The Model 1859 Sharps military rifle...

The Question:

Had the United States Army adopted the weapon for service in 1859, as it's standard infantry rifle, and the muzzle loaders cycled out of regular service entirely by the end of 1860, never to be produced again, from that point on, all U.S. contracts would be for the 1859 Sharps until something better came along (a repeater of some sort for example) how would this impact the ACW?

The Sharps had a lot going for it:

It's a breach loader with a simple falling block mechanism with a percussion cap ignition [that could also use a pellet primer feed; the feed held a stack of pellets, flipping one over, onto the nipple each time the trigger was pulled and the hammer fell. Edit: may not have been possible for the period due to complexity of the mechanism]

RoF: [8-10 shots per minute, compared to the 2-3 shots per minute of the muzzle loaders. Edit: 5-6 shots per minute possible with the paper cartridges of the time.]

Muzzle velocity: 1,200 ft/s (370 m/s), compared to the 1,000 ft/s of the average muzzle loader

Effective range: 500 yd (460 m) compared to the 200-300 yd effective range of the muzzle loaders

Maximum range: 1,000 yd (910 m). Only place the muzzle loaders produced prior to it ever matched up...sometimes.

So, what happens if the two armies that faced off at First Bull Run had been entirely equipped with these on the fateful day in spring of 1861?

Do we see a battle similar to what happened OTL or is it a far, far bloodier affair, the kind that makes both sides reconsider just what they're getting into?

What impact does it have on infantry tactics going forward?

Opinions?
 
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I suspect the 8-10 shot per minute was achieved only with metallic cartridge. Even then that must be some kind of record. The paper cartridge which was what was used in 1859 would not be quite that fast. You had to tap the gun to loosen up the powder after closing the action. 4-5 shots a minute with the paper cartridge would be more realistic. Also it would leak some gas.

Although early breechloaders had higher rates of fire, they were also much more expensive, and complex. Their advantages could be over come by modestly superior numbers. Another thing is muzzleloaders can easily fire as fast using the spit and tap method where the ramrod was not used. It was more not very safe though. The key advantage over a muzzleloader is the relative ease of firing from prone. However, this tactical edge was not exploited by military doctrine of the era.
 
Cheaper?

Could it be more of a case of converting the Springfields to breech loading? I don't know enough to say how easy this would be but must be cheaper?
 
Could it be more of a case of converting the Springfields to breech loading? I don't know enough to say how easy this would be but must be cheaper?

The first such conversion was the Allin, in 1866, which suffered from poor gas sealing and an inferior extractor; the Sharps is a superior weapon.

8-10 rounds per minute would be with metallic cartridges, first used in the Sharps in 1873; 5-6 rounds per minute would be normal with ACW era paper cartridges. Even so the Sharps can be loaded from the prone position or from horseback, unlike the Springfield.
 
I suspect the 8-10 shot per minute was achieved only with metallic cartridge. Even then that must be some kind of record. The paper cartridge which was what was used in 1859 would not be quite that fast. You had to tap the gun to loosen up the powder after closing the action. 4-5 shots a minute with the paper cartridge would be more realistic. Also it would leak some gas.

Although early breechloaders had higher rates of fire, they were also much more expensive, and complex. Their advantages could be over come by modestly superior numbers. Another thing is muzzleloaders can easily fire as fast using the spit and tap method where the ramrod was not used. It was more not very safe though. The key advantage over a muzzleloader is the relative ease of firing from prone. However, this tactical edge was not exploited by military doctrine of the era.

You may very well be right about the 8-10 shot RoF being with brass, I'm just working with the information I have handy at the moment.

Now, as to superior numbers, at First Bull Run, both sides were fairly equal in force strength and ended even in the number of troops actually engaged (about 18,000 each) plus, one would figure, first time out, both sides are sending in for their best showing, with the infantry units engaged totally fitted out with Sharps rifles.

There's where the questions arise:

How bloody does it get?

Does either side gamble and throw in their reserves even if they appear to have the opposing force seemingly where they want them, considering the carnage it took to attain that position on the field?

Lastly, in the aftermath of such a battle, which I would think stands to be far bloodier than it was OTL, how fast does military doctrine of the day fly right out the window, with surviving officers going back to their respective headquarters and passing on the new reality of the battlefield?

It's not hard to imagine the surviving officers taking one look at their losses and realizing that the current military doctrine has just become antiquated in a single afternoon.

