Ie, if I was a soldier in a regiment of line infantry or an archer firing at a group of enemy troops, would I pick out an enemy soldier to shoot at or would I just shoot in the enemy's general direction? If I had to guess I'd wager it was the later, as this would give a more even distribution of projectiles. But I've never heard of this side of tactics so I'm curious as to what the case is.
I don't have the source in front of me, but in Strategy and Power in Russia 1600-1914, William Fuller explains that marksmanship was a highly prized and emphasized skill in Russian armies in the 18th century, owing in large part to frequently-experienced shortages of ammunition in that army. At the same time, the armies of Western Europe (here Fuller speaks specifically of Frederick the Great) were intentionally dissuaded from aiming very carefully; the emphasis was instead placed on rate of fire, the idea being that the shock of frequent fire would cause an enemy's morale to collapse more quickly than slower, more precise fire would.
That's not to say that Russian armies necessarily achieved a higher degree of marksmanship than other armies, nor that either aimed or unaimed fire was generally more effective tactically. It is interesting, though, that (at least) two different philosophies regarding the aiming of projectiles were arrived at in Europe during the same time period, and that the choice was owed more than anything to logistical considerations.
I can answer this question wrt musket troops. The brown bess musket used during the napoleonic era had an effective range of about 50 yards, and was not 'accurate' over anything under about 30.
In order to be in any way effective you needed a solid block of men to get close and then fire in unison, hurling a wall of lead downrange to the target. Troops were encouraged to focus on firing and reloading as fast as possible as opposed to aiming.
The best troops would march to within 50 yards from the enemy (or wait until the enemy were within that distance of them.) before unleashing 3-4 shots per minute into the enemy ranks. This volume of fire would quickly cover the area between in smoke so aiming at the enemy would be impossible anyway.
Not a historian here but a MAJOR gun nut and inventor/builder of America's weirdest carry gun:
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/03/03/maurice-frankenruger-magazine-fed-revolver/
How's that for credentials?
:)
I'm going to compare Revolutionary War gun tech with what was available after the US Civil War; this was initially written in response to a now-deleted question on the movie "Zulu" but it also bears on the original question.
The "Zulu guns" were Martini-Henry single shot "breech loaders" that used an almost modern bullet, at least if we're talking "scaled up handgun tech" - relatively fat .45" bore, fairly slow moving bullet powered by "black powder" (mixture of sulphur, charcoal and potassium nitrate) instead of modern high-pressure "smokeless powder" (chemically related to nitroglycerin).
What was modern is that the primer, brass shell, powder and bullet were all one easy to grab and load chunk just like any current ammo.
Reloading cycle went like so: fire, drop a lever that auto-ejected the shell, slap another shell in there, pull the lever back up, fire it, rinse'n'repeat. Total time: as little as 2 to 4 seconds between shots in skilled hands. Same tech level used in the US by the time of the Battle of the Little Bighorn for example. The guns didn't have magazines that held rounds like we're used to but that doesn't mean the rate of fire totally stank.
Compare to the guns used around the time of the US Revolution, Napoleonic wars, etc:
First thing, the gun's "flint" has to be set up right and it probably only gets about 20 good uses before needing adjustment or replacing! But we'll assume that's good to go. I'm also going to assume the best possible tech.
http://www.arc.id.au/Flintlock.html
Put the butt of the gun on the ground and pour some powder down the barrel to form the main charge. If you're set up right you have a "powder horn" that has a one-shot-measure system on the business end so it's pretty quick. OR you get the powder out of a "paper cartridge" - you keep wax paper packages with a ball and some powder on you, you rip the paper with your teeth, pour the powder down the barrel.
Stick a ball in the barrel and push it all the way down in with your "ramrod", a long stick your gun has a special holder for. Now, at this point whoever picked the gun out made a choice: if it's smoothbore (British army) cramming a new ball down in there is pretty quick. If it's a rifle, not so much, the ball has to be rammed down in there in a pretty tight fit BUT your accuracy goes up quite a bit.
Now with the rifle pointed down range, cock it and open the pan to pour a little bit of that "starter powder" into it.
And NOW you're ready to fire.
Total length of time - varies (esp. smoothbore versus rifle) but it ain't near as fast as the stuff used at Roarke's Drift or the Little Big Horn!
