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  • I was gonna say that probably wouldn't help but then I saw the modern weapons. They would rip through the opposition like they were field mice under a roto tiller. Just bring like....all the ammo. You're gonna need to HOLD Harper's Ferry for the long term and that is gonna be tough with only 4 automatic weapons. With the proper displacement of forces with at the time current weapons i think it could be done, mostly cause a key access point is a bridge which would be easy to guard with an automatic weapon against flintlock guys. How to deal with artillery once it gets to that point would be a huge issue.

    • Iirc, the intention wasn't to hold Harper's Ferry it was to raid the arsenal and then evacuate up into the mountains. Brown stuck around too long because he was expecting reinforcements that never showed.

      • They could have done even more time traveler-y bullshit and not even directly interacted with John Brown.

        Pop in with those weapons, full combat gear and load out, 180 to 240 rounds of ammo each, radios, scopes and binocs.

        Split into two groups of two, position one team in the hills on the north side of the Potomac, a bit South of the current day (and historical?) Naval Battery Outlook, put the other team at the modern day Ridgetop Outlook, with ability to reposition if the Naval Battery Outlook team can see something they can't.

        (Apologies for whipping up shitty map on mobile)

        Lets say these weapons are all... Daniel Defense M4V7s, with about 1 MOA accuracy.

        Let Brown start the attack, and the South of Naval Battery Outlook team can operate as Designated Marksmen doing overwatch, and plink off Armory Guards and 'local militia' with accurate fire from across the ridge... ideally, allowing JB and his crew to be able to hold the much more defensible Armory than the house he was forced to make a hasty retreat to in our timeline.

        As the alarm is raised, the Ridgetop Outlook team basically lies in wait for an ambush, or if reinforcements come from an area they have bad visibility of, South Of Naval Battery team can tell them where the baddies are coming from and where to reposition.

        The time travelers have dramatic advantages.

        Smokeless powder.

        The enemy will realize they are being shot at, but will likely have absolutely no visual indication of where from, instead having to just try to figure it out by ear.

        Much, much better accuracy and range... and reload speed / time before needing to reload.

        Even the further removed South of Naval Battery team will be shooting roughly 5 inch groups at worst, at the range they are at.

        Aim for center mass, and thats still pretty much a guaranteed hit for each shot.

        The Ridgetop Outlook team is intended to plan on repositioning if necessary, so they'll be at an even closer range.

        Basically, just act as guardian angels, assist with the initial assault on the armory (JB and his crew canonically march south along the road Naval Outlook team is north of, then across the bridge), screen the entire counter attack against Brown, help put the fear of god into the inital Armory defenders... and heck, maybe bring some swan feathers or something, scatter them in with some piles of spent casings, and maybe now Brown is both a succesful revolutionary and also has the mandate of heaven.

    • I agree but as a pedantic correction those soldiers are going to have percussion cap black powder rifles not flintlock muskets

    • forget john brown, go back to king phillip's war

      • Seems easier just to shoot a few rounds off at the landings at what would be Plymouth and Jamestown and popped a hole in some sails the whole hornets nest might be avoided.

    • I'm far from expert on this but wouldn't overheating be a significant problem with trying to use these rifles as machine guns?

      I think the psychological effect of the bursts of fire would be strong but 4 ar-15s or m16s aren't going to be able to sustain a high rate of fire for more than a brief period.

      • It isn't the volume or rate of fire that is really that important.

        They ar15 armed time travellers have dramatically more accurate weapons (they are actual rifles, with... rifling), able to make slowly paced (by our modern standards, very rapid by the standards of a ramrod reloaded weapon), controlled shots from much, much greater ranges.

        They also have smokeless powder.

        This will basically be seen, or rather heard as 'fucking magic.'

        At that point in time, you as a soldier or gunman or hunter would be expecting to be able to identify gunfire both by the sound, and by the large volume of smoke created by even a single ... well, often, not even a rifle, more of a percussion cap musket.

        Even revolvers of the time produced much, much more smoke than modern day revolvers or semiautos.

        An enemy force (or the local militia) being shot at, accurately, effectively, with distant sounding gunshots, but no visible plumes of smoke... would be a totally alien experience and likely utterly terrifying.

        ...

        Basically, you don't make your tactics leverage volume of fire suppression... you operate as mobile, long range ghosts calling down accurate, invisible thundercracks, whose actual source location cannot be determined.

        Make each shot count. No full auto at all. All semi auto, fire as you are exhaling.

        Entirely unironically, most people of this era would experience that as some kind of supernatural intervention.

        ...

        More directly to your question:

        Those are not machine guns.

        Machine guns, as you are thinking of them, would be like an M249, RPK (derp, I think an RPD would be a better example), something with belts or drums of 75-200 rounds of ammo.

        What is pictured in the image is ... some kind of AR15 pattern semi-auto rifle, with 30 round magazines.

        Generally speaking, basically all civillian variants of the AR15 are semi auto only, the military M16A4 has a 3 round burst mode, but not full auto.

        Barrel overheating would only be a problem for most AR15s if you are intentionally doing a 'burn down', which is more of a stress test thing than something that is likely to happen in any engagement.

        If you are just mag dumping like a COD player, which in real life you would have to do semi-automatically because most AR15 style weapons an average person can get their hands on is not full auto capable...

        ... yeah barrel heating could be a problem, but that would be a very stupid tactical decision with this given kit.

        One or two bullets to the body is gonna put down your entirely unarmored opponents, who likely will have no idea where you even are.

        No reason to pray and spray, conserve ammo instead, that way if you do get spotted, then you can lay down some suppressing fire in a leapfrogging retreat/repositioning.

      • Good enough for people who group up to fire musket volleys and if they don't know the possible rate of fire and what they've seen is already mind blowingly faster, chances are the colonial militias with a few professional soldiers or veterans would scatter.

    • I still think you could maintain accurate fire on their artillery position and basically pick off anyone who mans the cannon.

  • If you showed up with AR15s and enough ammunition they'd need to bring the whole building down with artillery cannons to get you out.

    • Even then, huge tactical advantage pushing into them to seize their artillery. What are they gonna do, bayonet me? Accurate and repeated fire from 100m away vs a bunch of guys with muskets and a canon: who would win?

      • My money's on the AR15s tbh I think the other side will shit themselves when multiple people are accurately shot by something they can not see 300meters away.

31 comments