(This comes out of my interest in Alternative History novels.)
What could have been done to improve Civil War?Napoleonic canons? I have oft-wondered why rifled “muskets” firing minnie balls were common, but no cannons using the same idea. Could cannon balls have been made out of a heavier metal than iron to give more punch? Would longer barrels have resulted in longer ranges?
Heck, why weren’t canons more commonly fitted with sights?
**Given modern knowledge, what could have been done fairly easily to improve old-time canons? **
They did have sights: the gunner’s quadrant was a brass plumb-bob/protractor. It was too delicate to keep fixed to the barrel, but the gun captain would lay it along the top and instruct the crew to shim or screw the gun to the proper elevation.
I’ve seen CW-era cannons with slot in the base, where a leaf-sight could be inserted.
Paul in Qatar
I wonder what would have happened if they had made a wooden sabot and used a sub-caliber projectile. They would have increased their range substantially at the cost of projectile weight. It would seem that this would be useful against sailing ships.
In the mid-1800’s they had nitrocellulose which might have been a better propellant if they could make the barrels to withstand the pressure. I’ve never heard of anyone using it until later when smokeless powder was developed.
Using something heavier than iron, like lead, might have given a heavier punch but the pressure in the cannon barrel would have risen dramatically and might have blown up the cannons. (That would apply to the nitrocellulose idea as well)
I wonder if they could have used cast steel instead of iron to alleviate some of the exploding issues.
The Confederate Revolving Cannon was a neat idea. It was basically a revolver scaled up to cannon size.
Because the U.S. Ordnance Dept. thought smoothbore cannons worked just fine and didn’t see any need for improvement. During the same time, the British weren’t as stubborn and resistant to change and did all kinds of experimentation with rifled cannons. When the Civil War started, U.S. cannons were already behind the curve, and the shorter range smoothbores were found to be very inadequate for their job. Many smoothbore cannons were then re-bored and rifled. Rifled cannons and guns did see a fair amount of use during the Civil War. You can’t say that no cannons used the same idea.
Also, in addition to rifled muskets firing Minie balls, there was also the Whitworth rifle. Instead of a grooved barrel, imagine taking a hexagonal tube and twisting it. This required a special hexagonal round. Whitworth also scaled this idea up to a breech-loaded 2.5 inch gun.
Civil War cannons fired a lot more than just cannon balls. Cannons could fire explosive shells for more punch. Smoothbores fired round shells. Rifled cannons fired explosive shells that were much more modern in shape and design. These modern-ish shells were often fired by percussion caps on the front of the shell, but also sometimes used timed fuses. The round shells fired by smoothbores couldn’t rely on a percussion cap (since it was round and would tumble you couldn’t guarantee that the cap would hit first) and had to rely on timed fuses.
The timed fuses of the day kinda sucked, so there was some definite room for improvement there (this is a good place for your “what if” games). Too short of a time and the shell exploded before it hit the enemy. Too long of a time and the shell buried itself in the ground and wasted most of its energy throwing dirt around.
Explosive shells could be made to be effective against fortifications or troops, but not both. Basically if the shell broke up into smaller pieces of shrapnel it was much better at shredding troops and much less effective against fortifications, so there was a trade-off there.
One improvement made during the Civil War was the replacement of grape shot with canister shot, which was grape shot packed into flimsy sawdust packed containers that made it much easier and faster to load. Grape shot and canister shot were both used to effectively turn the cannon into a jumbo shotgun. It was very effective against troops.
Many cannons were fitted with sights. Also, keep in mind that if you are using a cannon against infantry (e.g. shrapnel shells or grape shot), aiming it isn’t all that important. You just aim somewhere towards the center of the large group of enemy troops and let 'er rip.
Not until the 1880s or so. They made a lot of improvements in steel casting in the decades right after the Civil War.
Have you heard of the Brunswick Rifle? That was another variant to rifling that was experimented with around the same time. Instead of typical rifling, the Brunswick had two large grooves on opposite sides of the barrel, and instead of a round ball or a minie ball, it fired a belted round ball. Imagine the planet Saturn with the ring actually attached to the round part and that’s the basic idea. The “belt” fit into the grooves, and the grooves twisted as they went down the barrel, giving the round ball a spin.
It didn’t really work that well. It still ended up being difficult to load once the black powder started fouling the barrel.
Fascinating. I’m surprised that the Whitworth company was the originator of the interrupted-screw breech mechanism, something still used today. I wonder if Whitworth designed this to avoid having to cut rifling, something that must have been a huge pain back in the day.
Canister shot is much older than the Civil War - it goes back to the 18th century. Shrapnel shells were developed during the Napoleonic Wars, and I think percussion caps (which made the guns more weatherproof) were introduced around the same time.
All the fuses used in explosive shells were literal fuses - or powder trails - that were ignited when the gun fired and hopefully burned down to detonate the charge at the right time. Naturally, this was a bit hit-and-miss. Percussion caps worked for impact fire against fortifications, but were no good for airbursts against troops.
The problem with breech-loading was, given 19th-century metallurgury, making a breech mechanism that could survive repeated firing and still be reloaded in reasonable time. Rifling, heavier shells and more powerful propellants made the problem worse - some navies went back from breech-loading to muzzle-loading in the 1870s because gun sizes had advanced faster than gun manufacture.
The other problem with firing at long range was spotting targets at long range to shoot at, which given terrain and the amount of powder smoke on 19th-century battlefields was often difficult. It wasn’t until proper recoil carriages were developed around 1900 that true long range artillery became practical.
The Armstrong Gun (actually a whole family of cannon up to 7-inches) seems to fit your question well. Manufactured from 1855 to 1865 Armstrong’s guns featured-
*Rifled Barrels;
*Breech loading;
*Built up construction ( a central tube kept in compression by rings shrunk around it) which made for a lighter and stronger gun.
A minie-ball type projectile.
The British used them extensively and successfully in their colonial wars at the time, but they reverted back to muzzle loaders after a parliamentary committee ruled the armstrong guns were too expensive and complicated.
I wasn’t trying to imply that canister shot was invented for the Civil War. Grape shot was obsolete long before then, but they were still using it in the early parts of the war. They were still using flintlocks for the same reason - there was such a shortage of weapons that if they had anything lying around that they could chuck at the enemy they used it. The wording of the OP seemed focused on cannonballs, so I was just pointing out that other forms of ammunition were already in use to make cannons more effective.
The modern-ish shaped shells designed for rifled cannons were relatively new (1850s-ish). Most of the others were around for quite a while before then.
Forsyth invented the percussion cap in the early 1800s but they weren’t introduced during the Napoleonic Wars. Practical percussion locks didn’t come around until after Forsyth’s patent expired and they started making their way onto weapons in large numbers in the 1840s. The Springfield Model 1842 was the first U.S. musket to use a percussion lock (if you want to nitpick, the Model 1840 was produced as a flintlock but a lot of those were retrofitted with percussion locks before they made it to the field - many of them ended up rifled later as well).
Improve the Civil War?
Replace the early Union commanders. That would have shortened the war by a bout a couple years and saved a few hundred thousand lives!
With cannons specifically, drop a heavy one onto Scott, Burnside, McCellan, Hooker, etc.