If it produces a level of carnage even on the side of the victor that is simply unsustainable both in terms of it's effects on troop morale and (especially in the Confederacy's case) of chewing up manpower, both sides are throwing out the old text books and writing new ones.

On the double quick.

There may end up being more than a few innovations in the heat of battle that form the basis for the "new warfare" as officers desperately try and keep their men alive, and the commanders trying to keep their armies from being torn to pieces in one afternoon.

Of course, "Hit the Deck!" Jackson doesn't have the same ring to it as "Stonewall", now does it?:)

That's presuming he survives the engagement. If the soldier who got his finger in OTL gets a faster second shot off lower and to the right, (or just a more accurate first shot) ...well, AH.com would have to find a new poster boy for "Victory Disease", I suppose.:eek:

Personally, I don't even want to think about what kind of carnage the later, larger battles would suffer without a change in doctrine following such an initial engagement.

The Seven Days, Second Manassas or Antietam, Gettysburg, if the war lasts that long, which it probably wouldn't if the generals were still stupid enough to use tactics and doctrine that died with so many men in the opening battle of the war.

If doctrine changes...we probably get a pretty good look at trench warfare about half a century sooner than OTL, which would be quite interesting to say the least.
 
The first such conversion was the Allin, in 1866, which suffered from poor gas sealing and an inferior extractor; the Sharps is a superior weapon.

8-10 rounds per minute would be with metallic cartridges, first used in the Sharps in 1873; 5-6 rounds per minute would be normal with ACW era paper cartridges. Even so the Sharps can be loaded from the prone position or from horseback, unlike the Springfield.

5-6 rounds per minute over 2-3 for a muzzle loader I'd have to think changes everything right there.

While the two armies may march into Manassas ready to deploy with the doctrine of the era, that doctrine is going to break down very quickly in the new reality presented by the change in technology.

2-3 rounds per minute were producing ugly numbers as it was OTL.

5-6 is going to produce doctrine changing casualties after the first major engagement; the thing would be an utter bloodbath under such conditions, using the doctrine of the day.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Ignoring other issues, there is one pressing concern. How do we build these weapons? They are much more complicated than a Springfield and very roughly you're cutting output by a factor of 4 or 5.

Now I can certainly see the carbine getting adopted by the cavalry. This was the contemporary trend. The British had already acquired the P1855 Sharps carbine* and they were carried by the 2nd Dragoon Guards, 7th Hussars and 8th Hussars during the 1857-8 Jihad in India. The infantry though, it's asking a lot. I'm fairly sure that the US couldn't build enough to equip the large volunteer force, and may have had to adopt one of the suggested approaches of only giving them to the flank companies and leaving the battalion companies with old smoothbores etc.


* They'd been trying to acquire a breechloader since the 1840's. They came close to adopting an improved version of the Dreyse in 1849, but the problems with the weapon were too great. The improvements the British made were largely incorporated into the M1862 Dreyse, a significantly better weapon than the M1848.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
5-6 rounds per minute over 2-3 for a muzzle loader I'd have to think changes everything right there.

While the two armies may march into Manassas ready to deploy with the doctrine of the era, that doctrine is going to break down very quickly in the new reality presented by the change in technology.

2-3 rounds per minute were producing ugly numbers as it was OTL.

5-6 is going to produce doctrine changing casualties after the first major engagement; the thing would be an utter bloodbath under such conditions, using the doctrine of the day.

This is only in theory. The average rate of fire with the Rifle-Musket on ACW battlefields was one round every 2.1 minutes (see Hess, The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat - especially table 4.2).

More interestingly, Mark Barloon's research could find no statistic difference in combat outcome in ACW combat based on the weapon - smoothbore, rifle musket and breechloader.

If you dig down to the core of the issue it is that soldiers in the ACW did not apply their fire properly. It is unaimed (for psychological reasons, see Grossman) usually against an unseen opponent (due to the instant smokescreen the first volley throws up). The bulk of the firepower was generated by crew served weapons (i.e. artillery) for the same reasons as they were in WW2 (see Marshall)
 
Ignoring other issues, there is one pressing concern. How do we build these weapons? They are much more complicated than a Springfield and very roughly you're cutting output by a factor of 4 or 5.

