I can’t imagine that it’d help stability unless the alternative is standing on a lion or something.
I’d guess that you’re probably right on vantage point, but I’m having a hard time trying to imagine a scenario where this would apply. If you had some kind of hard cover, it seems like you could probably also hang from it one way or another.
thinks
There have been some cases where people have fought in things like grain fields. Standing up in something like that seems kind of suicidal to me — you’re a very big target with no hard cover — but maybe in some scenarios, it’d make sense. Like, okay, say you have a another side trying to retreat, using a field of grain as concealment. You ride up to the field, stand up, and now you have a clear line of sight towards soldiers that are maybe in an open field on the other side, and probably aren’t doing much of anything by way of shooting back, especially before semi-automatic rifles were common. That’d be a pretty specialized case, but I could imagine it being worthwhile to have in the toolbox.
German cavalry firing from the standing saddle position during maneuvers on the Karshorter Racecourse, Berlin.
The cavalry was trained to “fire from the saddle” in this way at that time. It is very doubtful whether this method featured much, once the action started.
It did nothing to reduce the vulnerability of the horsemen to counter-fire from opposing infantry and machine-gunners; indeed, it increased such vulnerability. World War 2 was the end of massive cavalry use.
EDIT2: I see a Reddit comment from seven years back saying that he remembered someone else on Reddit saying that the standing position was used for reconaissance, not for shooting, which sounds reasonable, but then I don’t really understand why they’d have their rifles out. I even wondered if maybe it’d make sense to use a rifle scope as a low-magnification telescope, but those rifles don’t appear to be scoped.
Better vantage point? Stability, maybe?
Oh I get it. They’re stable.
👏🤝
I can’t imagine that it’d help stability unless the alternative is standing on a lion or something.
I’d guess that you’re probably right on vantage point, but I’m having a hard time trying to imagine a scenario where this would apply. If you had some kind of hard cover, it seems like you could probably also hang from it one way or another.
thinks
There have been some cases where people have fought in things like grain fields. Standing up in something like that seems kind of suicidal to me — you’re a very big target with no hard cover — but maybe in some scenarios, it’d make sense. Like, okay, say you have a another side trying to retreat, using a field of grain as concealment. You ride up to the field, stand up, and now you have a clear line of sight towards soldiers that are maybe in an open field on the other side, and probably aren’t doing much of anything by way of shooting back, especially before semi-automatic rifles were common. That’d be a pretty specialized case, but I could imagine it being worthwhile to have in the toolbox.
EDIT: Tineye turns up this:
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-cavalry-horses-1935/
EDIT2: I see a Reddit comment from seven years back saying that he remembered someone else on Reddit saying that the standing position was used for reconaissance, not for shooting, which sounds reasonable, but then I don’t really understand why they’d have their rifles out. I even wondered if maybe it’d make sense to use a rifle scope as a low-magnification telescope, but those rifles don’t appear to be scoped.