US Civil War fought with bolt action rifles

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What if the bolt action rifle had been invented and become widespread in time for the US Civil War? What effect would it have had on the war and would it have given the South a better chance to delay a northern victory long enough to win a peace of exhaustion?
 
What if the bolt action rifle had been invented and become widespread in time for the US Civil War? What effect would it have had on the war and would it have given the South a better chance to delay a northern victory long enough to win a peace of exhaustion?

I don't get the point of your question. Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse (1787-1867) started working on the prototype bolt action rifle in 1824. By 1836, his experiments resulted in the perfected Dreyse needle gun. "The first types of needle-gun made by Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse were muzzle-loading, the novelty lying in the long needle driven by a coiled conchoidal spring which fired the internal percussion cap on the base of the bullet. It was his adoption of the bolt-action breechloading principle combined with this igniter system which gave the rifle its military potential, allowing a much faster rate of fire." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Nikolaus_von_Dreyse and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun

The weapon was first adopted by the Prussian Army in 1848. Playing its part in the Second Schleswig War (1864) and the Austrio-Prussian War (1866). Where it proved able to provide "far more rapid fire" than the rifles the opponents used. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Schleswig_War and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Prussian_War#Armaments_and_tactics

It was effectively replaced by two more advanced bolt action rifles: The French Chassepot rifle (in use 1867-1874) and the German Mauser Model 1871 (in use 1871-1888). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chassepot and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauser_Model_1871

The United States Army reputedly rejected the use of bolt-action rifles back in the 1850s, reportedly because they were thought as "too complicated" for the average soldier.
 
More practically, the logistics of keeping them supplied would be...extremely fun.

Not impossible, but breechloaders are voracious consumers of ammunition (the not-mentioned side of "can be reloaded much faster"). For the CSA even more than the US, that would be a problem in adopting them on a large scale (assuming they can be manufactured on one).

I don't think that would balance out in the Confederacy's favor.
 
Bolt-actions I'm not sure about, maybe a brass-cartridge revolving rifle would be a better choice (Colt revolving rifles were actually tested in the war, but their tendency to chain fire* saw them rejected).

*Powder tended to leak out of the paper cartridges, and the imperfect seal between the barrel and the cylinder allowed some gas to escape, igniting the spillage and leading to the other cartridges detonating.
 
The other advantage of breechloaders is they can be reloaded while prone more easily. I don't know who would benefit from that more, but it might reduce the casualties a bit.
 
The United States Army reputedly rejected the use of bolt-action rifles back in the 1850s, reportedly because they were thought as "too complicated" for the average soldier.

Forgive me for my ignorance/stupidity, but with a bolt action rifle don't you just pull back bolt, insert bullet then push bolt back into place. I fail to see how that is more complicated than a rifled musket.

In terms of efficiency, wouldn't it be better?
 
Forgive me for my ignorance/stupidity, but with a bolt action rifle don't you just pull back bolt, insert bullet then push bolt back into place. I fail to see how that is more complicated than a rifled musket.

In terms of efficiency, wouldn't it be better?

There's more moving parts, which has implications for maintenance and training. Just my $0.02 worth.
 
Forgive me for my ignorance/stupidity, but with a bolt action rifle don't you just pull back bolt, insert bullet then push bolt back into place. I fail to see how that is more complicated than a rifled musket.

In terms of efficiency, wouldn't it be better?

Cleaning a muzzle loading rifle is very easily accomplished with no disassembly required. The process of cleaning a bolt action rifle is much more complicated and involves some disassembly and possibility of losing small parts which would render the rifle useless if incompetently done.
 
The South would not have afforded it or used it very well, the North would have had far too much fun and games with such a weapon used in a protracted offensive. The North could use them to enhance their existing numerical advantage, but the very complications of logistics for such weapons means they have to change their whole tactical-strategic concept. Winds of Fate has the North adopting Gatlings and breechloaders and I might note that a sufficiently competent Civil War general would be more than able to win with muzzle-loading rifles against a Civil War army armed with both weapons. The North would be able to afford them by 1864 when its industry was in full wartime gear, but Civil War terrain and technological levels in several occasions might actually favor the muzzleloader over the breechloader. Civil War terrain actually favored muzzleloader artillery over its rifled counterpart, the nature of wooded terrain in Virginia at least would to some extent counterbalance the greater firepower of breechloaders, as would the simple problem of shooting and missing.....
 
