Yes, several. Many infantry charges ended in bayonet work because there wasn’t time to reload when pressing the attack. At Gettysburg, there was a famous downhill bayonet charge on Little Round Top when the defenders ran out of ammunition; and the next day, Pickett’s Charge culminated in hand-to-hand melee at the “copse of trees.”
But the worst of all was probably the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania.
The main infantry weapon was the musket. During the Revolutionary War, the English for some strange reason didn’t want to give us any more Brown Bess muskets (gee I wonder why), so we got our muskets from the French. We copied these to make our own muskets. From about 1795 to 1812 we made low numbers of French style flintlock muskets. When the War of 1812 broke out we couldn’t make them fast enough, so we changed the way we made muskets a lot. By the time we perfected it, the war ended. We continued to make those up until about 1830. Then, we completely changed the way we manufactured them, going to machine stamped parts and such and doing a lot less work by hand labor, but the design of the 1830 musket was pretty much the same as the Model 1812 musket, which was still pretty close to the original French Charleville. So using entirely new methods, we continued to make the same old thing.
In about 1840, things changed. We switched from flintlocks to percussion locks, and then rifled the barrels and started using Minie balls. The Model 1840 was produced as a smoothbore flintlock, but a lot of them ended up with percussion locks fitted onto them before they made it out to the field, and some of them ended up rifled. The Model 1842 was produced with a percussion lock, but with a smoothbore barrel. The 1840 and 1842 were both produced with thicker barrels, anticipating that they would probably be rifled, and many were.
The Model 1840 and 1842 muskets that ended up being rifled were called, unsurprisingly, rifled-muskets, since they had been produced as smooth bore muskets but ended up being rifled later. The term rifle-musket or rifled musket continued to be used for the main infantry muskets, even though they were no longer produced as a smooth bore, as long as the so-called rifled musket was roughly the same length and of similar design to the smooth bore musket it had replaced.
All of these muskets were .69 cal, the same as the French Charleville they were based on. When you go from a round ball to an elongated Minie ball without changing the diameter, you add quite a bit of mass to the round, and this extra mass wasn’t necessary, and meant that they were throwing a lot more lead into each round of ammunition, which meant they could produce fewer rounds for the same amount of lead. So, the next step was to reduce the caliber from .69 down to .58. They also played around with the Maynard Primer system, which is basically strips of paper primer kinda like toy cap pistols use. The Model 1855 musket had the Maynard Primer and the .58 caliber barrel.
The Maynard Primer proved to be an unreliable piece of crap. It claimed to be waterproof, but it’s number one problem was that it wasn’t. For the Model 1861, they went back to percussion caps but kept the .58 cal. barrel.
When the Civil War broke out, they had a big shortage of weapons, so everything back to the Revolutionary War smoothbore muskets was dragged out of the closet. If it could shoot, they used it. A group of soldiers might have a couple Model 1861 or 1855 type muskets, maybe a Model 1840 or 1842, and two or three Model 1812 to 1830 style muskets. When they went into battle, they dropped the old smoothbores and picked up newer percussion rifle-muskets off of fallen soldiers when they could. Meanwhile, the north cranked out as many percussion rifle-muskets as they could, while the south bought most of theirs from foreign countries. The south had some production capability, but not much compared to the north, though they did manage to capture one armory and took most of its equipment back to Virginia.
Cavalry and navy soldiers used shorter carbines that were often based on the same designs as the longer muskets. Some breech loading rifles and later some repeating rifles were placed into service. All of these were produced in much smaller numbers than the main infantry muskets.
Pistols, when used, were usually cap and ball type revolvers.
Flintlocks, like the Hall rifle you linked to, as well as many other rifles and muskets, were often converted to percussion locks in the 1840s and 1850s.
The two most widely produced weapons during the Civil War were the Springfield musket (Model 1861/1863) and the British Model 1855 Enfield musket, which was imported by both the North and South.
In much lesser numbers, you had the Lorenz rifle (often a piece of junk), and other weapons like the Spencer and Henry repeaters. And you had some interesting variants like the Brunswick rifle and Whitworth rifle, which fired specialized rounds made just for them.
Erm, make that the Model 1853 Enfield (which is really embarrassing because I own one).
