Zulu Dawn - The Ultimate Disaster Movie!
Discussion
i watched bits of it last night, seen it before. there was a documentary about the battle on discovery a while back. although it was a complete disaster from the british point of view the film was not entirely accurate regarding the ammunition boxes or the supply of ammunition.
the discovery program examined the performance of the rifle and the supply of ammunition. the rifle was immense, good rate of fire, even accounting for miss fires, the Brits should have dispatched the zulus from 400 to 50 yards in 20 minutes. they examined the ammo boxes, easily opened using a rifle butt.
they also did an arceological search of the firing line and discovered that it was very far forward of the camp but there was loads of empty cases, ie loads of ammo.
so why was it such a disaster? the line was too far forward resulting in the soldiers being spaced far apart, 4 to 6 yards, meaning that the fire was not concentrated. hence once the zulus were onto the line the zulus had the advantage with their close quarter weapons. sadly a tactical mistake by the british.
the discovery program examined the performance of the rifle and the supply of ammunition. the rifle was immense, good rate of fire, even accounting for miss fires, the Brits should have dispatched the zulus from 400 to 50 yards in 20 minutes. they examined the ammo boxes, easily opened using a rifle butt.
they also did an arceological search of the firing line and discovered that it was very far forward of the camp but there was loads of empty cases, ie loads of ammo.
so why was it such a disaster? the line was too far forward resulting in the soldiers being spaced far apart, 4 to 6 yards, meaning that the fire was not concentrated. hence once the zulus were onto the line the zulus had the advantage with their close quarter weapons. sadly a tactical mistake by the british.
ian d said:
so why was it such a disaster? .
Typical upper class British arrogance.
The Zulus were assumed to be half naked savages; the reality of course is that they were an extremely intelligent, highly organised society of people with higher moral codes than the British.
And endless courage.
IOLAIRE said:
so why was it such a disaster? .
Typical upper class British arrogance.
The Zulus were assumed to be half naked savages; the reality of course is that they were an extremely intelligent, highly organised society of people with higher moral codes than the British.
And endless courage.
Hang on, they were half naked, pretty savage and somewhat liberal in their approach to infantry mortality which one could argue is hardly an enlightened philosophy.
Organised? Undoubtedly so but you have to be fairly good at logistics to run and supply an empire too, so we weren't exactly slackers ourselves on that score.
Their possession of a higher moral code? Well of course, everybody does - we're British, we must be evil!
Endless courage? Brave of course but an odd pronouncement I think and comparisons would certainly be difficult.
Upper class arrogance? Perhaps a little but more a case of underestimating one's enemy.
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