WI:The American Rifle


As put forward by these fine gentlemen, after seeing the military effectiveness of repeating rifles both in the recent civil war and in the on going Indian Wars, what if the top brass in the US military (particularly the ordinance department) finally got it into their heads that it was better for soldiers to rapidly and accurately shoot at 4-500 yards, than snipe a target at 1000.

With the use of lever actons like Winchester's and falling blocks like Sharps', the army develops squad tactics and doctrines that are very close to what was around by OTL ww2, in 1870-80s.

What effects would this have on, say, the spanish-american war/phillipine-american war, ww1, etc.?
 
The Philippines would be subdued faster than in our time.
Cuba is where the butterflies come in.
American infantry casualties would be far less and Spanish infantry casualties would be much higher.
There were European observers present on both sides. If one of them takes home the right lessons and people listen World War 1 will be quite different.
 
There were European observers present on both sides. If one of them takes home the right lessons and people listen World War 1 will be quite different.

The potential is certainly there, and maybe it would spur some more forward thinkers into developing similar intermediate caliber, large capacity, rapid fire guns. You could see experiments from various independent makers trying to get adopted.

Then again, with it being a very quick war by a strong and growing power against an already crumbling empire, they might not. They could look down on it as bing nothing like proper european warfare, with heroic calvary charges and ranks of men doing volley fire.

As far as i can gather, the old Napoleonic/Crimean mode of warfare was very much engrained in the mind of military thinkers, and it had a lot of momentum built up. OTL it took the very bloody first few years of ww1 for them to realize war had changed.

However, this was roughly the time when japan was modernizing and westernizing its military. They probably would learn much more readily than most European powers.
 
Watching the vid but gah classic Dunning-Kruger effect, arrogance born of ignorance congratulating itself on knowing better than people who learned, lived and died by their decisions.
As put forward by these fine gentlemen, after seeing the military effectiveness of repeating rifles both in the recent civil war and in the on going Indian Wars, what if the top brass in the US military (particularly the ordinance department) finally got it into their heads that it was better for soldiers to rapidly and accurately shoot at 4-500 yards, than snipe a target at 1000.

A soldier needs to be able to do something of both in the time period in question because you do not have radio, you do not have air support and you do have to protect yourself from cavalry, which is a lot harder without a goodly number of machine-guns....though might be worth pointing out properly employed cavalry did charge home against machine guns in the First World War and the Russian Civil War and even as late as World War Two. The whole answer to the:it is okay to be only able to stop a horse at three hundred yards theory is a big no, you need to start whittling them down a lot further off or be in tight formation.

What effects would this have on, say, the spanish-american war/phillipine-american war, ww1, etc.?

Well soldiers are going to be even more pissed at their rifles at San Juan and El Carney. In a long running sustained fight trap door loading level actions have a sustained fire capacity not much greater than single shot breech loaders. Though to be fair burst capacity is often what is needed even more useful is knowing your rifle will have a handful of rounds ready for when you need them...exactly what you do get with a clip loading Mauser or Lee-Enfield and exactly what you do not get with a lever action tube magazine rifle. Obviously a lever action clip loading box would be less of a disadvantage but that is not what they are discussing now is it?

The thing is in the 1880s the US War Department does at least need to consider what will happen in a war with either Mexico or the British Empire, though both are politically unlikely they need to seriously think about it, both of whom have effective cavalry who will charge home against fire. Hence the trapdoor Springfield with their 45-70 cartridges. The idea that US soldiers were outgunned in the Indian Wars is I strongly suspect based on a History Channel reading of a single incident, you may know the one where the normally reliable in a fight (and a disaster everywhere else) George Custer screwed up at Little Big Horn. The issue is that he screwed up in so many ways that day it is hard to put his defeat down to any one factor. I have come across little to suggest US troops found themselves outgunned anywhere else by Native Americans and maybe not even there. Now the 1886 model Winchester could have been issued in 45-70 which would have made the Sharps redundant in the Inrange model basically. Still it is an expensive gun that does not offer much of an advantage and lot of disadvantages against the just around the corner magazine loading bolt-actions.