Now I can certainly see the carbine getting adopted by the cavalry. This was the contemporary trend. The British had already acquired the P1855 Sharps carbine* and they were carried by the 2nd Dragoon Guards, 7th Hussars and 8th Hussars during the 1857-8 Jihad in India. The infantry though, it's asking a lot. I'm fairly sure that the US couldn't build enough to equip the large volunteer force, and may have had to adopt one of the suggested approaches of only giving them to the flank companies and leaving the battalion companies with old smoothbores etc.


* They'd been trying to acquire a breechloader since the 1840's. They came close to adopting an improved version of the Dreyse in 1849, but the problems with the weapon were too great. The improvements the British made were largely incorporated into the M1862 Dreyse, a significantly better weapon than the M1848.

Sometimes, a thought exercise is just a thought exercise.

This is only in theory. The average rate of fire with the Rifle-Musket on ACW battlefields was one round every 2.1 minutes (see Hess, The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat - especially table 4.2).

More interestingly, Mark Barloon's research could find no statistic difference in combat outcome in ACW combat based on the weapon - smoothbore, rifle musket and breechloader.

If you dig down to the core of the issue it is that soldiers in the ACW did not apply their fire properly. It is unaimed (for psychological reasons, see Grossman) usually against an unseen opponent (due to the instant smokescreen the first volley throws up). The bulk of the firepower was generated by crew served weapons (i.e. artillery) for the same reasons as they were in WW2 (see Marshall)

See, this is the purpose of the thread.

Now I have something useful to read on the subject.

Thanks.:cool:
 
This is only in theory. The average rate of fire with the Rifle-Musket on ACW battlefields was one round every 2.1 minutes (see Hess, The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat - especially table 4.2).

You're still using Mr. Voodoo Ballistics?


"The author has somehow come to the conclusion that the percentage of casualties suffered in a battle, when both sides have the SAME type of arms, tells you how effective DIFFERENT weapons are. Since the percentage of forces killed and wounded in battle didn't much changed over the years from the introduction of bayoneted muskets to rifle-muskets, he thinks the weapons must be equally lethal, and there was no point in issuing rifles to Civil War troops. The problem is, battles that Prof. Hess himself cites in classical times were even more lethal at time. Therefore, we should conclude that anyone who had had the vision to arm his troops with swords and bronze armor would have rolled over his opponents. "

"Another problem with this book is that much of it centers around ballistics, a subject the Professor has absolutely no understanding of."

"Hess mistakes tactics for weapon capability."

"Hess is highly selective of evidence. For instance, he uses Coggins's diagram on the bottom of pp. 38-39, but ignores one on the top of those two pages, and the accompanying text, which say that the rifled musket was much more effective than the smoothbore musket at ranges over 100 yards. He cites the egregious Paddy Griffith as an authority, mentioning his Battle Tactics of the Civil War (Yale Nota Bene), also known as Rally Once Again, but doesn't mention Griffith's conclusion that the average range of infantry firing in the War of the Rebellion was 120 yards early in the war, increasing to 180 in the last year or so."

"Hess's book is an interesting compendium of anecdotes about Civil War soldiers' relationships to their weapons. It is based on a diligent survey of original and second source literature. It is, however, based on little understanding of actual firearms. Hess also seems to lack an understanding of real world military technique, except as described by others."

"Hess reviews the butcher bills of Civil War, Revolutionary, and Napoleonic battles, and compares the casualty rates. But without an analysis, even a superficial analysis, of what caused these casualties, the raw numbers mean little. Livy reported that 45,500 foot soldiers were killed at Canae. Does that imply that the sword and spear were superior to the machineguns and artillery of The Somme?"

"We know that on the battlefield soldiers with smoothbores (mostly Confederates) quickly swapped them for rifles. Just as they prefered breach loaders and repeaters. Hess claims that smoothbores were just as effective as rifles. I guess those soldiers hadn't read this book."

[FONT=&quot]"This is a reasonably interesting book except for one error. Unfortunately this error is one of the major points made by the author. He notes that "bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores" I wish he had let us all in on what kind of miraculous trajectory is followed by the ball fired from a smoothbore musket. ALL ballistic projectiles follow a parabolic trajectory."[/FONT]
 
It is unaimed (for psychological reasons, see Grossman)

A few excepts from a review.

"His assumption that people are somehow inherently predisposed not to kill each other and only do so with great mental conditioning leading to psychological harm flies in the face of the obvious lessons of history. A reading of history suggests our ancestors often waged aggressive and enthusiastic war with little trouble. Even more importantly, they did not need video games or death metal to encourage them to do it."

