COMPLETELY, totally, absolutely, 100% false.
One of the worst and hardest to kill myths of the American Revolution.
The primary mode of fighting in the Revolution was the Continental Army fighting in lines in open fields PRECISELY as the British did. Von Steuben was brought in to train our troops in pretty much precisely the same drills and tactics as the British.
Linear tactics WORKED in populated areas with a halfway decent road network with a good deal of open space, such as much of the colonies in the Revolution. They helped discpline and were often the only way to get good firepower with a horribly inaccurate and short-range musket. There was nothing stupid about them.
In the South, most of the war was in fact a Civil War with most of the fighting between guerilla bands of rebels and loyalists, with some fighting between regulars towards the end of the war.
There was guerilla-type sniping by the US at Concord at the very beginning of the war.
But other than that, the overwhelming majority of the fighting was either European-style linear battles, or sieges. Bunker hill was the British attacking an entrenched position, not an ambush. The Continental Army fought its battles with linear tactics (and it really shocked the British when the Continental Army was able to go toe-to-toe with them in an European style linear field battle at Monmouth...which we almost won but ended up as a draw.
In fact, MOST of the "backwoods ambushes" in the Revolution were British and Indian troops ambushing AMERICAN troops.
I'm not an expert, but from my understanding the musket was considered a vastly superior military weapon to the rifle, since a triple line of troops with muskets could produce a much heavier volume of fire than could a group with rifles, and when a line of troops is shooting at another line of troops, accuracy is really not an issue.
My homeschooled son just finished reading Guns, Germs, & Steel. That same argument was used by the author to shore up his theory of why America won the Revolution. The author also claimed that such guerilla tactics changed warfare as the world knew it back then. The author never once admitted that maybe, just maybe, it was the ideas of the American Revolution coupled with a strong will to fight (conventionally and unconventionally) for those ideas, that finally secured the colonials freedom.
My son was not impressed with the book because he had studied the American Revolution previously and knew that the battle tactics of General Washington and his fellow generals were similar to the British. (Washington did do stuff like crossing the Delaware at night, when the river was partially frozen and took the British by surprise on more than one ocassion.)
My son also thought the book itself was written with a anti-Western, anti-capitalist cultural slant.
Oh, and on a similar note regarding tactics, both my son and husband were impressed by the gutsy move of President Bush to do the Target-of-Opportunity strike as an element of suprise to the Iraqi leadership. :)
COMPLETELY, totally, absolutely, 100% false.
100% false, except for Lexington & Concord, and the campaigns of Francis Marion (The Swamp Fox), Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter and Nathaniel Greene. In fact, it was Greene's use of guerilla tactics that drove Cornwallis back to Yorktown, leading to Cornwallis's defeat.
True enough, most of the major battles were fought European style. Washington was not a big fan of guerilla tactics, but those tactics were a significant part winning the war.
So, "100% false" is really 100% false.