weapons with which to arm major armies

I have been thinking of (possibly) writing a book, and although i unfortunately can't tell you the timeline out of paranoia :)eek:), i can ask for advice on the weapons (right?), so here goes:

1841: samuel colt dies of a misfire testing a gun (before his Patterson plant can fail)
1842: the republic of Texas (a thriving country in my story) buys and nationalizes the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, renaming it Colt, in respect of it's late founder. the Patterson rifles and pistols become the standard Texan military weapons.
1844:the Patterson plant burns down. all manufacturing is moved to Texas, although the guns are still called "Patterson" because of tradition (old habits die hard, and it's virtually the same gun)
1846: Britain finds it's Australian colony threatened, and needing better guns than the Brunswick rifle, set a competition for the best rifle for the British army. a hefty reward for the winner was provided.
1847:colt walker produced.
1848: colt presents to the British a revolving rifle following colt's Patterson, (basically the model 1855, but better, with less misfiring). they win the contract. the first batch is in .700 caliber, but the recoil was painful, so it was toned down to .56 caliber.
1871: the target race begins: for a variety of reasons (and i do have plausible reasons), target shooting becomes THE most popular sport in the Americas. the most popular competitions are the mid length pistol (6-8" barrel) and long-barreled pistol (9-12" barrel) competitions. suddenly, anyone buying a pistol is willing to pay extra for a longer barrel, and even target sights.
1873: the colt peacemaker is produced for military and civilian use, causing a stir, as it became the first cartridge pistol to be produced by a major american manufacturer (S&W was sold to prussia, another world power in my world), it had a totally different mechanism as a result of different designers. it was NOT produced in 4 3/4" barrel length thanks to the target race. the standard lengths were:
5 1/2" (army use)
7 1/2: (cavalry and civilian)
10" (civilian)
12" (not due to Mr. Buntline, but for company shooting for competitions)

however, i now am left with no guns for the U.S. military.:( with all the colts going to Texas, Smith and Wesson being Prussian (i have reasons), Springfields are obviously obsolete by this point, with all the new repeaters, what should i arm them with? Winchesters? which pistols? :confused: (BTW, the year is 1888). my protagonist is armed with akimbo colt walkers (in th style of mr. walker himself), one is armed with a shortened carbine 1855-style brit-rifle, and another is armed with a weapon of my own design-a sniper rifle with, with one of the old-style scope that's as long as the barrel, and 2 cylinders, one behind the other, the first front fires until empty, with a lever flip the hammer is directed to the firing pin of the rear cylinder, which fires through the empty chamber in front of it. it also has a flash guard in front of the cylinders, to permit use of the forearm.:D

so... any ideas?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Winchesters are nice, but the US Army was kind of against them on doctrinal grounds. They felt that they tended to waste a lot of ammo.

Myself, I think that the US military made a big mistake not using the Winchester, at least for cavalry units.

But you could just go with something like a Mauser 1891. It's a little early, but if you're going to slip a few things by, you might as well slip that by, too. Gun trade seems to be going across the Atlantic, and the Mauser was a great gun. (Mine is to this day! 2 Deer this year!)

Beyond that, you could just make one up out of whole cloth with a believable bullet size, like a Springfield bolt-action .223.
That'd be powerful enough to do the job, and built in the US. But it is the 1880s, and the US wasn't beyond using foreign built rifles (Krag-Jorgensen) until after the turn of the 20th Century.
 
Would not a Remington rolling block rifle be a logical replacement of the muzzle-loaded Springfield and Enfield rifles, before a bolt-action rifle is accepted?
 
Question - how can the RoT nationalise the Patent Arms company when it's in New Jersey?

I also have my questions over whether the company would be nationalised anyway. The biggest one is that it's my understanding that nationalisation was against the prevailing economic policies of the day - national ownership was unpopular among the populations of the day, who didn't want to government taking a control or even an interest in what they saw as the responsibility of the citizens, and politicians didn't want to get the government involved in risky strategies with no certainty of continued high profits. With Colt out of the picture, the company has lost a rare gem of a gun architect which I doubt it can replace, and so the company would essentially be in trouble as soon as the existing gun models became outdated - something which happened very quickly in this period. Colt's death from a faulty prototype only complicates this further.

That said, don't be put off totally by this. It's just something to take into consideration. I'm no expert, too, so others may supercede me here.
 
But you could just go with something like a Mauser 1891. It's a little early, but if you're going to slip a few things by, you might as well slip that by, too. Gun trade seems to be going across the Atlantic, and the Mauser was a great gun. (Mine is to this day! 2 Deer this year!)

Beyond that, you could just make one up out of whole cloth with a believable bullet size, like a Springfield bolt-action .223.
That'd be powerful enough to do the job, and built in the US. But it is the 1880s, and the US wasn't beyond using foreign built rifles (Krag-Jorgensen) until after the turn of the 20th Century.


hmm... how's this, the patterson plant burns down, colt doesn't die, is offered funding by texan gov't to bring entire operation to texas and sell exclusively to texas, and so on and so forth. (no nationalizing)

by "believible caliber" i'm sure you mean compared to my .700 cal revolver rifle, Right?:D well, one of britain's standard rifles, the brunswick, was .704!:eek: anyhoo, even I thought that was crazy, which is why i decreased it to .56, one of the origonal 1855 calibers.

what about early mausers being standard, supplemented by winchesters?

Would not a Remington rolling block rifle be a logical replacement of the muzzle-loaded Springfield and Enfield rifles, before a bolt-action rifle is accepted?

yes, and that's why it was used supplementally. i meant the '66 "trapdoor" springfield, the standard for 25 yrs or so. bad communication on my part!:eek:
 
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