So basically the Henry was firing a pistol cartridge in the Civil War as there had been pistols of equal or greater power before that. A pistol cartridge won't stop a horse and that is an issue if you find yourself up against decent cavalry. A lever action does have an impressive rate of fire but snap shooting and deliberate fires are more about accurate shooting than reloading speed. Come the charger/clip loading box the lever action tube magazine just looks silly and the lever action is at a modest disadvantage to the bolt action when loading prone. Even with effective magazine rifles squads manoeuvring independently is likely to be rare until improvements in artillery and machine guns have sufficiently marginalised cavalry.
 
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I think the butterflies are very much overstated here. I already don't see the US Army even adopting them in the first place, but for the sake of the thread, I'll just handwave it.

WW2 doctrines being developped in thr 19th century? Goodness, no. You're missing far too many factors for this to happen: Light machine guns, mortars are necessary for that and the technology just wasn't there at the time. Hell, we don't even have smokeless powder until the 1880s, making rapid-fire a lot more problematic if not completely unviable outside of heavier weapons (i.e. Gatling and Maxim guns).

This greatly depends on when the US adopts a lever-action rifle (and I honestly don't think they were actually viable outside of small-unit operations in the frontier and in siege operations where close quarters and rapid-fire are very important, as Ian and Karl mentioned in the video). Before smokeless powder, Ordinance is going to regret their decision quickly once they start having to replace the rifles as they foul up. After that, lever-action rifles are already obsolete.

Nothing's going to change in regards to the Spanish-American War. Not with the Spaniards with Mausers. Hell, the lever-action rifles might prove to be a liability there.

Of course the Europeans had observers- they has them in the Russo-Japanese War. The observers were promptly ignored despite how much could've been learned. Doctrines and mentalities endure and military establishments are notoriously stubborn and slow at adapting. Exceptions are rare and preparing for the last war is the rule.
 
A soldier needs to be able to do something of both in the time period in question because you do not have radio, you do not have air support and you do have to protect yourself from cavalry, which is a lot harder without a goodly number of machine-guns
With reguards to defending themselves against Calvary, if we consider a company of 100ish men, firing 45-60 from a 1876 winchester, i do think they are plenty capable of holding of Calvary. Doubly so for an 1886 shooting 45-70. These aren't pistol cartridges, they are intermediate calibers that can take down horses at the ranges that soldiers are actually engaging at. A gun being able to rainbow a shot at 1000 isnt that much of an advantage when you're actually fighting at half that distance, or often less.

In a long running sustained fight trap door loading level actions have a sustained fire capacity not much greater than single shot breech loaders
I disagree with you there. On an individual level maybe, but when we start talking about units (8 men or more) a few guys can keep up fire while their mates reload.

The idea that US soldiers were outgunned in the Indian Wars is I strongly suspect based on a History Channel reading of a single incident
its not based on a single incident, its rather based on multiple instances where the firepower and accuracy at realistic ranges of lever actions really shined when compared to trapdoors.

With reguards to loading, up until 1888 (when mauser actually started making a 5 round box mag with stripper clips) the tube mags weren't obsolete, were viable even, until the military adopts spetzer cartridges. Dont forget that up until that point many nations used tube mags, including France and Germany.
 
What effects would this have on, say, the spanish-american war/phillipine-american war, ww1, etc.?
The Spanish-American War ends up a decisive Spanish victory with Alaska and the Florida Keys surrendered to Spain, because rather than building battleships the US wasted its military budget on no less than three black powder fire arms, ammo, and modernization programs to get these guns firing smokeless powder rounds. That maybe a horrific exaggeration, but the post civil war American military absolutely did run on a shoestring budget. So those rifles will be bought at the expense of something else, probably something much more important given that America seemed to get along fine without an army equipped with lever action repeating rifles.
 
rather than building battleships the US wasted its military budget on no less than three black powder fire arms, ammo, and modernization programs to get these guns firing smokeless powder rounds.
Ignoring your facetious tone, im not saying that what the US does is just go buy a ton of Winchester's newest shit like a spendthrift Apple fanboy.

Maybe i should clarify a POD.
Say that in late 1866 the army tests a winchester, decides they like the idea of a large capacity, breech loading, intermediate caliber lever actions but wants something a bit stronger. Winchester decides he REALLY wants a nice steady government contract rather than selling to hunters and frontiersmen, so he pits a lot of effort into making a gun the military will like. 1869 comes around and Winchester goes at it again with an improved design, what OTL would have been the 1886 design with a locking block action instead of the of the orignal toggle lock of the Henry. Its a very strong action that can take the more powerful ammo the government wants. And just so happens to be strong enough for smokeless powder when it comes to the states. The military adopts it as the model 1870 Winchester. Thus the military has one really good and strong rifle that they can use for 20 some years with minimal improvements.
 

