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So give me your criteria for combat readiness assessment. In the above example if only one trooper in ten can produce the minimum expectation then I would be inclined to think the unit is not combat ready.

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Again you are going to the effectiveness of the unit. I am sticking with a simple training and practical application testing of the Springfield.

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If they hadn't even fired it 5 times rapidly what are the chances that that they were highly trained in other basics skills. My question to you orginally was how did they know they were combat ready. Te answer was they didn't.

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Again you are going to the effectiveness of the unit. I am sticking with a simple training and practical application testing of the Springfield.
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Fine -- but that doesn't tell us the combat readiness of the unit. After all, the fatal failures of the 7th at the Little Bighorn were failures of command.

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To criterion of combat readiness is the ability of the unit to carry out its combat missions under the most realistic combat conditions we can create. The modern Army uses the Combat Maneuver Training Centers with the highly sophisticated MILES system to create realistic combat conditions.

In Custer's day, there was no such technology -- it wouldn't exist for more than a hundred years.

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I just finished instructing at our rifle class for issuing rifles to officers. In fact the previous posts were done from there.
If we teach them to take apart the rifle, clean it, put it to together, and function test it, and we observe them in a practical then it has nothing to do with marksmanship. We record in the training record that could do this at an acceptable level. We instruct them how to zero their rifle and observe them making the proper adjustments. Record it. We require them to shoot on the move using proper techniques. Record it. We instruct them how to change magazines and transition to handgun. Record it. We force them to demonstrate their ability by using dummy rounds, multiple targets, and using up all rifle ammo. We record that they demonstrated how to change magazines, handle malfunctions, and transitioned to handgun. Again this is not marksmanship. Finally we get to marksmanship by training various shooting positions and ranges. We test with a speed and accuracy marksmanship test. Timed fire on a TQ-15 target at various ranges and positions and a transition to handgun is included in this course.
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Where's your documentation and validation data? How does all this add up to an effective police force?

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In modern times we also use the latest technologies MILO range and Simmunitions come to mind but we need to discuss th state of the art at that time. They didn't sit around thinking we have no way to assess combat readiness so lets not go into battle. There were manuals of cavalry tactics and equipment including firearms available at the time. Either they individually and/or collectively trained or they didn't.

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First. It wasn't the system or culture that grew Crook's innovations, or years earlier Buford's, or later MacKenzie's. It was simple distance FROM the military culture of institutional self regard (quite high, be it said, after the Civil War)in the East.

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Second, Custer was NOT held in universal regard, in the ranks OR up the chain. He'd been courtmartialed and convicted. There were many, some of clout with family connections (which mattered more back then), who'd served with him who didn't think much of him at all, like Barnitz. Benteen may have been the one who hated him, but others there were who thought him an unstable gasbag of the first water. And Custer was ALWAYS having issues with commanders, whether Hancock or Stanley.

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Also? Custer's conflicts are not over issues regarding things like tactics or equipment, but over his private band and his conception of himself as outside regulations that impeded his life's enjoyments. Custer could only do what he thought 'best' when distant from the culture as well, but his conflicts were over vanity issues, not military ones.

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When Mr. Humphrey says "Nor are any lost boxes the issue -- they had no effect on the outcome," he misses the point utterly. First, because a system that claims sleep and rest for men and mounts surely AFFECTED all that followed (nobody can say outcome, and I did not), and very likely did affect Custer's reasoning.

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Since leaving the Terry, the 7th's experiences with the the mules had been a horrendoplasty. Read Benteen and Ryan and Godfrey - the hours it took for the train to cross the Rosebud - an arguably damp stretch of water sometimes several yards wide - pretty much makes the point.

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All of this, one way or the other, makes it to the commander. To say with a straight face it didn't affect his decision making isn't credible to me. So, in the march to the Crow's Nest, I would wager he's weighing the likely success of adhering to Terry's suggestion that the 7th bypass Reno's previously found trail, keep going south, and then head down the LBH. The train is a disaster; it is mandatory that it not fall to the Sioux; that being the case, wouldn't the chances for success be better if we cut to the chase now? Because the train would exhaust the regiment with another fifty mile jaunt south, over, and then down the LBH, and slow it to pointlessness. We'll stop here and rest a day, cross tomorrow, and do it.....

