Posted on 02/09/2023 11:42:19 AM PST by Red Badger
Over 50,000 Americans died at Gettysburg, making it the bloodiest battle of the bloodiest war in our nation's history.
And if you'd stepped on this sucker, you might have been the last casualty of the Civil War.
From The Hill:
According to the park, the shell was found within the Little Round Top rehabilitation project area in the southwest corner of Little Round Top, the site of a Union victory over the Confederacy on July 2, 1863, amid the Battle of Gettysburg.
Officials with the park say the device dates to 1863. It weighs about 10 pounds, and measures about 7 inches long.
This is a national park, it's been around forever, and they still just now found this shell?
How did they miss it in the last 16 decades? I just find that hard to believe.
The shell was handled on Wednesday by the 55th Ordnance Disposal Company team from Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The team gently washed off the shell and removed it from Little Round Top to be destroyed off-site.
Local roads were closed on Wednesday afternoon after the device's discovery, though they have since reopened.
It's a pity they had to destroy this piece of history, but I guess that's better than leaving it in a museum where it could explode at any time.
I wonder if there are more artifacts like this one yet to be discovered.
If a place like Gettysburg – which you'd think would have been searched and excavated completely at this point – has this shell lying around, it might be worth your time to search any local battlefields near you.
Just be careful not to go out with a bang.
“Over 50,000 Americans died at Gettysburg...”
I don’t think so. That is most likely the number of killed, wounded, and missing/captured.
Shells from the Civil War are quite frequently found in gardens, forests, and rivers in the South.
One of my favorite series.
If every artillery shell weighed 10 pounds and it had to be horse-drawn in caissons or in auxiliary wagons for supplementary ammunition, the logistical problems must've been staggering. Every horse drawing a wagon full of ammunition, kit foodstuffs and all of the necessary accoutrements of an army must be fed and most of the feed for all that large number of horses had to be carted along because the horses would soon exhaust any vegetation within range.
So more horses have to be used to feed the ones bringing the artillery shells and some horses had to be use to feed the ones bringing the feed, and so on.
I have no idea the quantity of artillery used at Gettysburg, for example, but we know that Pickett's charge ran into a devastating artillery barrage. How many shells at 10 pounds each were expended? How many horses were needed?
The logistical problems posed practical problems for the generals. For example, in an almost heartbreaking message Gen. Longstreet whose orders were to suppress the Yankee artillery, sent a urgent message saying, "for God sake" go now because I'm running out of ammunition. The consequences of running out of ammunition contributed to the fact that two out of three who went up in Pickett's charge did not come back.
We know the German soldiers in Russia in the latter part of the war there were often reduced to horsepower, the so-called Russian ponies, for want of petrol or just for want of machines. Those units that were not mechanized Panzer units were horse-drawn for the most part.
The French Army, since 1952, has stationed an EOD unit at Verdun. Driving a different route every day of the week, they stop along the road and pick up unexploded shells the farmers have found in their fields and stacked by the road.
Yup that’s true. guide last summer says there is no doubt more remains around, but they don’t want to disturb them
Battle of Antietam is considered the most bloody battle of Civil War.
Nor really the case. Alexander had ammunation to support Pickets advance. The problem was not enough ammunition, it was the quality of the ammunition. The Confederate artillery was overshooting the Union artillery positions by 300-400 yards. The heavy casualties during Pickett’s Charge were because the Union Artillery had not been heavily damaged by the pre assault bombardment. The overshoot was because the Selma Arsenal case fuses performed differently than the Richmond Arsenal case fuses. The ANV was using Selma fuses because the Richmond fuse factory blew up in April 1863. A couple months after Gettysburg, the Confederate Ordnance Dept
did side by side tests of the two fuses, found out they performed differently, and ordered production standardized.
For the rest of the war the Selma and Richmond case fuses performed pretty much the same.
At exactly 2:25 PM, Confederate Colonel Edward Porter Alexander scribbled this note and rushed it off to General George Pickett: ”If you are coming at all you must come at once, or I cannot give you proper support, but the enemy’s fire has not slackened at all. At least 18 guns are still firing from the cemetery itself.” But those 18 Federal guns began to fall silent. So, Alexander watched intently, waiting to see if the Confederate artillery barrage had done its job.
