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IPFS News Link • History

Watching muskets being used, it's hard to believe they were effective on confronting native Amer

• arclein
The introduction of firearms had made combat(s) a much shorter affair because of how effective they were. No longer hacking away at each other with swords or weathering showers of arrows; one bullet could be sufficient to kill or incapacitate all but some lucky individuals. During WW2 an M2 Browning Machine gun might manage to fire 600 rounds per minute while it took Enola Gay 12 hours to drop one measly little bomb, yet the Japanese seem to have been far more in awe of the latter. You can't take the admittedly slow rate of fire of a musket out of its context. It hit and hit hard.