"The author also asserts that the reason thrusts with a sword are not used much is related to some psycho-sexual mental block. This only proves he has little concept of weapons through the ages, not to say the fact that he has never seriously used one. He also fails to comment on the development of specialized thrusting weapons in the late middle ages or the development of rapiers. That these weapons were used for several hundred years and thrusting the accepted technique for inflicting damage shows a poor understanding of swords, not to say weapons of the past in general. I wonder how he addresses the spear, the most common weapon for thousands of years? "

"Even more troubling is his use of SLA Marshall's work Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command to justify many of his positions. He quotes Marshall's famous firing rate: less than twenty-five percent of a unit would engage in combat with the enemy. The first problem is: He ignores Marshall's reason for this occurring. Marshall felt a lot of this had to do with the way soldiers were trained - only to fire their weapon if they could see a target."

"Finally, when he is given information that runs contrary to his views, he glosses over it or attempts to make it fit his conclusions."

"Grossman did do a service in pointing out the importance of the topic. His arguments and conclusion, however, are flawed and poorly thought out."
 
Ignoring other issues, there is one pressing concern. How do we build these weapons? They are much more complicated than a Springfield and very roughly you're cutting output by a factor of 4 or 5.

the problem isn't building them, it's getting DC to spend the money on the military. Having fought no major wars against a real military power since the Mexican war, the feds put little money (or thought) into the army since then, letting equipment grow continually older. When the ACW started, both sides scrambled to find enough weapons (any weapons) to arm the troops, importing lots from France and Britain. About the only way you'd get the Feds to adopt the Sharps would be to have some kind of a big war scare with a real military power, something that was a huge threat (one of the major European powers, maybe), thus kicking them into upgrading the army...
 

iddt3

Donor
I remember reading at some point that smoothbore muskets using buck and ball were actually more effective during the civil war because of the tactics used (massed volley fire). It was a while back and I don't have a source for it, but it rings true. However mass use of Sharps Rifles would probably 1. Advantage the Union, because they have the production capacity to actually make them, and 2. Force innovations in tactics sooner. Perhaps a War Scare with GB or someone causes the Government in Washington to decide the Army needs an upgrade, and to actually invest the resources necessary?
 
Methinks building these things is going to be a poroblöem. IIRC both sides imported arms at the beginning of the ACW to equip a larger number of men than they had the short-term capability to produce rifles for. That is with war powers and free spending on such things. In 1859, with purse-strings peacetime-tight, can the US government find the capacity to replace its entire inventory of rifles in a year? I doubt it.
 
The Union wins the war in three years or less as the Confederate wunderkinder with their ammunition can't match breechloaders and the Grant-Sherman school uses them to more devastating than OTL effect in the West, pushing the war to a victorious conclusion faster. At the crude level a war where the primary weapon requires a surplus of production favors the side with factories over the side without them, and as the Confederacy can't emphasize rifles over say, artillery......
 
I wouldn't take anything Tigers says too seriously. This a guy who thinks Little Mac was a great general when he was about as brave as Sir Robin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFefppqEtE

That's unfair to McClellan. He was brave and competent at maneuver, he had Braxton Bragg's degree of difficulty in translating concept to action without a Chickamauga to show he could do things right at least once. McClellan also failed to understand that war means fighting, fighting means killing, and that the enemy would do at least something to preserve its capital before he besieged it, and when Little Mac got an idea he never let little things like reality get in his way.

In this sense he really is the most World War I-esque general of the ACW. ;):p
 

67th Tigers

Banned
McClellan also failed to understand that war means fighting, fighting means killing,

No, he understood that killing was necessary. It is not however desirable. Like all officers of the time he was steeped in Jomini and maneuverist doctrines. Hence we get fluid campaigns of maneuver which are ignored because they never involved huge and exciting battles (TM).

and that the enemy would do at least something to preserve its capital before he besieged it, and when Little Mac got an idea he never let little things like reality get in his way.

I think you'll find he was expecting them to do exactly what they did - concentrate everything at the schwerpunkt, and was calling on the Union to do the same (from whence much of the criticism of him derives).

In this sense he really is the most World War I-esque general of the ACW. ;):p

No I am at a loss. Surely Grant and his perchant for futile attacks against entrenchments is far more of a "donkey" in the Clarkist sense (although I don't subscribe to Clark's theories).
 
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