The red coat certainly did not help while walking in the wood. Sniping was made a bit easier. :yep:

Well truth be told they didn't need the red coats to find the British that day. Just following the sound of their fifes and drums would have been enough dontcha think? Besides they marched down a road. Camo won't help at all in that situation.

I'm thinking they learned a lot since then.

RED COATS DON'T RUN; THE DYE WAS CHEAP & IT HID THE BLOOD
 

The Zulu warriors listened well if the only remaining soldiers standing were wearing anything but a red coat.

You said you wondered why the British thought the red coat was the best uniform. My point was that prior to that time, when battles were always fought by regular troops in long straight lines, the color helped them identify their own side. Other than that the color didn't matter. Marching in huge columns with artillery and baggage trains making huge amounts of noise, the best camoflage in the world wouldn't have made any difference.

I don't know if it would have turned out any different if the British had been wearing Khaki at Concord. Proper tactics are far more important than uniform colors and the British made several tactical errors that significantly contributed to the problems they encountered.

Agreed...the tactics to be employed were usually always predictable and the colonists used the fact well to their advantage more often than not.

And they wore brown color clothing, knew the terrain and practiced guerrilla warfare tactics. I'm of mind no matter what tactics the British employed, the red coat was not wise.

The colonists definitely didn't use guerrilla tactics at the bridge fight and not really during the running fight back to Boston either. In fact the colonists didn't really use any tactics at all other than completely disorganized and individual efforts, mostly by late comers, to take potshots at the retreating British forces. Being as how the British marched along the only road possible back to Boston beating a drum it renders their uniform color moot. Everyone in the countryside knew where they had been, where they were going and what route they would have to take. They could have been wearing multi-cam ACU's and they still would have had the same casualty rate.

I'd even go so far to say that had the British camo'd up then broke into smaller parties to escape and evade guerrilla style back to Boston their casualties would have been much higher than they were. Their disciplined formations are what kept the colonists from overrunning them completely. Remember even though we greatly outnumbered the British we were still not able to stop this tiny force from making it back to Boston mostly intact.

So bottom line here is that this particular battle is not really a good example of the superiority of camouflage and guerrilla tactics or even the problems with using brightly colored uniforms and marching in line formation. It is however a prime example of the dangers in kicking a large hornets nest with an insufficient military force. It's a lesson we didn't remember in Mogadishu a couple centuries later as there are a lot of similarities between the two battles.

Now if you do want a good example of guerrilla tactics in the Revolutionary war then i'd suggest Morgans riflemen at the battle of Saratoga. The British really paid a price for those fancy officers uniforms. It's one lesson we did learn (eventually) and today's combat leader dresses exactly like the troops around him and they keep the flags tucked away in a trunk when deployed.

For the sake of Steve and August...the red coats don't mean a hill of beans. The red coat comment was in general. Not on this day concerning a bridge.

Moving along....

Maybe a different shade of red would have worked better? We are also not taking into consideration of the thread count of the wool.

Don't forget the continental army used blue coats, not brown. Even in the U.S. civil war, the Union army wore blue uniforms. Back then, you had to fire your musket from basically pointblank range, i.e. less than 50 yds to have a decent chance to hit. Wearing a distinctive colour so you could tell friend from foe was more important than camouflage. It's only around 1900 that standard earth tone became the norm in uniforms.

Back to Concord, Mark Urbain's "Fusiliers" gives a very good overview of how the British Army adapted to conditions in America, namely more light weight uniforms and new tactics more suited to the terrain, although that only came after 1775.

One little known fact about lexington and Concord is that the British, once they realised that american militiamen were sniping them from the sides and from inside houses, quickly formed skirmish parties sweeping on both sides to provide flank protection. They ambushed many militiamen that way.

http://www.amazon.com/Fusiliers-Brit.../dp/0571224881

p.s. nice photos.

$LIGHTLY! ""The adoption and continuing use of red by most British/English soldiers after 1660 was the result of circumstances rather than policy, including the relative cheapness of red dyes. Red was by no means universal at first, with grey and blue coats also being worn. There is no known basis for the myth that red coats were favoured because they did not show blood stains. Blood does in fact show on red clothing as a black stain....
The cloth for private soldiers used up until the late 18th century was plain weave broadcloth weighing 16 oz per square yard, made from coarser blends of English wool. The weights often quoted in contemporary documents are given per running yard, though; so for a cloth of 54" width a yard weighed 24 oz. This sometimes leads to the erroneous statement that the cloth weighed 24 oz per square yard.
Broadcloth is so called not because it is finished wide, 54" not being particularly so, but because it was woven nearly half as wide again and shrunk down to finish 54". This shrinking, or milling, process made the cloth very dense, bringing all the threads very tightly together, and gave a felted blind finish to the cloth. These factors meant that it was harder wearing, more weatherproof and could take a raw edge; the hems of the garment could be simply cut and left without hemming as the threads were so heavily shrunk together as to prevent fraying.
Officers' coats were made from superfine broadcloth; manufactured from much finer imported Spanish wool, spun finer and with more warps and wefts per inch. The result was a slightly lighter cloth than that used for privates, still essentially a broadcloth and maintaining the characteristics of that cloth, but slightly lighter and with a much finer quality finish.
Colours; The dye used for privates' coats of the infantry, guard and line, was madder. A vegetable dye, it was recognised as economical, simple and reliable and remained the first choice for lower quality reds from the ancient world until chemical dyes became cheaper in the latter 19th century. During the British Civil War, red dyes were imported in large quantities for use by units and individuals of both sides, though this was the beginning of the trend for long overcoats. The ready availability of red pigment made it popular for military clothing and the dying process required for red involved only one stage. Other colours involved the mixing of dyes in two stages and accordingly involved greater expense; blue, for example, could be obtained with woad, but more popularly it became the much more expensive indigo. In financial terms the only cheaper alternative was the grey-white of undyed wool — an option favoured by the French, Austrian, Spanish and other Continental armies. The formation of the first English standing army ) saw red clothing as the standard dress. As Carman comments "The red coat was now firmly established as the sign of an Englishman". In short: Tough cheap plentiful tightly-shrunk English wool and a cheap one-step dye process for red with a growing if induced national sense of looking good amid the gunpowder smoke all contributed haphazardly to the two century military fashion; not unduly helped by a superior Brown Bess musket with a better reload rate (3 per minute) and a nasty piece of "cold steel" with "some English guts behind it!" And when that ceased to be effective: Khaki, the .303 Lee- Enfield and the 'mad minute' at Mons...:salute: