What would have been the impact if the Union army went to war equipped with Dreyse needle guns?

Weren't the issues with the repeater rifles (aside from the prone shooting) that the manufacturing for them was too complex/costly to make them anything close to standard issue?
Yes. When you look at the difficulty that the Union had in manufacturing muzzle-loading rifles (not a simple design, but immeasurably simpler than breech-loaders and repeaters) it rapidly becomes clear that the idea of arming the Union with substantial numbers of advanced weapons within the first half of the war is fantasy on the lines of 'WI the Germans entered WWII with 2,000 Tiger tanks?'

Giving the Union the Dreyse is marginally more realistic than giving them Spencers, Henrys and Sharps, in the sense that there was actually a factory in existence that could produce needle-rifles in large quantities. However, that factory is busy building rifles for both Prussia and other European states: the Union would be joining at the back of the queue, and Dreyse is unlikely to expand their factory capacity for this one-off order.

Until bolt-action systems improve by the end of the 19th century, I'd suggest adopting more lever-action rifles instead. They are easier to manufacture with gradually improving period technology than attempts at bolt-action rifles. In OTL, the Union army used the Spencer repeating rifle and they also adopted the Henry 1860 repeating rifle, both of these in fairly small numbers. The ACW era officers were still fairly conservative towards repeating rifles of any kind.
As I explained, the reason that the Union army used Spencers and Henrys in small numbers was not because the officers were conservative, but because the manufacturers were not capable of producing them in anything other than small numbers. An order for 10,000 Spencers at the end of 1861 produced 600 guns by January 1863, and as late as 1864 the total output of Henry rifles was less than 300 per month.

I'd suggest arming the Union of the ACW era with more Henries, if you can create a POD that proves convincing enough to Union officers.
So let's think about the actual logistics of this. Assuming that, as things stood, they only worked an 8-hour day (unlikely in this period), you could triple the factory's output to around 700 weapons a month by running the factory round the clock. However, this means considerable wear and tear on the machinery, requires additional pay for working unsociable hours (thereby driving up the cost from the existing $40, compared to the $19.52 of a privately-produced Springfield rifle and the $11.97 of a government-produced Springfield), and assumes that the hours of production are the only limiting factor (when historically, sourcing barrels caused a phenomenal amount of difficulty). It also assumes that you can find additional workers and train them to work these machines.

If you want to build more weapons than 700 per month, you need to expand the factory. This means constructing new machines, and probably also new buildings to house them: this takes both time and money. However, government contracts pay out only on delivery of weapons and not in advance, which means that the New Haven Arms Company will have to go out and find the capital to fund this expansion. It'll also compound the problem of having to find additional workers and materials.

The alternative is for the government to purchase the rights to the design and then license it to other third-party manufacturers or produce it at Springfield Armoury. However, in the first two years of the war, the Union failed in its aim of putting modern weapons in the hands of its troops (with 26.3% of troops at Gettysburg being wholly or partially armed with muskets or substandard rifles). As of July 1862, Springfield had made 109,810 .58 Springfield rifles and the private sector 9,960. If we take cost as a proxy for complexity, and switch domestic production entirely to Henry rifles, you can have 37,721 Henry rifles at the cost of the rest of your army being equipped little better than the Confederacy (with muskets, Mississippi rifles and non-interchangeable European weapons).
 
Last edited:
Giving the Union the Dreyse is marginally more realistic than giving them Spencers, Henrys and Sharps, in the sense that there was actually a factory in existence that could produce needle-rifles in large quantities. However, that factory is busy building rifles for both Prussia and other European states: the Union would be joining at the back of the queue, and Dreyse is unlikely to expand their factory capacity for this one-off order.

Can you expound on this? Are you saying there was an american factory who was producing arms solely for European States? During the war couldn't the president have used his war powers and simply taken control of that factory and have them produce solely for the Union?
 
Are you saying there was an american factory who was producing arms solely for European States?
The factory is Dreyse's own, in the town of Sömmerda in the Prussian province of Saxony. The capacity of this factory is about 30,000 weapons per year, which is considerably more than even the most prolific US breechloader manufacturer was capable of producing in the early years of the war. However, if the Union wanted to order Dreyse rifles, it would have joined the queue behind the Prussian government (which is having the M1841, M1860 and M1862 built), Electoral Hesse (which ordered a division's worth of needle rifles after 1861 and received them by 1866), and Hanover (which hadn't received their rifles by 1866).
 
