Average number of shots fired in war.

[Gibbs505]

According to the best information I can get, the average number of shots fired, per soldier, in the latest wars are as follows.

WW1............9,500
WW2..........25,000
Korea..........50,000
Vietnam.....200,000


However, for interest, I am currently reading "The Art Of War In The Western World" by Archer Jones. [ISBN 0 252 01380 8 for those that are interested.]
In the section dealing with the period from 1815 to 1914 he says that , in the Franco-Prussian war of 1869/70, the "small arms ammumition expenditure for the war averaged on fifty six rounds per man, less then each soldier carried."
Even the artillery used only 199 rounds per gun!

BIG difference!

 

[Nyles]

Now does that count machine guns or just individual weapons?

 

[Gibbs505]

Now does that count machine guns or just individual weapons?

All smallarms fire. Ie 303 for brits, 30.06 americians.

 

[JohnC]

has to include machine gun fire. I have a hard time seeing the average soldier (6 month tour?) firing 200,000 rounds wouldn't that burn out say 20 barrels (at 10k rounds per barrel) per soldier?. plus not all were combatants so the average for peeople actually in ocmbat woud be quite a bit higher.

 

[Sigismund]

perhaps it is rounds fired in said conflict, then divided with number of soldiers serving. So mg's, tank mg's, perhaps even airplane mg's are counted in?

 

[tootall]

I read somewhere that in the US civil war, when they used to say "dont fire until you see the whites of his eyes", the average shots per killed soldier was 17 rounds.

In WW1, with the invention of the belt fed MG, and the use of volley fire, the average had gone up quite dramatically, to about 50....


THOUSAND!

And in Vietnam, it was about 200,000 rounds per enemy kill.
And I recently heard that in Iraq, it averages about 275,000 per insurgent.

Sniper teams are still about 1.3 rounds per kill, I think!

 

[Gibbs505]

perhaps it is rounds fired in said conflict, then divided with number of soldiers serving. So mg's, tank mg's, perhaps even airplane mg's are counted in?

That is what it is, exculding the aircraft. That is the responsibilty of the AirForce.

I read somewhere that in the US civil war, when they used to say "dont fire until you see the whites of his eyes", the average shots per killed soldier was 17 rounds.

In WW1, with the invention of the belt fed MG, and the use of volley fire, the average had gone up quite dramatically, to about 50....


THOUSAND!

And in Vietnam, it was about 200,000 rounds per enemy kill.
And I recently heard that in Iraq, it averages about 275,000 per insurgent.

Sniper teams are still about 1.3 rounds per kill, I think!

I got my figures from the book, "One Shot, One Kill". They did not inculde the WW1 figure but I had read that elsewhere. Sorry I don't remember. May be correct about the Iraq figures, I do not know.

I do not belive that the figures for the russians, or the axis where inculded.

 

[Rod B]

I wonder if it is lack of marksmanship; or possibly the smaller .223 as compared to .30caliber?

I remember reading an article by Col Jeff Cooper where he stated that the military no longer spends adequate time to train soldiers in the art of marksmanship.
His theory was that the present day armies put a lot of lead into the air in hopes that some poor SOB will stumble into it.

At 275000 round per kill it looks like Col Cooper was correct.

Rod.

 

[contact148]

In na,m one 20 rnd m16 mags was considered a ticket for 1 solider to cross the street in cities

 

[TheIndifferent1]

If you want to read about the psychological reasons for this, buy this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Killing-Psycho...ef=sr_1_6/702-8762208-3896842?ie=UTF8&s=books

I haven't had a chance to read it all yet, but the bits and pieces I used for a paper were very good

Not only did soldiers not fire their guns, but many who did purposely aimed to miss. As training got better, this became unusual rather than the norm (progression from WW1 to vietnam).

 

[Tudenom]

I'm guessing most personal weapon automatic fire is used to deny movement so that the big guns like air strikes, artillery, mortar fire, and heavier machine guns, can do the real work of killing enemy soldiers.

Of course, this is comming from an armchair commando, maybe one of the military guys can pipe in here.

 

[Joe Turner]

The problem with this subject is that there is no real science behind it, no readily agreed to parameters or method of measurement. At best it is speculation dressed as science and offred as fact. Reminds me of " how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" That begs a lot of assumptions, specialized knowledge, belief and the size of the pin. One could ask " how many soldiers were killed by deliberate, aimed shots" in such and such a war and be dazzled by the multitude of answers. The dead don't care whether it took only one shot or ten. And lets talk abot inventory and supply and ammo loss and ammo dumping and ammo lost or misplaced, traded, stolen, blown up, sent home. traded for favors, etc. All of that has to be figured in some how and there is just no way to accurately factor such things. Joe

 

[Unsub]

That is an interesting book. One of the reason the numbers got so high is all the 303 machine guns. Imagine how many rounds were fired in air battles or even just one machine gun.

 

[whitbyman]

SPRAY AND PRAY

the moto of a modern army

 

[Quiet]

I find those numbers hard to believe. As some have already mentioned, huge numbers of soldiers never saw the enemy and many who do never fired a shot even when they had the chance.

Do those numbers include all the .303 and .30-06 sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic, used in training or surplused after the war?

 

[bearhunter]

I suspect those numbers listed were for rounds expended or lost in conflict as a total overall count used in all aspects includeing training and all weapons useing that calibre of projectile to expend one enemy in the field. bearhunter

 

[airwapiti]

Perhaps tactics have evolved over time.

 

[667]

Are you sure yo read that right...?
I read the same stats, but they were framed as the number of rounds fired per enemy soldier killed....

That is... as time has gone on more and more ammo is spent on killing fewer and fewer

 

[Levi Garrett]

Kill shots?

 

[recce]

The book On Killing by LTC Dave Grossman went into some detail on this.

The majority of troops would fire their weapons without aiming just to appear as if they were taking part in the battle and not "loose face" with their buddies. The number of shots fired obviously rose when everyone was armed with automatic weapons. If I'm not mistaken the US went to a 3 round burst system in order to try and counter the waste of ammo they found in Viet Nam.