Impact of steam driven tanks on the American Civil War?

Early tanks from OTL for examples were entirely at the mercy of contemporary field guns but by requiring field guns to be brought in to engage them directly they still performed a lot of their mission even when they did not in fact kill, maim or drive off the crew of said weapon and carry on regardless.

The M1857 12 pdr Napoleon weighed around 2500 pounds, with a six horse team and caisson.
With rifled muskets, gunners who rode towards the sound of the guns to employ the cannon, had a short life on ACW era battlefields. The gunshield for the crew was a bit in the future, though it shouldn't have been, esp. for the new breechloaders
 
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Why not make the tank out of wood? Defending against cannon fire seems like a hopeless cause at this stage. But if you had a bunch of wooden tanks that can survive shrapnel, and bullets it would be useful even as just a morale raiser. They could be armed with riflemen and light cannon.

I suppose it might be more like a mobile blockhouse but I suppose if you drove a handful towards enemy lines along with friendly infantry you would do some damage even when the engines fail.
 
Why not make the tank out of wood? Defending against cannon fire seems like a hopeless cause at this stage. But if you had a bunch of wooden tanks that can survive shrapnel, and bullets it would be useful even as just a morale raiser. They could be armed with riflemen and light cannon.

.58 Springfield could penetrate 11 inches of Pine at 200 yards, and 3.25" at 1000

So we are back to weight again, dried Yellow Pine is 36 pounds per square foot.

A bullet resistant 12"x12" steel plate at 1/4" thick is around 10 pounds
 
.58 Springfield could penetrate 11 inches of Pine at 200 yards, and 3.25" at 1000

So we are back to weight again, dried Yellow Pine is 36 pounds per square foot.

A bullet resistant 12"x12" steel plate at 1/4" thick is around 10 pounds
Oh. Never knew bullets were that good. I remember seeing mythbusters try to saw through a tree with a minigun and they had some trouble.
 
Oh. Never knew bullets were that good. I remember seeing mythbusters try to saw through a tree with a minigun and they had some trouble.

I knew a Vet(now sadly passed on) who spent time in the Hurtgen forest.

He'd opened up to me on that on occasion, and one time got to talking about the trees there

He hated them. Said that as cover, unless you couldn't link hands around the trunk, wasn't thick enough to have a chance at stopping 8mm Mauser, and trees that big would have a lot of branches above.

I asked what was the problem in that, and he said, the Germans would rain down mortar shells, shells that would explode up there and kill you with splinters, unless you were in a hole and your foxhole had some some cover ontop, like tree limbs.

But said that cover wouldn't help if a shell dropped ontop or your hole either, and a tree that big would have roots all over the place, making digging a decent foxhole almost impossible.
 
Well if your aim is to simply survive small arms fire you don't need as much armor plating as if you were trying to survive bombardment, especially if they hit upon the idea of sloped armor. And as to armament, im not sure if they were still in use at the time but a breach loading swivel gun or two would be pretty effective.

So yes, they're basically like more armored versions of the war wagons used by the hussites (or the Chinese for that matter)
 
Well if your aim is to simply survive small arms fire you don't need as much armor plating as if you were trying to survive bombardment, especially if they hit upon the idea of sloped armor. And as to armament, im not sure if they were still in use at the time but a breach loading swivel gun or two would be pretty effective.

So yes, they're basically like more armored versions of the war wagons used by the hussites (or the Chinese for that matter)

The thing is, you DO have to consider the prospect of taking a cannonball, especially considering you're building a giant, slow moving target that (unlike a mass of infantry) you can be relatively certain you can stop the advance with a few solid shots at most. If the enemy has anything in the way of cannons, they're going to quickly stumble onto the realization that prioritizing the tank will quickly and reliably neutralize the threat
 
The thing is, you DO have to consider the prospect of taking a cannonball, especially considering you're building a giant, slow moving target that (unlike a mass of infantry) you can be relatively certain you can stop the advance with a few solid shots at most. If the enemy has anything in the way of cannons, they're going to quickly stumble onto the realization that prioritizing the tank will quickly and reliably neutralize the threat
They didn't armor up tanks in that way in WWI
Tanks%203%20B.jpg.opt603x377o0%2C0s603x377.jpg

While most tanks were lost to mechanical failures, many still were hit with 77mm guns.

