CSA Adopts Whitworth Armaments System

Delta Force

Banned
Joseph Whitworth was a British inventor who made his fortune by developing techniques for producing high precision surfaces. He also developed hexagonal barrels and ammunition for rifles and artillery (even testing an 80 pounder cannon), but they were not adopted by the British military because Enfield rifles cost for times less and Armstrong artillery was favored. His weapons did have significantly greater accuracy and range compared to their contemporaries (comparable to rifles and artillery decades later), and a few rifles and artillery pieces saw service in the American Civil War.

My question is what kind of impact there could have been on the war if Whitworth's armaments had been more widely adopted by the CSA, such as the CSA purchasing the machinery for the Whitworth rifles and 12 pounder cannons (no one else was buying the weapons so it is not like the British military would have any grounds to protest) and financing the development of larger cannons for their forces. Perhaps they could also purchase machine tools from his machinery business to allow for hexagonal rifling to be applied to other designs being produced?

As for getting the machinery itself through the blockade, that can be handwaved for the purposes of this.

Here is a link to some contemporary reporting on tests of his artillery weapons:
http://www.nytimes.com/1860/03/21/n...hitworth-s-newly-invented-breach-loading.html
 
The expense issue is an even bigger problem for the CSA than Britain, so I don't see this working out well.

Plus, is the level of production high enough? Even if the CSA purchases manufacturing equipment, equipping tens of (or hundreds of) thousands of men is going to be hard.
 

Delta Force

Banned
The CSA imported a good chunk of its weapons from Europe at a premium (the CSA government competed with private intrests for space on blockade runners), so the cost of domestic armaments might be more competitive. I am not sure how much production of Whitworths the CSA could have, but production in the tens of thousands seems likely. Whitworth was an industrialist and inventor who owned other factories so he could do research, machinery production, and export production all in house.
 
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The CSA imported a good chunk of its weapons from Europe at a premium (the CSA government competed with private intrests for space on blockade runners), so the cost of domestic armaments might be more competative. I am not sure how much production of Whitworths the CSA could have, but production in the tens of thousands seems likely. Whitworth was an industrialist and inventor who owned other factories so he could do research, machinery production, and export production all in house.

But as you stated in your first post, the Enfield is a fourth of the price of the Whitworth - how much different is when importing? And production in the tents of thousands would not be easy.

Meanwhile, a couple other notes:

(fist one is from the wikipedia article)
f
"While the trials were generally a success for the Whitworth rifle, the British government ultimately rejected the design because the Whitworth's barrel was much more prone to fouling than the Enfield, and the Whitworth rifle also cost approximately four times as much to manufacture. "

That's going to be a major deterrent to wide spread use - by both riflemen and officers.


Second, the Whtiworth needs special (not even close to standard caliber) ammunition - which is another thing that needs to be produced and issued.

If the CSA could give every rifleman a Whitworth or knock off that's one thing, but it makes capturing enemy ammunition virtually useless, and having some men armed with Whitworths and others with Enfields or Springfields or the Richmond knock offs or any of the other options - not a good situation.

I think this would easily turn into a white elephant situation if no worse, rather than better the CSA's chances.
 
I see things going worse for the CSA as they can't afford it. Things might go better for the Union if it uses it because the Union CAN afford it.
 
The CSA did import a lot of Whitworths. They are issued to sharpshooters. no one is sure how many were issued but a lot of cartridges for them were found on battle fields.
It was good for sharp shooters.
it would mean that capture union ammo would not be of much use.
I do not think it would have made a big enough difference to change the war.
The only thing that could have changed the war in my opinion would be for the union blockade to have been stopped allowing the normal import export trade for the CSA ports.

"
In 1860, the British National Rifle Association held its first annual meeting at Wimbledon. Queen Victoria fired the first shot from a Whitworth rifle on a machine rest at 400 yards, and struck the bull's-eye 1-1/4 inch from its center.[3]
Britain was officially neutral during the American Civil War. However, private arms manufacturers were not required to remain neutral, the Whitworth Rifle Company, for example sold the rifle to the Confederacy. The Confederate soldiers that used these rifles were referred to as Whitworth Sharpshooters. They accompanied regular infantrymen, and were usually used to eliminate Union artillery gun crews.
According to popular accounts, on May 9, 1864, during the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Union General John Sedgwick was chiding some of his troops for lying down in a ditch to avoid Confederate sharpshooters at a range of around 800 to 1000 yards. Shots from Confederate Whitworth rifles, easily identifiable due to the shrill whistling noises their hexagonal bullets made in flight, caused members of his staff and artillerymen to duck for cover. Sedgwick strode around in the open and was quoted as saying, "What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." Although ashamed, his men continued to flinch and he repeated, "I'm ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." Just seconds later he fell forward with a bullet hole below his left eye. At least five confederate soldiers would later claim that they had fired the fatal shot.
Earlier during the war, the Whitworth was responsible for another high-ranking death. On Sept 19, 1863, at the Battle of Chickamauga, an unnamed Confederate sharpshooter mortally wounded Union General William Lytle, who was leading a charge at the time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitworth_rifle
4596625_orig.jpg

The .451 Caliber Whitworth Hexagonal Bore Rifle
http://www.namlhunt.com/traditionalmldata4.html
 
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The CSA doesn't have the existing industrial basis to make this worthwhile. Nor does it have the financial basis to purchase more expensive rifles in smaller quantities when it can get much less expensive ones in greater quantities.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
This would have been a disaster for the Confederacy and probably resulted in the war ending two years earlier than it did IOTL.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The CSA did import a lot of Whitworths. They are issued to sharpshooters. no one is sure how many were issued but a lot of cartridges for them were found on battle fields.

