Category: Arms & Armament
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Origin of “sharpshooter”
When giving presentations I am often asked if the term “sharpshooter” has anything to do with the Sharps rifle. A persistent story attaches it to Berdan’s Sharpshooters, who with their Sharps rifles were then (so the story goes) called “Sharps shooters,” and later just sharpshooters. Trouble is, it’s not true, any more than is the […]
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Finding the Range
Range estimation was a critical skill for the Civil War sharpshooter. The low muzzle velocity of black powder rifles (less than half of what is common today) meant that the bullet traveled in a high arc rather than on a flat trajectory. One manual of the day warned that if a riflemen fired an Enfield […]
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Bullets and Lethality
Finnish firearms expert P. T. Kekkonen ran a web site, “Gunwriter’s Questions and Answers” where he addressed various gun-related issues. Unfortunately Kekkonen passed away, but his site remains. If you scroll down a bit, he goes into a lengthy and quite interesting account of bullet design from round ball to the modern full metal jacket. […]
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An Explosive Proposition
A gentleman on a discussion group I visited recently assured one and all that the Confederacy would never, nevah! use explosive bullets. Actually they did, on at least on one occasion. The Jacob’s rifle, mentioned previously, was capable of firing a bullet with an insert of fulminate of mercury, which would explode on impact up […]
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The Jacob’s Rifle
Brigadier-General John Jacob One of the more unusual sharpshooter rifles was the Jacob’s, the brainchild of John Jacob, one of those brilliant, eccentric British Army officers who spent his career in India. He had spent 25 years improving rifled firearms, carrying on experiments unrivalled even by public bodies. A range of 200 yards sufficed in […]
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The Rifle Archive
During a discussion about the bore diameter of the Jacob’s rifle (about which I will have more to say later), Bill Adams got carried away with his micrometer and checked a number of other rifles, Enfields and Lorenzes, as well. The results, as you can see below, were rather surprising. Keep in mind that quality […]
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Sharpshooter Ammo and Pouches
I’ve always said that one of the most difficult jobs of the war was that of the Confederate ordnance officer. It was not unusual, especially early in the war, to have units armed with two or even three different types and calibers of weapons. Even when things more or less standardized (at least In Virginia) […]