The 19th Century saw the most rapid improvement in the rifle of any comparable period in history. At the beginning of the century the exemplar of the standard arm was the smooth bore .75 cal. Brown Bess musket, and by the end we have the modern .30 cal. bolt action, box magazine repeater using smokeless powder (not to mention the Maxim gun).
The Brown Bess had the longest service life of any service arm. The design went back to the 1720s and it served in the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. Even then, the Duke of Wellington was loth to give it up for the rifle musket. Converted to percussion, some remained in service in parts of the Empire until the late 1850s.
Eventually the British Army did get around to adopting the rifle, but there was a great deal of variation in the types of rifling and intense debate on which was best. The Volunteers, a sort of self-armed, self organized militia, were a great laboratory for this, since they (at least until 1862) furnished their own weapons and also shot a great deal in long range target matches. You can click on the image for a closer look, but the first two are standard 3 and 5 groove barrels. The third is the oval bore Lancaster that I mentioned earlier. The last is also interesting, as it is similar to the Whitworth and modern “polygonal” rifling designs.
Almost all these designs used a soft lead bullet of .57-.58 caliber and very deep grooves. At the moment of firing the bullet “upset” and had its skirt forced into the grooves, which made it spin. This did cause quite a bit of friction, however, which slowed the bullet down considerably. It surprised me to learn that the initial velocity of the smooth bore musket was considerably higher than that of the rifle, 13-1500 fps as opposed to 850-900 for the rifle. Of course the round ball of the smooth bore slowed down much faster than the cylindrical bullet of the rifle musket, but over short distances it did have a a flatter trajectory. The rifle, OTOH, had a looping “rainbow” trajectory that made long distance shooting difficult. Get the range wrong and the bullet would pass considerably over your target’s head or hit well in front of him. Thus the core of most mid-century marksmanship programs was distance estimation, since it was impossible to hit anything accurately without knowing it.
Here’s an illustration of the problem—a .45-70 black powder round compared to a modern .308/7.62 NATO round. Note that it’s not really a “rainbow” trajectory. The round drops sharply at the end of its ride as its energy falls off and air resistance increases.
In the next few nights I hope to review Joe Bilby’s new book on the small arms of Gettysburg and further explore some of these topics.
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