Please explain (from "The Patriot") "Aim small, miss small" (vanity)

2/4/04 | self

[rudy45]

I saw the movie Sunday night on TBS. Early in the movie, Benjamin Taylor (the Gibson character) enlists his two younger sons to rescue Gabriel (the oldest son and Heath Ledger character). As they wait in ambush, Taylor asks the sons to repeat what he had taught them about shooting. They reply, "Aim small, miss small."

What does this phrase mean? Thanks.

[cyborg]

Maybe it's me, but I liked it and saw nothing wrong.

[John H K]

There's a difference between pedantic "that guy's uniform should have had 6 buttons, not five" and the sort of rampant, egregious fabrications "The Patriot" engaged in.

What basically offends me is that The Patriot PRETENDED to be historically accurate; they made a big deal of having hired historical consultants so that they could say they did; then then proceeded to ignore them totally.

I mean, the central incident of the movie (the church burning) was totally and completely invented out of whole cloth. That's not trivial.

[skinkinthegrass]

Could you tell us where "SHEETS" BYRD (IF) he shows up. (reason: not to spend money to enrich ted turners projects)

[UB355]

There's no accounting for taste. Try to watch the DVD version with a surround sound capable DVD and TV.

The sound effects in the movie are just unbelievable. I saw one rating site that listed the movie's audio effects as being in the top five of all.

The sounds of the cannon shots are done in such a way that you can follow its audio trajectory across the room you are viewing the movie in , totally cool.

[Sicon]

I agree. I just sw it for the first time over the weekend, and was amazed not only by its historical inaccuracy, but also its disconnection from reality in terms of how the weapons of the day were portrayed and employed.

Utterly and completely ridiculous. That movie is total, 100% Hollywood crapola. That its producers even hinted that it was in any way historically honest, accurate, or relevant is laughable.

[cyborg]

I stopped watching history movies for accuracy. It kills enjoying the movie. Although I never really cared for old war movies, esp. old slave movies like Roots.

[BallandPowder]

Powder..patch..Ball FIRE!

Of course, the characters in the movie are firing with smooth-bore muskets. Most were not even equipped with gunsights, as it was an exercise in futility

I shoot regularly with a group of men who use smoothbore flintlocks. They can hit what they want out to 125yds without a problem with great regularity

Also 15-25 yds with a flintlock/caplock pistol and hitting a knockdown squirrel target 6 out of 6 times is not uncommon for the guys who practice.

These guys are hobbyists, having to depend on your weapons for your life helps you be dedicated in your practice. Colonists HAD to be good.

[bagman]

I'm not entirely positive that I am correct, but I think that the term "musket" implies a reasonably large amount of windage between the projectile and the barrel. With a musket you can essentially drop the projectile down the barrel. A rifle, on the other hand, has rifling, and, for the rifling to work, the projectile must fit tightly against the barrel. For a Long Rifle (whether called Kentucky or Pennsylvania), the ball must be forced down the barrel. The rate-of-fire is slow, whereas, with a musket, because the ball moves more easily, the rate-of-fire is much faster, perhaps twice as fast as that of the rifle.

One downside is that the ball to some extent carooms its way out of the musket, decreasing its accuracy. And, of course, with the rifle, the angular momentum of the spinning ball helps to maintain accuracy.

The rifle-musket was used in the War of Northern Aggression (the Third War of Independence). It was made possible by the development of the Minie Ball (more properly, the Minie Bullet). The Minie ball, of course, is conical with a hollow base. The projectile does not have to forced down the barrel, and it has a hollow base. This base expands when the weapon is fired, causing the base to expand and the projectile to engage the rifling of the barrel. The rifle-musket, then, has roughly the same rate-of-fire as the musket with greatly increased accuracy. The Minie bullet was invented in the 1840s, I believe.

With black powder the barrel fouls rapidly, so that even with a musket, the ball must be rammed home. Loading a long rifle becomes even more difficult with powder foully.

