Trench Warfare and the Civil War

Events up to 1861
1816: James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, begins designing a multi-barrel gun. It can fire ata bout 125 round per minute.

1817: The Watt Gun is first produced. It has 6 barells, with two hoppers feeding the gun (one for bullets and one for percussion caps). This gun is not parctical.

1820-1854: Various inventors redesign the Watt Gun to some extent. By 1854, the latest 'design' is lighter and is tripod mounted.

1842-1859: Breech-loading rifles begin to appear in European armies. The US Army adaopts the Dreyse Needle Gun in 1852. Colt gets a liscense to build this gun in America. Horace Smith begins work on what he calls an 'automatic rifle'. This new rifle is hopper feed and hand-cranked, and has one barrel.

1855: Horace Smith begins redesigning the Watt Gun. His new gun will be lighter, with 4 barrels, and fed through one hopper. Richard Gatling takes over Smith's work when it becomes too demanding.

1856: The first Gattling gun is produced. It can fire at an austonishing rate of fire of 350 rounds! The US Army is impresses, and begins to order them in numbers, from Springfield and Harpers Ferry.

1857: The first Smith sub-Gatling gun design is submitted. It is hopper-fed, and is hand-cranked. It can fire up to 175 rounds per minute on the best days. The US Army orders 45 guns for testing.

1861
April 12: The Civil War begins when Confederate Gun boats fire on Fort Sumpter. All through the night, the Fort is shelled, but not stormed.

April 13: Confederate Army forces finally enter Fort Sumpter. The are met with fire from Gatling guns and two Smith Guns. Eventually, after 14 hours of fighting, the Confederate forces capture the Fort.
Also, Harpers Ferry is captured by Confederate forces. Producation of Gatling guns increases as much as possible.

April 15: First Battle of Manassas. 5,000 Union soldiers and 9,000 Confederate soldiers die in this battle. The Union has constructed several shallow trenches, and the the Confederacy takes massive losses. Eventually, the Confederacy breaks through at a high price.

October 15: After 7 months of stalemating, due to both sides digging and re-enforcing their positions, Federal forces launch Operation Titan. 100,000 soldiers push towards Confederate positions, supplemented by Gatling guns and a few Wesson (ex-Smith) guns.

October 16: Operation Titan stops after just 6 miles of territory is taken with bitter fighting. Apparentley, Pinkerton and his agents underestimated the size of the Confederate Army. President Lincoln orders the Operation Titan is to be suspened.
At both sides armories, production of guns (most noteable Gattling and Wesson) increases.

November 9: Confederate forces push towards Washington. Their advance, like some many other through out this whole war, stalls and stops completley short of their objective.

November 11: West Texas breaks away from the rest of Texas, and forms the territory of Sequyah. The Confederacy sends 8,000 soldiers into Sequyah, but Union and Sequyian soldiers stop the advance.

November 15: Blockade of the Confederate coastline begins. The break this blockade, three new weapons are conveived. The first it the CSS Virginia, and ironclad warship; an underwater "gun" that uses compresed air to fire a projectile; and the world's first submarine.

November 17: The US lays down the USS Monitor designed by John Ericksson.

December 3: The Spencer automatic carbine, or auto-carb, is designed. It is feed through a 50 round drum placed in the middle of the gun, like a revolver. To reload, the gunner swings open the drum, and pops out all empty shells. Then, the soldier can either fit all 50 rounds in at once, or use 5 or 10 round easy loader. After much though, the designers instead design a gun that is fed through a 30-round stick, and shells are ejected by a special spring.
 
Why would West Texas break away and form the state of Sequyah? Are there alot of Cherokee Indians living there? Sequoyah was the suggested name for a state formed by breaking the Indian Territory into two states for admission. The name was suggested by the indians themselves, I don't think any white people of the 1860s are going to agree to naming their state after an indian.

I think it far more likely that Watt would have settled for a rate of fire of 50 (or less) rounds per minute in 1816.
 
IIRC WV was Aplalchia but the US Gov't pushed for WV for propaganda reasons.
Gatling didn't invent his Gattling till 63~63 and the Union Surrpressed it as Gattling was a Southerner and they were scared of Him taking it south. ?What caused a 7 year advance here? And I think you are underestimating the shere Bureaucratic problems in adopting new weapons, pre war sistuation.
 
Trench warfare in 1860 US.

To get trench warfare you need a reason that trenches can't be taken by storm or maneuver.
1. Rapid fire weapons common.
2. Large armies that prohibit flank attacks
Neither case was close to true in the civil war. They did have repeaters but they used gunpowder and fouled quickly. Gatling guns had multiple barrels and were somewhat resistent to fouling, but weren't enough by themselves. Smokeless powder would have enabled automatic weapons.
But there was no way that the US with 1/5 Europe's population could have manned a trench line that was five times as long. Not gonna happen.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Hmmm, well you did get trench warfare all around Richmond and pretty horrendous it was too. Admittedly this was at the end of the war but it meets Walter's requirements. It was not IN ITSELF new - eg Sevastopol had seen similar developments. But it was clearly new in its extent and new in the ACW at this level

Grey Wolf
 
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