Category: Arms & Armament
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Lore of the Sharpshooter
In my last post I discussed how photographer Alexander Gardner posed the body of a sharpshooter at Devil’s Den for a more dramatic shot, and how this became an iconic image of the war. I came across an excellent article on the Gettysburg Discussion Group site by Gary E. Adleman and Timothy H. Smith on […]
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Snipers, Sharpshooters, and Designated Marksmen
There is a great deal of confusion about the various types of riflemen and their duties, both now and in the Civil War. This is pretty obvious in a recent AP article “USMC sniper metes out swift death in Iraq.” What the author of this overwritten article is talking about is really a designated marksman, […]
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Where Did Those Rifles Go?
In my last post I looked at English match rifles, and of course this invites a comparison with the much heavier American target rifles and raises the question of why the Federals never made use of these high tech weapons. I’ll defer that one for later. Instead, I want to look at where those long […]
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English Match Rifles
English Match Rifles Last week I did a post on Sir Joseph Whitworth and how he changed long range shooting. It’s hard to exaggerate the effect his innovations had on rifle technology, and I’d rate them together as one of the major “revolutions in arms” such as the breech loader, the repeater, and smokeless powder. […]
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Sir Joe and His Fabulous Rifles
The period 1850-1900 witnessed some of the most radical changes in small arms in history. In 1850 the standard infantry weapon was still the equivalent of the Brown Bess .75 caliber smoothbore; but by 1900 we have the fully modern .30 caliber box magazine repeater (i.e. Mauser) firing smokeless powder. One of the men most […]