[Zavien Doombringer]

Actually, the colonists did not have the smoothbore military muskets. They had rifled barrels, hint; Kentucky/Pennsylvanian/Virginian RIFLES. The accuracy of these rifles were a serious threat to the British. The militia were used as marksmen and snipers infront of the regular army, who were using the Charleville .65cal smoothbore. The British were using the Brown Bess .75 (3/4 of an inch of lead at you) smoothbore, which was far more less accurate than the Charleville

[Just another Joe]

I stopped watching history movies for accuracy. It kills enjoying the movie.

My thoughts exactly. I don't watch the movies for historical accuracy, at least most of the time.

[Zavien Doombringer]

The answer is, a rifle is a rifle, a musket is a musket. Most Muskets were used by the military, rifles were used for hunting. To answer your question, yes, a rifle barrel can be fit to any stock, however the touch hole for a flintlock must line up correctly, or it will not fire. A Cap-lock however, needs to make sure the hammer contacts the nipple correctly.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I beg to differ. The Kentucky rifle that was used by many American militia was rifled (hence the name "rifle"). Accuracy left much to be desired with the maximum accuracy of about 2 to 4 MOA (minutes of accuracy, it equates to about 2-4" from point of aim at 100 yards or 4-8" at 200 yards). Not great, but generally good enough to hit a man sized target at 200 yards.

The muskets had horrible accuracy. At best maybe 24 MOA (that's TWO FEET from point of aim at 100 yards). That is why the opposing sides walked right up to each other shoulder to shoulder and fired en masse. They are also much cheaper to manufacture.

P.S. I post most of this for those who may not be familiar with guns.

[bagman]

What size target at 125 yards?

I've heard National Park Rangers give the effective range of the Brown Bess (standard British musket of the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars) has being 40 yards. I've also heard of testing by the British army which claimed that a man-sized target could be hit with some regularity at 100 yards.

I've never fired a smoothbore musket and defer to your experience, but it is important to give a little more information regarding the target size.

[sneakers]

That's OK Doug - you can dislike it if you want. :-) Everybody has their own tastes. Personally, I liked it, if only for the fact that Mel Gibson wanted to make a movie about the Revolutionary War. We don't have enough movies about our fight for independence. And this one - however inaccurate - at least bases some of the story (very loosely) in fact. I watched it again recently after having seen it only once, and found I enjoyed it more than the first time.

[Zavien Doombringer]

Again you are wrong...The baseline in history is accurate, though the characters are fictitious. The final battle accuratley depicts the Battle of Cowpens, before the long chase behind Cornwallis to Yorktown. Study your U.S. History...Morgans Militia were depicted as the frontline militia in Cowpens, and the battle tactics were true to form. Re-enactors from the Virginia 7th regiment of the continental line were there as extras.

[Zavien Doombringer]

I beg to differ and yet am in agreement. The Church burning was hollywood. The British revered God and would not stoop to burning a church, courthouse maybe, but not a church. The Historic accuracy follows the correct timeline of the revolution. You don't see all of the battles, but the movie is about the struggles of a father to make the world around his family safe, and what he had to do to keep it together.

[BallandPowder]

Powder..patch..Ball Fire!

Target size at 125 yds? How about a dinner plate. We use a knockdown target with a 10" plate in the kill zone of a bison sillouette. If you don't get the hit the plate doesn't go down.

Also you must remeber that smoothbore muskets were anywhere from 58 to 76 caliber roundball or anywhere from double to triple the size of a 45 caliber wadcutter. That much lead running at over 800 ftpersec would hit a man and could rip his arm or leg most of the way off of his body...

[Shooter 2.5]

In shooting, the focus is on the front sight. The rear sight and the target will be out of focus. When a person is shooting, there is a wobble zone that has to be dealt with. With practice and the development of muscle memory, good shooters can place the front sight on the target faster than novices and their wobble zone will be smaller. When a person is trying to shoot fast, sometimes the front sight anywhere on the target is acceptable but it has to be a trade off between speed and accuracy. Picking out a small area on a target will slow down a hurried aim.

[BallandPowder]

Powder..patch..Ball FIRE!

40 yds... I guarantee that you wouldn't want to face a Brown Bess at 40 yds...