# Breech loading rifles and the American Civil War **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 15, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690 "2018-01-15T14:21:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/41 "2018-02-16T19:23:43Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The BAR did have an advantage in that it didnt have to be crew served, one could fire it from the hip. But yes, the MG 34 was superior in most other ways. I like how the wikipedia page on that contradicts itself. ‘Nonetheless, the design proved too complex for mass production’ No. built 577,120 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/42 "2018-02-16T19:43:45Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I like how the wikipedia page on that contradicts itself. > > ‘Nonetheless, the design proved too complex for mass production’ > > No. built 577,120 Yes, the MG 34- of which they actually made more of then the “easy to mass produce” Mg 42. ---
**Author:** ![Gbro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Gbro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gbro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/43 "2018-02-16T21:51:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by engineer\_comp\_geek > Leading up to the Civil War, there were two minor tweaks to the design of the musket. First, the flintlock was replaced with the percussion cap, which made the musket much more reliable and much more immune to weather. If you fire a flintlock in the rain, the most likely result is that it just goes click. You won’t be able to get a spark off of your wet flint and steel. The second change was the invention of the Minie Ball, which, despite the name, wasn’t a ball at all but instead was bullet shaped. A musket gets more and more difficult to load as you shoot it, since black powder fouls up the barrel and makes it more and more difficult to shove the next round down into it. A hunter can stop and clean his barrel after every few shots, so a rifle back in the 1700s for a hunter was no biggie. But armies couldn’t use them because soldiers couldn’t stop and clean their barrels every few shots. The Minie Ball fixed that. It had a hollow skirt at the base of the “bullet”. The Minie Ball was smaller than the barrel bore, so you could shove it down a fouled barrel and it wouldn’t get stuck. When fired, the hollow skirt (being soft lead) would expand and grip the barrel rifling. British Captain John Norton 1823 Invents a hollow based bullet that is the Exact bullet used in the Civil war refered to as an Americanized Minie’ Rejected by the Military leaders because the round ball in use for the past 300 years worked good enough! English Gunsmith William Greener 1836 invented the hollow based bullet with a wooden plug to aid in expanding the skirt of the hollowed base. 1847 Claude Minie’ invents a hollow based connical bullet and uses a iron plug to help expand the bullet skirt. So 24 years after the Amazing work of Captain Norton He get no credit! Read about it here.; [https://books.google.com/books?id=NzdLTMwLX-sC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Norton+hollow+based+bullet&source=bl&ots=FVSZhJWTnx&sig=rBjiUV9hkuA4z3fK5OSin\_s4Kx8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIiqrUravZAhXIqYMKHR0YAjsQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Norton%20hollow%20based%20bullet&f=false](https://books.google.com/books?id=NzdLTMwLX-sC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Norton+hollow+based+bullet&source=bl&ots=FVSZhJWTnx&sig=rBjiUV9hkuA4z3fK5OSin_s4Kx8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIiqrUravZAhXIqYMKHR0YAjsQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Norton%20hollow%20based%20bullet&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/44 "2018-02-17T00:12:23Z")
John Norton’s 1823 design was not the “Exact bullet used in the Civil war”. As with most inventions, the Minie Ball wasn’t developed wholesale out of nothing. But Minie came up with a superior and more reliable design. Even then, there was considerable later development at the Springfield Armory which turned it into a much more useful, and more easily mass-produced, piece. I did want to drop by to comment on two aspects that, while not overlooked, could use some clarification. The first is that commanders in the Civil War absolutely did know that warfare was changing with the mass introduction of the rifle. They just hadn’t yet worked out exactly how it would change. The common idea that they just marched troops into the meatgrinder because they didn’t know better is false. Generals knew from the start that charging defended works was really, really hard: it’s just that the they often didn’t have a better option. It would take until the end of the war to develop trench-breaching tactics - which were actually quite similar to those eventually used in WW1. ON the whole, commanders were pretty sparing of their soldiers lives. The really bloody battles were more the result of a lack of available cover or ground to maneuver, where one side or the other felt that a risky attack was necessary. Further, these attacks were often successful if well-planned and well-led. Secondly, the plain fact is that while northern industry was extremely strong and still booming during the war years, the technology to make reliable repeaters was just being polished. Factories tried to start mass-production but just couldn’t do it, with the result that supplies were very limited even in 1865. Of course, the attempts probably helped developed the very precision and systems needed. Trying to outfit every soldier with such arms would probably have been a futile effort. It’s somewhat the same story in medicine: advances in biological knowledge along with the following improvements in antiseptics only became widespread after the war. Here also the surgeon’s experience during the war probably contributed to a considerable development of those skills and techniques in the postwar era. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/45 "2018-02-17T12:38:17Z")
Nowadays we expect to buy a spare part for a Ford and have it fit and function properly regardless of whether it was made in Detroit or Dagenham or Valencia. But achieving interchangeability in the 19th c. was a difficult and expensive process which many claimed to have conquered but secretly did some hand-fitting anyway to get the stuff to work. The Ordnance Department declared that ‘we must have interchangeability and we are determined to have it, regardless of cost’ and they did achieve it at the National Armory. Commercial organisations found it much more difficult, and try to make a profit as well (e.g. Singer sewing machines, which usually exhibit a degree of hand-fitting) ---