Forgive me for my ignorance/stupidity, but with a bolt action rifle don't you just pull back bolt, insert bullet then push bolt back into place. I fail to see how that is more complicated than a rifled musket.

In terms of efficiency, wouldn't it be better?

A rifled musket is a muzzleloader. Relatively simple to make. Any kind of breechloader requires fine tolerances for the time and finicky, expensive and prone to failure. Moreover, a bolt action really needs a metalcartridge, which was also expensive.
 
Forgive me for my ignorance/stupidity, but with a bolt action rifle don't you just pull back bolt, insert bullet then push bolt back into place. I fail to see how that is more complicated than a rifled musket.

In terms of efficiency, wouldn't it be better?

Besides the other reasons noted already, generals in particular and officers in general had a very low opinion of the average intelligence of enlisted men. Cleaning and maintaining a bolt action rifle vis a vis a muzzle-loading musket would have seemed very complicated to them, and thus beyond the intellectual capacity of front-line soldiers. Also they would have considered the higher rate of fire a drawback because the common soldier would soon rely on volume of fire rather than aimed fire. That was reportedly one reason the British and German armies were still using bolt-action rifles during WWII while the US had adopted the semi-automatic M1 Garand.
 
Besides the other reasons noted already, generals in particular and officers in general had a very low opinion of the average intelligence of enlisted men. Cleaning and maintaining a bolt action rifle vis a vis a muzzle-loading musket would have seemed very complicated to them, and thus beyond the intellectual capacity of front-line soldiers. Also they would have considered the higher rate of fire a drawback because the common soldier would soon rely on volume of fire rather than aimed fire. That was reportedly one reason the British and German armies were still using bolt-action rifles during WWII while the US had adopted the semi-automatic M1 Garand.

How much did they rely on actual aim in the days of volleys? Or is there a nuance I'm missing here?
 
Besides the other reasons noted already, generals in particular and officers in general had a very low opinion of the average intelligence of enlisted men. Cleaning and maintaining a bolt action rifle vis a vis a muzzle-loading musket would have seemed very complicated to them, and thus beyond the intellectual capacity of front-line soldiers. Also they would have considered the higher rate of fire a drawback because the common soldier would soon rely on volume of fire rather than aimed fire. That was reportedly one reason the British and German armies were still using bolt-action rifles during WWII while the US had adopted the semi-automatic M1 Garand.

In this vein it's also worth noting that the one Civil War army to make a full effort to use repeating rifles earlier on, the Army of the Cumberland, was equipped with those by William Rosecrans from 1862/3 and George H. Thomas in 1863/4. Most of the time the quantity of firepower had a slight difference except in particular moments where More Dakka sufficed to break up enemy charges in chaotic situations.

Otherwise the repeaters had more of a psychological than actual impact. The Austro-Prussian War was the first where their impact was purely military. And Elfwine, one reason for line of battle tactics in the first place was the simple quantity of firepower required to hit something. Teaching aiming and how to fire weapons happened rather seldom and was one reason that sheer quantity of ammunition was seldom a guide to quantity of people killed on the battlefield (the other, of course, was that deaths by disease were the major killers in wartime).
 
Early breechloaders also had reliability issues - the needleguns provide a fine example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.
The firing pin (a long needle essentially, hence the name of the weapon) pierced the cartridge case and the propellant before igniting the primer, which was at the front of the cartridge. This meant that the needle was inside the propellant when it ignited, with attendant strains on the firing pin itself. I seem to recall this led to crystallisation of the metal, but in any case the result was that the firing pins tended to break and had to be replaced in the field before fire could be resumed.
This tended to lower people's enthusiasm for the design.
 
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