It was July 3, 1863, moments before what remains the most well-known, controversial, and roundly debated infantry assault in American military history, forever known as Pickett’s Charge. Smoke was still swirling from the greatest cannonade the North American Continent had ever witnessed as Alexander peered through his glasses, trying to fathom if the Rebel bombardment had created the necessary conditions for their infantry to advance.
He watched closely as Federal batteries limbered-up and departed the critical area (which he incorrectly thought was a cemetery), while none replaced them. After five minutes of meticulous observation, he scribbled another note, sending it off at 2:35: “For God’s sake come quick. The 18 guns are gone. Come quick or I can’t support you.”
https://www.jimstempel.com/jimstempel/general-longstreet/
It may have been embedded in a hillside, and with 16 decades of erosion if finally came to surface? Cole Hill in Plymouth was used as burying ground in the early days of the colony, but after about 100 years of rains, bodies and bones starting sliding down the hill.
Another problem for Alexander, Hunt had ordered Union guns to stop returning fire. Not to conserve ammunition, but to let the Confederates think that the massive bombardment had been effective and launch the infantry assault.
50% of the Confederate killed and wounded during Pickett’s Charge were caused by Union Army artillery.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/gettysburg
ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: 51,112
https://www.historynet.com/gettysburg-casualties/
7,058 were fatalities (3,155 Union, 3,903 Confederate).
I do not know if they are counting the number who died of wounds shortly afterwards. Many Confederates were taken to a Union Hospital on David’s Island in Long Island, where Walt Whitman, among others tended the wounded.
I recently learned that my Great-Grandfather (sic) who was born in Dublin, was at First Manassas, and listed as deserting on the way to Chancellorsville, though he challenged that status. I do not know how successfully.
One wonders whether the Confederates had sufficient ammunition and one presumes that the Yankees had ammunition aplenty. One wonders whether the practicalities of horsepower logistics had anything to do with the, presumably, disproportionate artillery available to the contending sides.
one reason for the disproportionate artillery available to the contending sides. One side had 5 large foundries and a dozen or so smaller foundries that could cast artillery barrels, the other side had 1 large foundry and 2-3 smaller foundries that could cast artillery barrels.
Chamberlain's regiment defended Little Round Top from attacking Confederate troops commanded by William Oates - a battle that might well have decided the outcome of the war. As you noted, Chamberlain was subsequently elected governor of Maine; Oates went on to be elected governor of Alabama. IIRC, a line connecting the places where the two men were born passes through Pennsylvania, with Gettysburg located at the approximate midpoint...
;^)
“The problem was not enough ammunition, it was the quality of the ammunition. The Confederate artillery was overshooting the Union artillery positions by 300-400 yards. The heavy casualties during Pickett’s Charge were because the Union Artillery had not been heavily damaged by the pre assault bombardment. The overshoot was because the Selma Arsenal case fuses performed differently than the Richmond Arsenal case fuses. The ANV was using Selma fuses because the Richmond fuse factory blew up in April 1863. A couple months after Gettysburg, the Confederate Ordnance Dept did side by side tests of the two fuses, found out they performed differently, and ordered production standardized.”
I knew about the overshooting by the rebel artillery but didn’t know the reason. Very cool. Thanks for posting that.
It was buried, you ninny!
Hey! I have an IDEA!!! Why don't you go over to France, take your little shovel, and start digging in some of the old WWI battlefields. The ones that are fenced off. I'm sure you'll find all sorts of fun things!
Yes.
Just to be sure, one could put it a bucket of water for a day or two. There wasn't any need to destroy it.
I had heard that before about the barrels. We drove from DC to Gettysburg to do the car tour & they said people in DC could hear the sound of battle. That’s 90 miles away. Not sure if I by that or not. Granted, they didn’t have noise pollution like we have today, but 90 miles?
My wife’s father and grandfather both farmed the hills in Iowa and occasionally find bones & they would call the sheriff but it always ended up being Indian remains. I worked with her cousin on a house clean up job & he shared that both the grandfather and her dad were killed on the same tractor in the field where the remains were found. I remember the hair on my neck standing up when he told me the story.
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