**Author:** ![Gbro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Gbro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gbro)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2018, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/46 "2018-02-20T17:14:09Z")
> [@](#): > > #44 Report Post Unread 02-16-2018, 06:12 PM > smiling bandit smiling bandit is offline > Guest Join Date: Nov 2001 > Posts: 16,839 > > John Norton’s 1823 design was not the “Exact bullet used in the Civil war”. As with most inventions, the Minie Ball wasn’t developed wholesale out of nothing. But Minie came up with a superior and more reliable design. Even then, there was considerable later development at the Springfield Armory which turned it into a much more useful, and more easily mass-produced, piece. I am wrong to use the word “Exact” in my post, however the study of these bullets is very interesting to me. But then one can find Garbage like this on the internet too! > [@](#): > > A major breakthrough arrived in the 1850s, courtesy of a French army officer named Claude-Étienne Minié. His eponymous bullet was still made of lead, but it was conical, not round. When hot gases from black powder combustion expanded into the hollow-based Minié ball, they caused the soft bullet to flare out and grip the rifled barrel. This meant that the innovative bullets could be made smaller than the bore without diminishing the spin they acquired. And they didn’t require a patch, which made them easier to load. > > The Minié ball – the first cylindroconoidal bullet – improved the accuracy of shooters tremendously. During the Civil War, which saw the first widespread use of these bullets, Union and Confederate infantrymen hit their targets more often and at far greater distances. > > [https://science.howstuffworks.com/10-bullet-innovations3.htm](https://science.howstuffworks.com/10-bullet-innovations3.htm) And here is an example of the information I read in another book about Captain John Norton and his development that was rejected by the British army. > [@](#): > > 1832 The cylindro-conoidal bullet was invented by Captain John Norton of the British 34th Regiment in 1832. It had a hollow base, so that, when fired, the bullet would expand and seal the bore. The origin of his idea is an interesting one: when in southern India, he examined the blow pipe arrows used by the natives and found that their base was formed of elastic locus pith, which by its expansion against the inner surface of the blow pipe prevented the escape of air past it.[1] > Here; [John Norton - Graces Guide](https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/John_Norton) So Who’s Bullet is more like the Americanized Minie’?? And keep in mind, Captain Minie’s Bullet was designed more for the French rifle with the plug in the chamber that would contact the metal plug upon ramming it hard against it and thereby cause the skirt to expand to seal the gasses. From my reading this was not a reliable system because of the difficulty in cleaning the chamber area of the barrel. So I therefore argue that the expansion of the bullet buy the gases is much more Captain John Norton’s design. ---
**Author:** ![Gbro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Gbro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gbro)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/47 "2018-02-21T16:10:30Z")
> [@Cardigan](#): > > Why didn’t the US Army and War Department pursue procurement of breech loading rifles as the primary infantry weapon, as opposed to muzzle loading rifles? The advantages of breech loading firearms were already well understood at the time. When young Lt. Ambrose Burnside resigned his commission to pursue an idea of a Gun that he developed due to the horrendous leak of gas at the breech of the Hall breach loading rife he had seen used on his duty in the southern US. [Burnside Breach Loading Carbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnside_carbine#/media/File:Burnside_carbine.jpg) (This is either a 4th or 5th Model pictured as I am unable to see a guide screw on the receiver) The patent on his carbine is for a gas seal at the breach. The seal is an integral part of the [Cartridge case](https://www.gunauction.com/buy/11342398) but the rifle could be used with loose powder and round ball if needed! There were many breach loaders being tested by the Ordinance Department that was under Gen James Ripley’s command. One of the major hurdle that Burnside had to cross when his breach loader out preformed many other rifle being tested was Ripley liked the Maynard and in particularly the Maynard Tape Priming system and required Burnside to adapt that to his rifle. Well the tape primer was a dysfunctional system at best but Burnside and his team did it to the degree of still being able to easily prime his rifle with the common Musket Cap when the Maynard primers ran out or were damaged by water. Then another change would be added making the Burnside orders late each time. The Burnside Carbine did make it into use but not in a great number because by the end of the war Burnside was helping in the production of the Spencer Carbine. And Gen James Riley was involved in the design of the muzzle loading rifle in use, so one could say there was a conflict of interest??? ---
**Author:** ![Randolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Randolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randolph)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/48 "2018-02-21T16:47:46Z")
Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690/49 "2018-02-23T07:22:20Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > Nowadays we expect to buy a spare part for a Ford and have it fit and function properly regardless of whether it was made in Detroit or Dagenham or Valencia. But achieving interchangeability in the 19th c. was a difficult and expensive process which many claimed to have conquered but secretly did some hand-fitting anyway to get the stuff to work. The Ordnance Department declared that ‘we must have interchangeability and we are determined to have it, regardless of cost’ and they did achieve it at the National Armory. Commercial organisations found it much more difficult, and try to make a profit as well (e.g. Singer sewing machines, which usually exhibit a degree of hand-fitting) Even as late as WWI, the various arms manufacturers hadn’t _quite_ mastered interchangeable parts. The bits and pieces for a Pattern 1914 rifle made by Winchester might not exactly interchange with one made by Remington, for example. Generally they’d interchange with parts from the same manufacturer, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breech-loading-rifles-and-the-american-civil-war/806690.md?page=2)