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Date	Original Topic
3rd December 2002	Safety in Numbers By PETE HARMAN Lets be reasonable? would we really have stood a chance at ISANDHLWANA even with the superior fire power. I would think a british force of to day would find it hard to repel a force of 20000 with the weapons of that day What do you think.
Date	Replies
15th December 2002	Geoff Melling With the rapid rate of fire available to well trained British troops equiped with the Martini-Henry rifle, I don't see why the Zulus could not have been driven back. But as in all things there is a huge BUT and plenty of IFs and a few MAYBEs here. The Martini-Henry rifle had a nasty habbit of over heating and then jamming with over use, which is what you get with constant rapid fire. This is of course the last thing you want when faced with a huge Zulu army screeming for your blood. The Martini-Henry also produced an awful lot of smoke, which tends to linger in a huge cloud around the firing line. This of course acts as a smoke screen to the advantage of any attacker, as your Zulu warrior would literally be a few feet away from you before you saw him. Finally i think that the British firing line was much too far forward of the camp, thus rendering the British soldiers spaced too far apart from each other. So everytime a British soldier fell, a huge gap would be left in the defensive line allowing the Zulus to pour through. Finally i think weight of numbers in favour of the Zulu army added to all the above points to caused a British defeat. Ultimatelly if the firing line had been better positioned close into the camp i think that the result may possibly have been different on the day, but who knows?!?!