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It's also worth noting that Crook eventually concluded that using Army troopers to fight Indians was fairly pointless, given that they'd never as a whole be trained well enough or competent enough. Crook favored using other Indians.

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I believe it does tell us. They were not combat ready. In order to advance to collective training one builds upon the individual skills. Makes no sense to form a skirmish line if you can't use you carbine effectively.

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Allow me to point out that there were whole regiments in the Civil War who did not know what the rear sight was for. Yet somehow they managed to kill 600,000 men in that war.

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I would guess it was those that knew how to shoot that shot those who didn't know what their rear sight was for. No wonder the numbers were so high if whole regiments didn't know how to aim. A target rich environment.

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1. "Allow me to point out that there were whole regiments in the Civil War who did not know what the rear sight was for. Yet somehow they managed to kill 600,000 men in that war." That total isn't correct. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004615.html) Both North and South combined had less than HALF of that by death in battle. Of that, a large percentage was by artillery including cannister. Even firing into massed groups of men also firing into your massed group with huge .50 bullets, this isn't impressive evidence for accuracy or anything. Most deaths were by communicable disease in the camps. Say 220k battle deaths, of which conservatively 25% would be artillery, I'd think (no way to know). That's 36k a year, North and South, dying of bullet wound. Given the huge set piece battles and firing into massed formations dead in front of you.......

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2."You misunderstand. To this day the Army holds commanders in a sacred position and gives them great lattitude. In those days, with fewer regulations and less ways to measure performance, commnanders had greater lattitude....It was this latitude that allowed innovation -- both good and bad -- to flourish, often at the expense of standardization and quality." You wouldn't know that reading those manuals that are held up as so relevant. And being closer to the Curia inflicts rigid prayer at the alters designated. The West was far from the Curia.

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3. "Which does not offset the fact that up until then he had been quite successful at fighting indians and that the people who mattered -- Terry, Sheridan and even Sherman considered him a competent combat commander." In the past, yes.

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Terry knew only Custer had more experience than himself. Sheridan was not a Custer enthusiast those last years, and Sherman never was a Custer fan mostly because he hated all rah-rah types. Whenever you see the word "competent" in a play review or a military job performance, it always reads like it means "barely mediocre," a form of polite code everyone understands. Just like when you read the word "zany" you know the comedy movie/play is awful.

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4. "....but Cavalry to this day cultivates personalities like that (consider people like George S. Patton.)" Custer was no Billy Mitchell, or Jacky Fisher, nor George Patton.

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He looked entirely to the past for his instruction and values in combat. He most resembles the French idiots who gave their Army Plan 17 in bright red and blue uniforms. Custer would have loved that, audacity being all.... He's a fighter pilot in mentality.

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5. "Now all we have to do is show how. Of approximately 600 men, how many had to ride back and look for dropped packs?" Again, Mr. Humphrey, I think you're feigning incomprehension.

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Going back for packs, frequent stops to retie, inability to control mules at water, all of this nailed the unit speed of the 7th and its range of operations to the damned train in the middle of the Powder River country, the very definition of enemy territory. It would take an idiot commander not to be aware of, and factor in, this chronic problem.

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. "Much of that time was in watering them -- and 140-150 mules take time to water." Why? They're in a line parallel to the creek. They could all drink at once or close to it with the men available by a right face and a walk of about fifty feet. But few of the men available had any experience with mules at all. Getting them across that damp rivelet took two hours. That isn't control of the train regardless of the reason.

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. "Mindreading is a sport, not a science. There is no evidence that Custer had any such thought process. What eviden0ce exists is to the point that he considered the indians would soon know of his presence, if they didn't already. And that conviction informed his decision to strike early." First, the issues with the train were serious,

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and if Custer didn't consider them, he was a fool, and I won't suggest that. Up till the time the discovery of the box by Indians and additional rumored sightings by Indians at the Crow's Nest in the morning, he was content to stay a day and rest, from which we can infer he thought they needed one. The trail of shod horses would be there whether the box dropped or not, and that didn't bother Custer.