By the way, the Charleville musket design that the Model 1795 Springfield was based off of dates to the 1760s or so. At a quick glance, there’s not much difference between a French Model 1763 Charleville and an American Model 1830 Springfield.
“Charleville” is also a bit of a misnomer. This was just one place where French muskets were made, but when the Americans imported them, they wanted the latest “Charleville” style muskets and not the older French muskets. Since most Americans didn’t know the difference, all French muskets kinda ended up being called Charlevilles, which is still what they are called today. Some folks distinguish the Charlevilles as only the later style muskets, but this isn’t consistent.
Anyway, the point is that up until about 1840 or so, the main infantry musket was pretty much the same design that had been in use since about 1760.
Comp Geek,
Thanks for the info. I guess the Hall rifle wasn’t used much since it’s more complex and expensive to manufature.
Since you own a muzzle loader, can you tell me how many times you can shoot in one minute when trying to maximize the rate of fire?
I’ve never tried to maximize the rate of fire. I don’t use cartridges, so I have to measure out each powder charge and lubricate each round as I load it. I end up firing about one shot every two minutes at the range (which is better for my wallet). I’m guessing that since I haven’t practiced it, I could probably manage about two shots a minute. I have a flintlock as well (Model 1756 British infantry musket) which would probably be slightly faster since you don’t have to reach for the percussion cap.
Soldiers were drilled until they could manage 3 shots a minute reliably. Some could manage four shots a minute, but three was the requirement. I would need some practice before I could go that fast. I’m also a bit leery about trying it. When you go that fast you have a slight risk of cooking off the next powder charge as you load it. Basically, if there’s a small burning ember left in the barrel, it causes the powder to go off when you load it. Waiting a bit allows any embers left to burn out and extinguish themselves. With the flintlock, since I need to fire a patch anyway, I will often run the patch down the barrel with the ramrod to clean it between shots, then use that patch for the next shot. This reduces barrel fouling and prevents any problems with burning embers. Soldiers in battle couldn’t take the time to do this. They needed to fire as fast as they could.
Here’s a youtube video of a guy firing 3 shots in 46 seconds with a 2nd model Brown Bess (it’s shorter than the one I have). This shows you how fast you have to move to pull it off, and the guy isn’t taking much time to aim at all (not that it really matters with a Brown Bess - the thing’s only accurate to about 50 yards).
You may not notice it at first, but if you watch carefully, the last shot is a misfire (it hangs for a moment, the guy looks up, and then it fires, kinda taking him by surprise). Flintlocks were notorious for misfires, especially if you didn’t maintain them well.
These guys look to be firing about one shot every 20 to 25 seconds. You need to do each shot in 20 seconds to make 3 shots per minute. These are Civil War caplock rifle-muskets.
ETA: by the way, the cartridge I mentioned above isn’t a cartridge like a modern gun shoots. You don’t insert it whole into the weapon. You tear open the paper cartridge, pour out the pre-measured powder charge, insert the pre-lubricated minie ball, then toss the paper tube away (then ram the ball down with the ramrod, put the percussion cap in place, aim, and fire).
I find this paragraph just a bit puzzling. You seem to be ascribing the late adoption of assault rifles in NATO to their insistence on the larger 7.62mm round and assert the Soviets knew better with the AK-47.
But the AK-47 fires a 7.62mm round. It’s smaller, granted, but it’s got a kick. They did not adopt an intermediate cartridge until the 5.45x39 which fits the AK-74.
He did say “7.62 NATO” which is more specific than “7.62”. Momentum can vary considerably between rounds which have a nominal caliber of 7.62. I don’t know if the 7.62X39 has a lot of recoil, I didn’t have the opportunity to fire it.
Recoil and muzzle rise are less about the diameter of the round (although that has relevance when it comes to its ballistic coefficient) and more about the weight X velocity. I think a typical 7.62NATO is (going by memory), about 150 grains going at about 850 m/s? The 7.62X39 is about 122 grains going at about 700m/s and the typical 5.56NATO is 62 grains at a bit more than 900m/s.
