I have never seen a proper analysis of the traditional tale, that if Reno stayed in the valley and Benteen followed his orders and went to Custer, then all would be well.
I would like to think it through and suggest that we use a middle of the range value of 1500 Indian combatants with 900 in the valley as estimated by Benteen and 600 available to react to Custer and his two companies (E,F) in the Ford D region and to companies C,I,L at Calhoun Hill.
My first condition is that Benteen must bring the packs as ordered and not just some other version like ammunition packs. So Benteen's progress and decisions must reflect that he has the pack train in tow.
An initial thought is that Reno staying in the trees means he will be fixed by the Indians in that position. 900 are not required for that task and so when Custer is detected moving North many will follow Crazy Horse and head back to the village leaving only enough men to hold Reno in position. How many is that?
Benteen will still go right and follow Custer's trail.
I will wait now to see who wants to join in. I am well aware that most are much better at this than I am. Mike I hope you will not bail out yet.
Cheers
Going back to the beginning here. If, If, If...
I disagree with the thought that all would be well if Reno stayed in the valley and Benteen followed his orders and went to Custer.
The potential for "all to be well" would have been much enhanced if Custer had told Reno and Benteen what his plan was, to include 'signal volleys'.
Reno believed Custer and Cooke told him he would be supported by the whole outfit.
Had Custer provided Reno support to Reno there is a small chance they could have held off the Indians and moved to defensible ground. There was no defensible ground in the valley except maybe the copse of trees. Had Reno and Custer stayed in the valley, then more and more Indians would have moved to the fight.
When Custer decided to go to the North (right) he should have sent a messenger to Reno telling him so. He was obligated to do this as a commander AND because Reno sent him two messengers saying the Indans were behaving abnormally and attacking him instead of running away. At the same time he should have sent a messenger to Benteen telling him to either (1) follow Reno or (2) follow the his trail which would bear off the the North (right) and NOT to follow Reno.
You people put too much emphasis on that BS Note. Benteen was getting ready to go left till the Indian Scouts motioned him to the right.
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deadwoodgultch Kindly pointed out I used the wrong number of people in the Benteen Battalion. Instead of 225, it was about 125, a few more if you include the scouts. So corrections are made throughout the below with the right numbers.
-----------------------------------Reno had about
225 125 men. 900 Indians would have been about
4:1 7:1 odds. 3:1 (is frequently used and so far as anyone can tell, not a proven number) is the rule of thumb for an attacking force to defeat a defending force in a defensive position (hasty or not). Since Reno was not in a good defensive position and his men were not well trained, that probably would have been good enough to take him out. He survived because he first decided to defend from the copse of trees and then either through luck or skill (probably luck) he decided to break out and escape to the ridgeline, but got pretty beat up at the time.
Here is some math and a lot of assumptions. We used this method to try to determine how we would fare against an attack or how we would fare when attacking. It is only a rough attempt at figuring out things would work out. I would modify it based on the qualification scores of my tanks on individual, platoon, and company qualifications. There is no reason to assume anyone would shoot better in combat than on the range. (Note: in my two tank gunneries, none of my tanks qualified, but I wasn't alone. In the battalion, only about 5
qualified. IN all of US Army Europe that year, only about 40 tanks qualified. We all probably should have been relieved. It was more embarrassing than being awarded a Bronze Star for my work in Desert Storm.)
The M1873 rate of fire was said to be in its trials 8 rounds/minute for recruits and up to 15 for experienced soldiers. I watched one trial on TV where a person proficient with the Springfield fired about 10 rounds in one minute while the person with a Winchester was able to empty his magazine in the same time, so let us stick with 8 rounds/minute for the soldiers of the 7th as an average.
The maximum range of the rifle was said to be about a mile, but was probably, in the hands of a skilled marksman, only effective to about 500 yards. A hit beyond that is nothing but luck. Probably, the troopers of the 7th as a whole were lucky if they could hit a moving target (even if it was straight toward them) at 250 yards.
Let us be generous and say the combined probability of hit is about 0.25 over the entire range of the carbine out to 1 mile and lets set the pk to .25 as well
Let's say a galloping horse can run 30 mph or 880 yards/minute. That means it can run 1 mile (1760) in about 2 minutes.
Once Reno ordered his men to skirmish, he reduced his firing troops from
225 to a maximum of 168 125 to a maximum of 93.
The dust of the Indians charging from 1 mile would reduce the accuracy and the number of targets available, but we will allow the whole target array to be available.
We will also allow the Cavalry and the Indians to be able to fire over the whole distance to simplify the computation. (The way I would do this in the real world was to send my jeeps out when I was preparing the position and have them move at about 20kph toward me. We would track the amount of time that they were exposed to see how much firing time we would have. If I didn't have time to do it that way, I did it off the map.)
So, at best a trooper would fire 16 rounds in the two minutes it takes the Indians to close. There are 900 targets to hit (actually less because of dust, but hitting a horse would be as good as hitting an Indian in this case.) We will assume the Indians would have closed until they overran the skirmish line, then would have dismounted. We already know the Indians had an advantage in dismounted combat (No sabers, no bayonets, probably knives, with no real training in knife or saber fighting either.) Jammng does not appear to have been a big problem in the engagement.
The Cavalry would have occupied a line about
840 465 yards wide if every man was on the firing line. So let us say the Indians attack on a front of 1000 yards at the same 5 yard interval. They would have been in a box
about 200 wide and 4 ranks deep.
The different is frontage would have enable the Sioux to easily envelop the battalion.By the time he got to the bluff, Reno thought he was almost out of ammunition. (Yes, I know that is not how they would attack.)
168 men * 16 rounds * .25 ph
672 round * 0.25 ph = 168 hits
168 hits * 0.25 pk = 42 killed. We will assume the rest were wounded.
93 men * 16 rounds * .25 ph
372 rounds * 0.25 ph = 93 hits
93 hits * 0.25 pk = 23 killed. We will assume the rest were wounded.It doesn't look good for the 7th to try and stand and fight.
At the Rosebud Indian Casualties were thought to be 16 - 36 killed and 63 - 100 wounded for a total of 79 - 136. Estimates range between 10,000 - 25,000 rounds were fired. That equals 126 to 183 rounds per hit/kill.
At Rourke's Drift, the British fired about 20,000 rounds with 851 Zulu's killed or wounded or 23 rounds/hit. The British had the advantage of breastworks to protect them. However, I believe most casualties were inflicted by the bayonet. I take it as a given the 24th was better trained than the 7th.
If Custer had shown up with his
525 225 or so, then they would be at
750 350. You can do the math yourself. This number may have been enough to convince the Indians it was a bad day to die and they would have started to move the camp, while enough warriors continued to delay the 7th. There is no evidence to support Custer's battalion shot any better than any other detachment of the 7th and Crooke fired off so many rounds he felt he had to retreat from the field and resupply.
To me, the only way for Custer to win this fight was to get to a place where the Indians had to attack him with the whole 7th. Even then, I suspect the Indian's would not have stood and fought. They didn't at the Rosebud and they didn't against Reno/Benteen. (They probably just wanted to keep them pinned so the village could escape and they wanted to evade the Gibbon/Terry force coming down from the North (In a role reversal from the Barbarians always come down from the North.)