The other thing you notice is that the loading cycle on the flintlock and other "front stuffers" (percussion, matchlock, wheellock, etc.) is that they need gravity to do part of the work. Reloading 'em while laying on your belly is theoretically possible but would take far, far longer and wouldn't be as reliable. So modern "lay down on your belly" tactics just didn't work - couldn't reload!
Here's what it looks like for a rifle of basically the type used by the US in the Revolution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V045WlcJ5A
In the war pitting US "irregulars/militia" against British main troops the Brits had a max range in their "fast loading" smoothbores of about 60 yards. They could get off several shots a minute. The US side was mostly using hunting rifles, they were lucky to get off one shot a minute but many could hit an individual human at 200 yards! So they'd pick off some redcoats (esp. officers!), run like hell while reloading as best they could, do it again, rinse'n'repeat :). Drove the Brits batshit insane.
What else...
In one sense the Martini-Henry single shots and other similar tech level guns (such as used by Quigley in "Quigley Down Under", a US-made Buffalo Rifle of the same period) were "obsolete" in that lever-action repeating rifles were pretty respectable by around 1866 (Henry with the new side-loading setup) and even better by 1873 (Winchester). Internal magazines held up to 15 shots in some, BUT the power level of the rounds themselves were limited to basically "handgun standard" instead of "rifle standard"...which is why the British and US militaries went to big single-shots as used in "Zulu" and the like.
Right now you can buy a replica of an 1873 Winchester levergun in a modern caliber like "357Magnum". Except it isn't exactly...the manual says to use rounds with no more than 20,000psi pressure, modern standard pressure for the 357 is 35k and loads up to 43.5k are known to be "mostly safe" except in a replica old-west levergun! So why do they sell them? Well in SASS competition (Single Action Shooting Society, basically target shooting with 19th century guns) your main match rifle and pistols are limited to rounds of 1,000fps or less for safety reasons and to make the steel targets last longer. That only requires 14k pressure or so. The "toggle action" used on the leverguns of 1866 and 1873 are very fast-handling and the top competitors all use those. The Winchester model of 1892 in comparison has a stiffer lever BUT far, far tougher and have a safe working limit up to 55k psi in some variants.
The other problem with classic leverguns or anything else with a tubular magazine is that you can't use modern pointy ("Spitzer") rifle bullets for safety reasons - under recoil the nose of one bullet can act as a firing pin on the primer of the next one up and then your whole magazine basically blows up! I'm using tubular magazines in a 9mm handgun, probably the only one like it in existence and I've taken to using flatnose or hollowpoint bullets for fear that the basic "round nose" loads in 9mm are just maybe pointy enough to crank off a primer in the mag!
Whenever possible, yes, at least for the Revolutionary War. This was true for both sides, not just the Americans.
For example at North Bridge in Concord the militia's first volley was aimed and it proved particularly devastating to the British officers facing them.
This would be a common tactic of American forces throughout the war and would be particularly hated by the British. For example, at Bunker Hill one of the surviving British officers would claim that:
not one officer who served in the light infantry or grenadiers escaped unhurt, and few had less than three or four wounds
This tactic of aiming at officers would prompt many British officers to "dress down" and remove things like the metallic lace on their uniforms, the gorget (which is a rather prominent sign of an officer), and sometimes their sashes. However this didn't stop Americans from being able to spot them because by and large their uniforms were of a finer quality and a different color. Officer's uniforms were scarlet instead of the duller red that was often used in the rank and file.
As for aimed volley fire, the best time to do that is in the first volley, which allows the soldier time to make sure that his musket is properly loaded, with the ball tamped all the way down. It's also the best time because there's no fouling of the barrel with gunpowder and the first volley also allows for more deliberate aim. At Guilford Courthouse one American would recall that:
after they delivered their first fire (which was a deliberate one) with their rifles, the part of the British line at which they aimed looked like the scattering stalks in a wheat field when the harvest man as passed over it with his cradle.”
There's a popular myth that the British armies in the Revolutionary War were trained not to aim, but this simply isn't true. While the drills for loading and fire didn't specifically use the word "aim", they did command the soldier to look down the barrel of the rifle towards the eneny. The 1764 Regulations for the British Army stated that the soldier should:
“raise up the butt so high upon the right shoulder, that you may not be obliged to stoop so much with the head (the right cheek [is] to be close to the butt, and the left eye shut), and look along the barrel with the right eye from the breech pin to the muzzle.”
