Australian Army has or had -- by country and wondered how that sounded to you. Besides the Regiment of Riflemen (United States), there were, as noted, three other regiments. Their "pages" are roughed out in my sandbox; sadly, what you see is about what you get: The 4th Regiment fought along side he 1st and had the honor of fighting in the last (depending on who's counting) skirmish in the War of 1812; the second was on guard duty and the third... well, I'm not sure the third did anything. I think they all should be documented. If I build the other three pages, I'll probably just do it and let someone tell me I'm too bold! Oh, and then there's those two regiments of light dragoons...--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 21:33, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

G'day, I made a couple of copy edits/tweaks, please check that you are happy with my changes and adjust as you see fit. Regarding the navbox, I'm not really sure on the policy around that. It might pay to ask for comments on the main Milhist talk page. I can think of a few Australian units that used the word "rifle" in their designation. For instance the "4th Battalion (The Australian Rifles)", "10th Battalion (The Adelaide Rifles)", "36th Battalion (The St Georges English Rifle Regiment)", "44th Battalion (The West Australian Rifles)", "46th Battalion (The Brighton Rifles)", "55th Battalion (The New South Wales Rifle Regiment)". Additionally, a number of units had this designation pre-Federation. However, I'm not sure that the post-Federation units were technically any different from any other infantry battalion. Additionally, the Australian Army has had a number of "mounted rifles" units. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:48, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! The writing needed a second set of eyes. I'll ask the question about the navbox later today. I think mounted rifles could be included, being different than cavalry.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 13:43, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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• 1st United States Rifle Regiment 1812.jpg

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They had rifles? Why?

Despite the subject's name, the article doesn't clarify that the soldiers were indeed armed with rifles. At this time, rifles were very rare in armies, and a regiment using them exclusively should be noted as exceptional. Plus, the reasons for that exception would be critical.

Before the Minié ball system came into use in the 1850s, rifles took 2-3 times longer to reload than smoothbore muskets. (The rifling prevented the shot from being forced straight down the barrel; it required the shot be slowly turned in sync with the groves of the barrel's rifling.) While rifling did give much better range and accuracy, in the era of volley fire at massed enemy lines, this didn't count for much; rate-of-fire was much more important. So while rifles had been invented generations before this, they were mostly just for hunting, where range and accuracy is key and rate-of-fire unimportant (if your fist shot missed, you usually didn't get a second at the fleeing game no matter how quickly you reloaded).

A few armies at the time did field a few small units using rifles, as specialized light infantry that acted only as skirmishers and sharpshooters, using radically different tactics from the bulk of the army's line infantry. Rather than the bold uniform colors of line infantry at the time, they used drab colors -- dark green, gray, brown -- providing relatively more camouflage. They got special training focused on individual action and initiative, open formations, using cover, and (unlike regular line infantry), aiming. They got higher pay and more and generally better equipment, and were usually seen as elite soldiers. All this made them harder to maintain; such units often ended up converted back to line infantry musketeers.

If this regiment were riflemen of this type, it explains why the regiment was never deployed as a whole unit, but divided up and dispersed. A large unit of only skirmishers is ineffective at winning battles by themselves, but small units could well support regular line infantry regiments. Also, this matches their uniform colors, using drab green and gray. Taking all this together, I think that's what this regiment was about, but that's only my conjecture based on what I know of warfare at the time; I have no sources.

So, were these in fact riflemen, armed with rifles? If so, where they used as this kind of light infantry instead of traditional line infantry? --A D Monroe III^(talk) 15:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

• Interesting question. My primary reference when I built the page was on loan from another library and I don't remember the issue being addressed. It's worth some digging. Working premise is that the riflemen were more deadly at a longer range; that would earn me a "citation required" in a heartbeat.--Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 23:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I belatedly found some of my questions answered in the infobox, which I skipped the first time reading thru the article. Starting with that, I went and found a reference that confirms the rifleman and light infantry infobox facts, plus some more that aligns with what I surmised above, though it's brief and lacks all the details I'd prefer. Still, it's enough to put something in the lede about this, which I did. Please review; I'd still like to get more of this in, but that's all I have from sources. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 22:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Regiment of Riflemen

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Regiment of Riflemen's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Spencer":

• From Daniel Appling: Rauch, Steven J.; Tucker, Spencer C. (2012). Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 18, 580. ISBN 978-1-85109-956-6. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
• From Military deception: Spencer, Jack H. (1990). "Deception Integration in the U.S. Army" (PDF). Defense Technical Information Center. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: United States Army Command and General Staff College. p. 50. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 March 2020. Retrieved 17 November 2020.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 08:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)