If the 7.62NATO momentum is taken as the base value of 100, this gives us (not accounting for propellant weight, weapon weight or recoil-reducing measures):
7.62NATO: 100
7.62X39: 67
5.56NATO: 44
I don’t know if that allows us to say that the 7.62X39 is intermediate. The 5.56NATO has 2/3 of the momentum of the 7.62X39 and the 7.62X39 has 2/3 of the momentum of the 7.62NATO.
The Henry was rather fragile, and had several safety flaws. It also used a .44 RIMFIRE shell, which pushed a 216 grain bullet with 25 grains of powder. It was fairly inaccurate, and the early version used copper casings which jammed. The Spencer was a little bit more powerful (and accurate) , but again used a rimfire cartridge. They both cost about 2-3X what a rifled musket did.
The .45/70 (centerfire & reloadable) pushed a 405 grain bullet with 70 grains of powder. It was a notorious killer, with serious “Knock down” power , extremely accurate and long ranged. It replaced the Enfield , which fired a 530 grain bullet pushed by 68 grains of powder (more powerful than the 45/70). Springfield Model 1861 fired about the same.
So, there are many times where a certain hit and kill at 200yards is better than a hail of lead.
Now, later in WWI & WWII- a trained soldier with a bolt action rifle can fire pretty damn fast. Really, going from the Springfield to the Garand was not a huge improvement. My Dad fought in WWII, and used them all, and thought the Springfield more accurate.
Honestly, those guys who ran the military werent stupid. They thought this out pretty carefully.
A variety of reasons, but the three that spring to mind are related to power (ie range and effectiveness of the cartridge) the fact it’s hard(er) to cycle a lever-action from a prone position, and the fact most lever-action rifle magazines are slow to reload.
Rapid reloading is why pretty much all repeating military bolt-action rifles could be loaded with charger clips- with the interesting exception of the French Lebel M1886 rifles, which have a tube magazine.
Incidentally, at least one European nation did adopt a lever-action rifle as an infantry arm: Tsarist Russia, who adopted the Winchester M1895 chambered for 7.62x54R. They had them fitted with charger guides so they could be reloaded in the same manner as a standard military bolt-action rifle. The M1895 has a box magazine rather than a tube magazine (and a stronger action than most other lever-action rifles of the time), which might be largely why the Russians decided it would be suitable for military use.
Also, keep in mind that, until the Boer War, European military doctrine had a strong focus on volley fire - you’ve seen Zulu, right? - so soldiers didn’t need to be individually pumping out round after round after round of aimed fire in quick succession, or so the thinking went at the time. Even after the Boer War showed the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare and individual marksmanship, the idea that giving troops repeating weapons was somehow wasteful or extravagant lingered around.
Lee-Enfield rifles produced until 1915 had a special magazine cut-off attachment designed to convert the rifle to single-shot loading, with the loaded magazine kept as an emergency measure. It was removed in 1915 (along with windage-adjustable rear sights and long-range volley sights) to speed up manufacturing, but was curiously reintroduced to British-made (Australia and India also made Lee-Enfields) SMLE rifles after the war before being removed again in WWII.
Beside the Anglo-Zulu War which you mentioned, and things like the Mahdist campaign of 1885 (in fact, pretty much any Colonial war), there was also lot of melee fighting in WWI. There wasn’t a lot of room in the trenches to be manouvering 5’ long rifles about, so trench battles were often fought with detached bayonets, knives, clubs, spades, and so on.
Something else which might be of academic interest - in 1904, a Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) Mk I rifle cost cost the British Government £4/11/4.5, or about $585 in modern currency. In 1914 (when WWI kicked off), a standard-issue SMLE Mk III cost £3/15/- , which works out at about $400 nowadays.
Martini,
I figure you’re just about the best person to ask this to:
How accurate is the Martini Enfield? If you shoot five rounds at 100 yards, how far apart can you expect them to be?
“keep in mind that, until the Boer War, European military doctrine had a strong focus on volley fire”
Any idea why that was? With inaccurate smoothbores it makes sense.
The short answer is they’re pretty accurate but not modern match-grade accurate. All five rounds would certainly hit the centre mass of a man-sized target at that range, which was perfectly adequate for what it was supposed to do. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say the rounds should all have been within a 2" group at 100yds from an as-issued rifle with issue ammunition in 1895.