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8. "Actually, Crook favored maximum forces, and plumped out his column with indian allies -- which were not an unmixed blessing, since they could leave whenever they wanted to. Crook also liked Infantry, and mounted them on mules." Actually, like most experienced Indian fighters and the Indians themselves, Crook favored dragoon tactics of riding to chosen field and shooting on foot. Teach the cavalry to dismount and fight, teach infantry to ride. Mules are tougher and more reliable than horses to Crook: he rode one. Bourke's description of this announcement to the infantry before the Rosebud is quite funny, as is the image of the unschooled becoming schooled quick in the joys and blisters of riding anything, and that anything a mule. But I said "eventually concluded," and that's so.

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. "Much of that time was in watering them -- and 140-150 mules take time to water." Why? They're in a line parallel to the creek. They could all drink at once or close to it with the men available by a right face and a walk of about fifty feet. But few of the men available had any experience with mules at all. Getting them across that damp rivelet took two hours. That isn't control of the train regardless of the reason.
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You don't have much experience with pack trains, do you?

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Vern-- What is your position here? I am not seeing to much out of line with what DC said. Do you think it should take 2 hours to water? I would guess they would have trouble keeping the mules away from the water if it was in close proximity. I do have some pack experience and own three horses. Our northern officers own mules and pack with them. My horse can drink his fill in a minute after hours of riding. I would guess we rest about 10 minutes per hour. If there were 150 mules and allowing them five minutes to drink they would have to be only allowing seven mules at a time to drink to take two hours. I must be missing some other factors here.

Again I believe it would be better to have the pack strings with each company rather than by themselves. As far as the importance I guess the last message from Custer's command says it all, something like PS Bring Packs. Maybe there was a missing part that read something like what takes so long to water the mules.

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The dropped packs are symtoms of a disorganized pack train. It was slow and a drag.The speed of the train was not critical to the success of the campaign.The timetable [according to what was agreed with Terry]was set by Gibbon's infantry.Over rough terrain approx 2.5 mph.

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Is there anyway you fellows can seperate quotes from answers?It is getting nigh impossible to make head nor tail of the posts.

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2. "Which is the point -- the pack train cannot be blamed for the disaster at the Little Big Horn, any more than jamming cartridges can." And nobody has. It's only been pointed out that pack train issues would likely have prohibited Custer from carrying out Terry's suggested line of march in the time allocated anyway, and may have provided reinforcement for his decision to cross the Wolf Mt.'s by the Crow's Nest. BUT, it certainly did slow down the regiment, which had to stay in notional rescue distance.

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3. "If you had a solid bank, and a more or less straight stream, you could water quickly." And the Rosebud is relatively straight, parallel to the current road and assumed Custer trail, for long stretches; the Rosebud hardly has any banks at all in some spots, and is barely a stream. There was nothing to prevent organized and rapid watering and crossing except incompetence crossed upon inexperience.

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1."If they had watered at the Rosebud, perhaps -- but the incident we're talking about was at the Morass, which is on Reno Creek." No, we're not, and neither were you. The term "morass" hasn't appeared in the thread till just now regarding this, has it? The two hour delay of the train crossing the Rosebud was not at the morass but at the Rosebud. I couldn't find "morass" on this thread till your recent post.

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2. Well, Wild and Mr. Humphrey claim opposite facts about the length of Custer's proposed jaunt by Terry and whether he could have made it. But it doesn't affect my point, either way. The train was not getting much better, and since the 7th couldn't leave it or substantial parts of it, it was a sea anchor. And I'd hope Custer factored stuff like that in, and would find it hard to believe he did not. As you know from reading Godfrey, Custer wasn't entirely appreciative of the condition of the mules at first (never great, way tired after Reno's scout)when they discussed what to bring and not.

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