So let's think about the actual logistics of this.
that's a basic problem of trying to improve the weaponry of the ACW... it would require a POD that has the Federal government actually thinking about all this well before the war and spending the money to build/expand factory space for repeaters.... and that's a tall order since the feds showed so many times that they weren't willing to spend that kind of money...
 

Art

Monthly Donor
When the regular army of the United States was less than 30,000 men, not very likely. But were there not 400,000+ muskets and rifles in the Southern arsenals? Does anyone here have numbers of how many- #1-Flintlock Muskets, #2-Flintlock Rifles- #3- Percussion Cap Muskets- #4 Percussion Cap Rifles- and #5 Breechloading Rifles were in the hands of the Federal government in 1860?
 
it would require a POD that has the Federal government actually thinking about all this well before the war and spending the money to build/expand factory space for repeaters.... and that's a tall order since the feds showed so many times that they weren't willing to spend that kind of money...
Even then, the US regular army was so small that it had no meaningful effect on the provision of modern weapons. You can see this with the Springfield rifle: the 16,000 regulars carry it, and yet it proves impossible to procure large quantities of the weapon from domestic manufacturers until 1863 and after. Whereas in Britain, with a regular army of a quarter of a million, Confederate and Union buyers can make contracts for large numbers of interchangeable and non-interchangeable Enfield rifles with relative ease right from the start of the war.

Does anyone here have numbers of how many- #1-Flintlock Muskets, #2-Flintlock Rifles- #3- Percussion Cap Muskets- #4 Percussion Cap Rifles- and #5 Breechloading Rifles were in the hands of the Federal government in 1860?
In store as of November 1859:

#1: 23,894
#2: 652
#3: 503,664, of which 290,509 were converted flintlocks (M1822) and 213,155 built as percussion (M1842)
#4: 106,598, of which 33,631 were .69 M1842 muskets that had been rifled, 44,760 were the M1841 .54 Mississippi rifle, and 28,207 were modern .58 rifles.
#5: 0 (zero)

were there not 400,000+ muskets and rifles in the Southern arsenals?
The Federal arsenals captured by the Confederates represented about 1,765 .58 rifles (not including those taken from Harpers Ferry), 8,990 .54 rifles, 972 .69 rifled muskets, 85,315 percussion muskets, and 8,283 flintlock muskets. Beyond the limited proportion of Federal stocks that they acquired, they also had the contents of the state arsenals (as, of course, did the Union). However, there's no reliable documentation of what those arsenals contained, other than that the bulk of their contents were flintlock and percussion muskets, acquired over the course of more than half a century.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
Whoa. . . I never knew the Confederacy had so few proper rifle-muskets at the start of the war. . . Too bad that the Alin Conversions/Springfield Trapdoors were after the war. They would have been very useful.
 
Or a similar variant to that mechanism. First came into service in 1841 and used in battle in the german revolutions.


prussian-needle-rifle-rawscan.jpg



This is also assuming the south wouldn't have had the capacity to produce them and would have retained the rifle-muskets.
Wonder If the Prussian Army would adapt the Winchester 66.
 
Even then, the US regular army was so small that it had no meaningful effect on the provision of modern weapons. You can see this with the Springfield rifle: the 16,000 regulars carry it, and yet it proves impossible to procure large quantities of the weapon from domestic manufacturers until 1863 and after. Whereas in Britain, with a regular army of a quarter of a million, Confederate and Union buyers can make contracts for large numbers of interchangeable and non-interchangeable Enfield rifles with relative ease right from the start of the war.
that ~15 year stretch between the Mexican War and the ACW was pretty peaceful, to the point that the army and it's weaponry was fairly low on the mind of the Feds... and it wasn't a huge priority even before the MW... to get our POD here, you'd have to really shake things up abroad, and have the US go through a serious war scare, something that would cause the Feds to decide that it needs to equip it's troops with the best available if they aren't going to increase the size of the army... or do both...
 
Top