Relatively few, and then only to special sharpshooting companies whose job it was to pick off officers or artillery crews. Cleburne's division in the Army of Tennessee, for example, was issued only twenty Whitworth rifles, and it numbered between four and five thousand men.

Despite their much longer range, they would have been totally ineffective had they been issued to regular infantry, for they took so much longer to reload and were subject to fouling much more easily. In an open field fight, a regiment armed with Enfields or Springfields would cut a regiment armed entirely with Whitworths to pieces inside of five minutes due to their superior rate of fire.
 
The CSA had virtually no industry at the start of the ACW & what it developed during the war was minimal, and always under the threat of being overrun by Union troops. Given the fact that manufacturing Whitworth rifles was a more technically difficult procedure than the others used, there is no way the CSA would have either the facilities or the skilled labor to produce these arms. Production of all types of firearms during the ACW by the CSA was minimal. Absent arms purchases from Europe, arms acquired from federal arsenals at the beginning of the war, and captured weapons, the CSA would have been unable to provide firearms to its troops. As other posters have said, captured ammunition was also very important - useless for Whitworth.

Putting aside issues of fouling and speed of loading, the CSA had it adopted this weapon would have been 100% dependent on imported rifles and ammunition - making it impossible for them to get enough to arm troops. There was also no way they could afford to buy that many rifles even at the normal price, let alone 4x/unit.
 
Relatively few, and then only to special sharpshooting companies whose job it was to pick off officers or artillery crews. Cleburne's division in the Army of Tennessee, for example, was issued only twenty Whitworth rifles, and it numbered between four and five thousand men.

Despite their much longer range, they would have been totally ineffective had they been issued to regular infantry, for they took so much longer to reload and were subject to fouling much more easily. In an open field fight, a regiment armed with Enfields or Springfields would cut a regiment armed entirely with Whitworths to pieces inside of five minutes due to their superior rate of fire.

I agree only useful for sharpshooters.
The CSA had lot bigger problems than that rifle and cannons they used.
 
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Delta Force

Banned
What about modifying or improving the M1819 Hall rifle instead?

Modified as a rifled breechloading cartridge gun perhaps? The design is rather unique so I am not sure if it would be able to be modified to use a hammer design and rimfire cartridges or if it would only be able to use cartridges containing the bullet and powder (still using the old caplock system). The CSA had problems with brass supply so it would probably prefer paper cartridges anyways.
 
I don't think the CSA could have used it on a wide scale during the war itself but there is the possibility of a victorious Confederacy making use of Whitworth's rifling system when they try to standardize and modernize postwar in a CSA victory scenario.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
It is probably worth pointing out that for the majority of the ACW the Confederacy had the best general use infantry weapon and in fairly large numbers. They had upwards of 500,000 No 1 Enfields (all made with interchangable parts). The Union got hold of around 300,000 Enfields, nearly all of them No 2s (knock-offs of No 1s that were hand fettled together without interchangable parts). It is not until quite late in the war that Union production of Springfields is sufficient to put large numbers on the battlefield. Even then they are not quite as good as a No 1, but close, they are however better than a No 2. Any of the three weapons described above is more useful as a general use infantry weapon than a Whitworth. This is not to say a hundred thousand more could not have been used to very good effect by the Confederacy.

The Union which had a lot of experience with both machine tools and gunmaking had trouble building enough Springfields during war. To expect the Confederacy which has little experience in machine tools to produce similarly large quantities of a much more complex weapon is unreasonable. This is without addressing the important issue of metalurgy.

Whitworth field pieces are much more interesting. A few hundred more of them and a secure supply of shell would put the Union artillery at a grave disadvantage. They outrange the Union field guns by a margin, even the newer rifles, they are far more accurate and they are more devastating. However, there is no way the Confederacy would be up to producing them even with onsite technical assistance from the Whitworth company. They might supply shells for them.

I suspect even the Whitworth company itself would struggle producing them in the sort of numbers the Confederacy might require, at least initially. They are very high tech items for the high Victorian period even more complex to manufacture than an Armstrong gun and most steam engines!

If the Confederacy were to be able to purchase say 500 of these guns the effect on the battlefield would be impressive but so too would the effect on the economy, the cost of these guns was many tens of times that of a home cast bronze Napoleon pattern weapon.
 
Remember when it comes to CSA purchases in Europe they were to a large extent credit financed. Promissory notes, cotton bonds, Confederate currency etc - the CSA had as close to zero hard currency (gold/silver) available, basically whatever US hard currency was in the south at the start of the war, and this was not in government hands but spread out amongst the populace. Selling anything based on this sort of credit/collateral was a bet the CSA would win, and at the beginning of the ACW things were very unsettled, and of course by late 1863 this was a bet you'd only take on long odds (or significant discount on face value of the bond). There was about an 18 month window where selling to the CSA for anything other than valuta was not relatively nuts.

The CSA had to get maximum value for its dollar, and purchasing weapons (and ammunition) at 4x the cost of "standard", is simply not doable as none of these weapons would be war winners (not like they were buying AK-47's & 155mm howitzers).
 
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