The real problem during the ACW, while smoothbore 12 pdrs had 'Minute of Tank' accuracy at 300 yards, Arty was in danger if exposed to rifled musket fire at 1000.

Early in the War, Cannon Cockers who tried to emulate Napoleonic tactics by moving guns up close to the front lines, ended up very dead in most cases

So the Cannons were typically in prepared positions, protected by earthworks.

So say we handwave things around, and a the CSA has a few 'Land Ironclads' at Gettysburg

They will be a magnet for Union Artillerymen, and most will be knocked out.

But while they are shooting at the Confederate Turtles, they can't be shooting at Pickett's men
 
They didn't armor up tanks in that way in WWI
Tanks%203%20B.jpg.opt603x377o0%2C0s603x377.jpg

While most tanks were lost to mechanical failures, many still were hit with 77mm guns.

The real problem during the ACW, while smoothbore 12 pdrs had 'Minute of Tank' accuracy at 300 yards, Arty was in danger if exposed to rifled musket fire at 1000.

Early in the War, Cannon Cockers who tried to emulate Napoleonic tactics by moving guns up close to the front lines, ended up very dead in most cases

So the Cannons were typically in prepared positions, protected by earthworks.

So say we handwave things around, and a the CSA has a few 'Land Ironclads' at Gettysburg

They will be a magnet for Union Artillerymen, and most will be knocked out.

But while they are shooting at the Confederate Turtles, they can't be shooting at Pickett's men

There's the rub though: you can handwave in those Land Ironclads if you want, but even assuming they'd be worth spit on terrain like the rough hills and gullies arouhd Gettysburg when they can barely produce enough power to propel themselves over flat ground, we can't assume they just magically materialize in a puff of smoke. Setting up the organizational and material support systems, training specialized crew , to say nothing of just building the things (itself taking up training time and wasting resources) is time, human capital, and material that isent going into something else. The Rebels are likely coming into battle with, at least, several fewer batteries of conventional artillery which is a net lose easily.
 
There's the rub though: you can handwave in those Land Ironclads if you want, but even assuming they'd be worth spit on terrain like the rough hills and gullies arouhd Gettysburg when they can barely produce enough power to propel themselves over flat ground, we can't assume they just magically materialize in a puff of smoke. Setting up the organizational and material support systems, training specialized crew , to say nothing of just building the things (itself taking up training time and wasting resources) is time, human capital, and material that isent going into something else. The Rebels are likely coming into battle with, at least, several fewer batteries of conventional artillery which is a net lose easily.

The rebels material devotion to Ironclads was apparently very high, I read something like 25% of confederate steel production was devoted to them. Of course in hindsight that looks like a waste but the view of things can be very different when the war is going on.
 
So say we handwave things around, and a the CSA has a few 'Land Ironclads' at Gettysburg

Honestly i don't think the CSA is in a position, logistically or strategically, to employ terrestrial ironclads, especially not for the Gettysburg campain where they needed that mobility. Give them tanks and battle would happen long before they reached Pennsylvania

I can see the union making tanks in a situation like Petersburg though
 
The rebels material devotion to Ironclads was apparently very high, I read something like 25% of confederate steel production was devoted to them. Of course in hindsight that looks like a waste but the view of things can be very different when the war is going on.

I fully agree, but that wasn't what I was trying to critique. It's less a matter of the motivation to reallocate resources (people make dumb decisions that take on lives of their own all the time, suck cost fallicy ect.) but that it's moving eggs from one basket to another rather than actually increasing the number of eggs, per say.
 
Like a higher-tech version of the medieval war waggon?

Basically, yes. The engines aren't going to be strong enough to use it offensively unless you're conducting a siege, so this 'tank' is quite limited, but it's very good within those limitations.

In that case, why don't you just have the infantry dig an earthwork bastion? They'd have to do alot of work and not be expecting to move much to want to have a hard defensive point anyways, so why not just add in that tiny bit of extra digging? Saves you the trouble of having to drag that thing along.

An earthwork doesn't let you drag the cannons onto the frontline, and point-blank grape shot that resists infantry fire is a terrifying thing to attack.
 
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If they have the capability to make sufficiently powerful steam engines which could be put into a viable land vehicle, would they really go with tanks/land ironclads immediately? It seems to me that artillery tractors are more likely, especially since artillery branch would like to see its heavy artillery pieces moved about much quickly, while not using so many horses, all of which need feeding and tending to.

Just a thought.
 
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