While it doesn't come out and say "Aim", the instructions do everything but say that. In addition we know that British soldiers were drilled in marksmanship and that the muskets were sometimes altered to have a sort of rudimentary site on them.
In 1774 Gage would write “that the men [should] be taught to take good aim, which if they do they will always level well.”
Major General the Earl of Cavan recommended that officers “have at the breech [of the firelock] a small sight-channel made, for the advantage and convenience of occasionally taking better aim.” Just a few days before Bunker Hill General Gage issued orders for his officers so that “[p]roper marksmen [are] to instruct them in taking aim, and the position in which they ought to stand in firing, and to do this man by man before they are suffered to fire together.” Firing at individual targets was part of the war time training of British soldiers.
In January 1775 Lieutenant Mackenzie of the 23rd Regiment of Foot wrote that:
"The regiments are frequently practiced at firing with ball at marks. Six rounds per man at each time is usually allotted for this practice. As our regiment is quartered on a wharf which projects into part of the harbor, and there is a very considerable range without any obstruction, we have fixed figures of men as large as life, made of thin boards, on small stages, which are anchored at a proper distance from the end of the wharf, at which the men fire. Objects afloat, which move up and down with the tide, are frequently pointed out for them to fire at, and premiums are sometimes given for the best shots, by which means some of our men have become excellent marksmen."
Matthew H. Spring's book With Zeal and With Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783 is a fantastic resource for tactics of both American and British forces in the Revolutionary War. While the primary focus is on the British Army, he does compare and contrast tactics of the American forces to highlight how the British Army adapted to local circumstances.
Depends purely on the range. Everything has a maximum range that typically far exceeds the weapon's effective range. Something the Germans didn't seem to get in WW2 was that maximum range wasn't awfully important for, say, their Elephant Tank Destroyer. Yeah, sure, it can hit a target at 2000 meters. A target at 2000 meters is never going to be standing still either.
More to the point, archers prized accuracy, but more importantly prized the ability to gauge how far they can launch their arrows and still reliably hit a target.
Because a long range volley that you see in a lot of movies where everyone's aiming at a ~45-55 degree angle, you're not typically aiming at a target so much as an area. Mongol archers from Ghengis Khan's era could hit targets up to ~500 meters normally, but typically only had an effective range of 100-200 meters. Which is to say it could hit a target at up to 500 meters, but they'd only realistically be picking their shots at about a quarter of that range.
More recently, the part of the purpose of Napoleonic era firing lines was to help negate the inaccurate nature muskets from the period.
This answer is not specifically historical but,
I can tell you that despite the modern prevalence of highly accurate infantry weapons in modern (1900+) combat aiming for and shooting individual enemey soliders is usually only the primary job of designated marksmen. Despite the current US Army rifle qualification being based on accuracy against man sized silhouttes, training and actual combat experience dictates firing at locations to esatblish a base of fire, rather than firing at individuals. That is to say, although aimed shots are encouarged and wasting ammunition discouraged, in combat the goal of one side in a fire fight is "fire superiority" to fix the enemy element and either destroy him with supporting fires or move against him. For instance Automatic weapons are often directed to fire at, or just above enemy locations in order to better suppress them.
Taking accurate shots at any kind of range is very difficult, doubly so in combat, which is enormously tiring and stressful. Coupled with reduced visibility due to smoke or enemy concealment taking even just aimed shots against an active enemy is extremely difficult.
English archers of the Hundred Years War era trained in what's known as zone firing, which, to my knowledge, was pretty standard among archers throughout the world. This meant that, rather than training to hit a specific target (which would be impossible at long range; even today, it's exceedingly difficult to hit an individual beyond 50 yards) they tried to place their arrows within a general area, and to fire into this area as quickly as possible. There are parallels between this and the later "beaten zones" established by machine guns in the 20th century.
There is actually an interesting book on this idea called
On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Dave Grossman
Essentially he looks at the statistics of not what soldiers are trained to do but what they actually did. For example he writes only 15-20% of WW2 soldiers actually actively shot at the enemy. Yes most people fired their rifles but in the grand scheme of things only a percentage were shooting to kill, or would engage a target on sight.
This is an understood fact by the military and hence the tactic of attaining fire superiority and suppressing the enemy becoming more popular. Essentially shoot to keep them in one place and use artillery or air support to handle the actual killing part.