They were recorded as being accurate rifles in their day, and they all had “heavy” barrels on them, but it’s worth noting the centrefire versions stopped being used for serious competition use about when the Magazine Lee-Enfield (and later SMLE) was introduced in the late 1890/early 1900s.
Theoretically a Martini-Enfield can shoot accurately to 1,000 yards - but having said that, the SMLE has sights graduated to 2,000 yards (ie, nearly 2kms) but I don’t think anyone was actually expected to hit targets individually at that sort of range.
I guess what I’m saying is not that Martini-Enfields were inaccurate (they most certainly weren’t!) but that the Lee-Enfield was more accurate. They could all be relied upon to put a bullet pretty much exactly where you aimed at any sort of range where you could actually see what you were shooting at. If you’ve ever tried shooting beyond 250 yards with iron sights you’ll know what I mean.
Bear in mind the Martini-Enfield was primarily a reserve or “second-line” arm. Most of them were convered Martini-Henrys and they were designed to go to places like India where the native regiments were traditionally kept one level of rifle behind the European ones just to mitigate ideas about repeating things like the Indian Mutiny. Thus, when the European troops were getting Magazine Lee-Enfields, their native charges would get Martini-Enfields. Firing the same cartridge, still accurate, but only one shot at a time instead of the 10 rounds whitey had in their magazines. FWIW, around the turn of the century they phased out the policy and just gave everyone the same rifles - but European soldiers still got more ammunition until around WWI.
The Martini-Enfields were also extensively used in places like Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada where the Colonial police forces and the like used them, as well as volunteer units (back in the days when being a white male aged 15-40 pretty much automatically meant you were nominally responsible for aiding in the country’s defence). Lots of them were sold on the civilian market as hunting rifles, so like I said, they were certainly accurate - just don’t expect 1" groups from them.
I could spent ages going into more detail but usually when I start talking about old British military rifles people’s eyes glaze over, so that’s probably enough on the subject for one post. 
It was basically a holdover from the days of inaccurate smoothbores, as I understand it. And for the sort of fighting the British were doing in their Colonial adventures, massed volley fire was indeed effective.
One of the reasons the British got such a shock during the Boer War was because instead of coming to them in some sort of charge (or orderly fashion), their opponents basically scattered into the Veldt and picked them off one by one with rifles that outranged theirs and were more accurate (although once the British switched to Spitzer projectiles the range and accuracy difference was less pronounced).
“I could speng ages going into more detail but usually when I start talking about old British military rifles people’s eyes glaze over, so that’s probably enough on the subject for one post.”
Quite liking this. I am quite difficult to bore with that type of information. I once read a book by Martin van Creveld titled: Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. Yes, a whole book on logistics.
I can see how the Boer tactics would have changed the practice of shooting in volley fire and tight ranks. Volley fire and tight ranks must make a unit easier to command. Volley fire means you don’t have dozens of guns going off every second, drowning out orders. The officers also have everyone close to each other and orderly to move/observe/hear/relay orders. If you’re only fighting people who primarily engage in melee, there’s no significant cost to tight ranks and there is a significant advantage if they do succeed in closing in to melee.
The Stg-44 fired a 7.92 round just like the Karabiner 98k, but the Stg-44 round was a shortened less hot version.
There’s a huge difference between the 7.62 NATO and the 7.62x39- they’re nominally the same diameter, but the NATO round is essentially a full-house round with similar ballistics to the .30-06 or .303 or 7.62x54R rifles.
The 7.62x39 on the other hand is more like a .30-30 than anything else. You can actually fire a AK-47 on full-auto, while it’s pretty laughable that anyone could fire a M14 or FAL on full-auto and keep it anywhere close to on target.
During WWII, after my folks got married, my Dad moved out of the BOQ and they rented a room in Fayetteville, NC, taking the bus every morning into Fort Bragg, where my Mom had gotten a typist job.
At some point along the road, there was a line of earthen embankments that stretched out in a straight line . Frequently, on the trip in or the trip home, my Dad would express surprise at their placement and wonder what they could have been. Each time, my Mom said, “Well, they are probably fortifications from the Civil War.” Dad would shake his head, point to the creek at the end of the line, and say “That makes no sense. Anyone could send troops down that creek where the line ends and enfilade the whole position.” Finally, after arguing the point for a couple of weeks, they asked the bus driver what the mounds were. The driver replied that they had thrown those up to stop Sherman marching back up from Georgia, but that when “the dam’yankees got there, the sum’bitches came down the creek bed and shot the hell out of our boys.”
