What if the Minie ball had never been invented?

As you can probably guess from the title, this thread is about how firearms would have developed if the Minie ball hadn't been introduced. Historically, early rifles were impractical for line infantry because they tended to foul up when fired, making it harder to push the ammunition down the barrel. The Minie ball OTOH expanded when fired, filling the barrel and reducing fouling, giving soldiers the range of a rifle with the loading speed of a musket.

IRL, the adoption of the Minie ball was followed by the widespread introduction of breech-loading rifles. What I was wondering is whether such weapons would still be useful without the Minie ball, or whether we'd have seen breech-loading smoothbore muskets instead. Given their design, it would be easy to reload breech-loaders regardless of the fouling, so would this be enough to make breech-loading rifles practical for line infantry? Or would the rifling get fouled up enough to fill in the grooves, and essentially turn it into a smoothbore anyway after a couple of shots?
 
Take a look at the Ferguson rifle. Breech loaded and rifled, apparently it could get around 60 shots off before fouling if proper care was taken. It had some durability and cost issues, but those could likely get worked around.

With some adaptation it might be a practical weapon for the average soldier.
 
It is going to happen. Otl, a guy named Norton tried to get the British to use his similar invention, but Ordnance didnt want to obsolete all their store oof muskets. Within a few years, SOMEONE would have come up with the idea.


Certainly a similar technology would be around by the us ivil war, as the french ad british were alreaady using minié and lee enfields in the crimean war, otl. So, another decade out, ie the civil war, theyll be in use.
 
IRL, the adoption of the Minie ball was followed by the widespread introduction of breech-loading rifles. What I was wondering is whether such weapons would still be useful without the Minie ball, or whether we'd have seen breech-loading smoothbore muskets instead. Given their design, it would be easy to reload breech-loaders regardless of the fouling, so would this be enough to make breech-loading rifles practical for line infantry? Or would the rifling get fouled up enough to fill in the grooves, and essentially turn it into a smoothbore anyway after a couple of shots?

Breech loading was a very old idea, and minie balls weren't a necessary prerequisite. You can make a breech loader with round shot (the Ferguson rifle DoomBunny mentioned upthread, for example). The main obstacle to earlier mass adoption of breech loading was maturity of the manufacturing technology needed to make reliable breech loaders at a reasonable price: the two reasons the British backed off of Ferguson rifles IOTL were that the breech mechanism tended to be too fragile and finicky for extended combat use, and the rifle itself was too expensive relative to a brown bess musket to justify the cost difference as more than a niche weapon.
 
Consider the ubiquity of muzzle loading rifles firing Minie balls during the American Civil War. Minie balls are ultimately about making rifling a sensible thing for the bulk of troops, whereas breech loading simplifies (or at least speeds) loading; technologically the relationship between the two is pretty tangential.

In terms of the basic premise I tend to think that if for whatever reason the Minie ball didn't happent we'd see breech loaders appear around the same time as OTL, but would be looking at otherwise more traditional smoothbore weapons. Without change being introduced anyway things might be a bit slower with military traditionalism and all, but repeaters will be appearing in the era as OTL, my guess is that what you will see is an ACW fought almost entirely with muzzle loading smoothbores, followed by an era dominated by repeating pistols appearing and a variety of breech loading, but largely smoothbore longarms.

Of course without something weird happening jacketed ammunition is going to look even more attractive than OTL, so if anything you'll probably get that happening sooner after the introduction of breech loaders. These will be the first standard issue military rifles, rather than the generation of largely tradtional but rifled weapons the Minie ball allowed, but in the big picture this probably doesn't change much. The ACW might lose some of it's parrallels to WWI, but I wonder about even that; the comparison is IMO often overblown, and where is does exist legitimately could have happened quite reasonably with massed smoothbores.
 
The problem is that massed smoothbore muskets have a significantly lower effective range, which limits the amount of time you can fire on an assaulting line.

So it would be considerably harder to replicate the effects of massed riflery with massed musketry.

Not to mention that eliminating rifles from common use means that artillery can be brought close enough to blast infantry lines at a range you can do significant damage.
 
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