I only hope that they were thrown up by local militia who didn’t know any better and not some officer who should have known better.
Personally, I think that sounds like a fascinating book. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it!
It wasn’t just the Boers, it must be said. There’d been a gradual evolution from the mid-19th century onwards but the impetus was really things like the First Afghan War (If you remember your Sherlock Holmes, the fictional Dr Watson was a veteran of this campaign, complete with Jezzail bullet in his leg), the numerous campaigns on the Subcontinent, the pasting the British got at Isandhlwana in 1879, the Mahdist campaign (where Chinese Gordon was killed defending Khartoum and Winston Churchull later fought), the Maori Wars (The Maoris were famous and accomplished guerrilla fighters), and so on that led to a gradual shift from ranked volley fire to soldiers engaging individual targets. The transition really wasn’t complete until WWI in many respects.
The Boer War was (as far as I can tell) the first protracted war the British had fought against another (nominally) European country since the Crimean War concluded in 1856, and (one of) the first since the Indian Mutiny where they’d fought against soldiers with access to (more or less) the same equipment as them - and the ability to use it effectively.
There’d basically been nearly 50 years of Epic Win* using a certain set of tactics (Which involved employing cartridge-firing guns against opponents armed with muskets, clubs, pointy sticks, or pieces of fresh fruit) and not a great deal of reason to change the formula until their opponents suddenly got their hands on useful quantities of repeating rifles and the know-how to use them properly.
You can imagine what happened when machine-guns (rate of fire: approximately 600 rounds a minute) arrived** - in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 involved about 25,000 British and Egyptian soldiers facing off against 52,000 Mahdists. The Anglo-Egyptian forces had Maxim guns and artillery; the Mahdists did not. Final score: 10,000 dead Mahdists and another 18,000 wounded or captured, with the Anglo-Egyptian side suffering 47 deaths and about 400 wounded.
It was this sort of outcome which convinced the British that whatever they were doing was working (from a tactics point of view), and why they were so thoroughly unprepared to fight people whose idea of warfare involved hiding in rocks a mile away and shooting at them, and not obligingly charging at the Thin Red Line en masse.
The main point of volley fire was to get a lot of lead heading in your opponent’s direction and to keep a constant rate of fire. In an era where two shots a minute was about the best you could expect from a musket (even a good one like a Pattern 1853 Enfield), being able to have multiple ranks keeping up a more or less continuous rate of fare was a vital thing for an army to do.
It’s also easier to train troops to volley fire. Pretty much anyone can point a boom-stick forwards and pull the trigger, then go through a drilled set of moves to reload. Actually teaching people how to aim, how to adjust for distance and wind, pulling the trigger evenly, not flinching, etc is a lot more work. Back In The Day it wasn’t deemed as worth it, except for specialist units.
For what it’s worth, troops using the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield were trained to fire 15 aimed shots a minute - an average of one shot every four seconds, including the time it takes to reload the magazine.
**Not counting Isandhlwana, obviously
*To approved Civilised Powers only, of course.
Second Afgan War (1878-80) - Watson would have been a bit long in the tooth if he’d been around in the 1840s 
(Flashman on the other hand made his name in the First Afgan War - the “Hero of Piper’s Fort”.)
I don’t see anyone mentioning the late 19th development of safe smokeless powder. Semi-automatic and automatic rifles would be out of operation in short order by fouling if operated with black powder.
Also, Dr. Watson took the Jezail bullet in the shoulder. British troops were engaged in Afghanistan up to WWII-the Afghans were always fighting.
As I understand it, effective commercial semi- and full-auto rifles weren’t developed until after the turn of the century (or WWI, in the case of full-auto models) but machine-guns (which were around from the 1880s) have been mentioned.
I know Mannlicher had a semi-auto rifle in the late 1880s but I don’t know how far beyond “commercially produced prototype” the design was.
In “A Study in Scarlet” Watson’s wound was in the shoulder. In “The Sign of the Four” the wound was in the leg. In other stories the location of the wound isn’t specific.
Must have been one heck of a bullet. 