Oh dear. This video purports so much ignorance. For a start the British used the .44 calibre Adams pistol in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny both of which occurred before the US Civil War and US gun manufacturers were familiar with the Adams a copy albeit in .36 calibre being produced stateside ergo it was understood that the Henry rimfire cartridge was a pistol level round at the time it was introduced. Wagon Box Fight funnily enough rather 300+ it would seem that rather than the account from the other side is more like the Sioux and Cheyenne lost between 6 and 50, also Springfields did most of the work. Oh and yep Little Big Horn...really we are heading into enough said territory. In fact erm yes he says absolutely nothing about it, some Garry Owen and we are supposed to be sold here? Oh we have a return to the battle later with a discourse on the archaeology and then some surmise on the usage of Henry/Winchester's there but no actual evidence.

Allatoona fortifications may have had something to do with the Union holding, Wagon Box...well there is the wagon box and no mention in the InRange account of the relief force bringing along a howitzer along with a wild exaggeration of the Cheyenne and Sioux casualties (seriously 300+ dead would have broken them forever, these were small populations), Little Big Horn is a litany of division of force, poor coordination between the widely separated detachments and...well then there is an awful lot we will never know about the battle but Custer who had in fact been a very impressive soldier in the Civil War and certainly managed to be combat savvy long afterwards had a really off day and he and a lot of his men paid the price.

What I am not seeing are any accounts of the US Army being outgunned in fights with the Native Americans, any examples you may have would be welcome because my suspicion here is that the InRange channel has sold you a bill of goods with a very selective where not downright inaccurate reading of history. We know from numerous wars that field fortifications could prove an impediment to regular armies let alone the forces of native peoples, the British after all held Rorke's Drift just fine with their single shot Henry-Martinis. Thus rather than a single example of a front being held by fire, which would I admit make a much more effective argument, we have two examples of victories from behind cover and one of a balls up without it.

To make their argument they really do need an argument of a force US military, US civilian or Native American or even other does not matter which holding its ground by dint of the firepower of Henry Winchester type rifles alone. I am not cross with you piratedude, you have taken the evidence that InRange have presented on trust. I am angry with them for so blatant a manipulative presentation which ignores known facts and distorts several incidents without offering the viewer a chance to consider all the factors for themselves and assign a weighting in their own mind.
 
you have taken the evidence that InRange have presented on trust. I am angry with them for so blatant a manipulative presentation which ignores known facts and distorts several incidents without offering the viewer a chance to consider all the factors for themselves and assign a weighting in their own mind.

I suppose you're right, thanks for the correction. My knowledge of the post civil war period is very limited, and i filled in the blanks with what i know from doing civil war reenactments (which even then is limited). I shouldn't have taken these guys' history at face value. i trusted them because with respect to the histories focused on the mechanics and development of guns, they are pretty solid.
 
Another factor is that lever actions are more expensive, complicated and fragile than the alternatives, those are three words which mass conscript armies on the European 19th century model are rightly allergic to.
 
I suppose you're right, thanks for the correction. My knowledge of the post civil war period is very limited, and i filled in the blanks with what i know from doing civil war reenactments (which even then is limited). I shouldn't have taken these guys' history at face value. i trusted them because with respect to the histories focused on the mechanics and development of guns, they are pretty solid.
I adore Forgottenweapons and InRange. Honestly, this is one of their worse videos. The title itself is really clickbaity (and I remember them admitting that themselves; Ian himself has made a video about the assault rifle teminology and how people love to misuse it) and shows that they are somewhat out of their league when it comes to more general [military] history.

To be fair, I honestly don't remember the details on the two videos since I watched them when they were released, but I can't help bit find it all strange since Ian is usually a far better historian and the videos reeked of popular history you'd get on the history channel.

The C&Rsenal videos on the levee-action rifles may be a good addition to this topic.
 
With reguards to loading, up until 1888 (when mauser actually started making a 5 round box mag with stripper clips) the tube mags weren't obsolete, were viable even, until the military adopts spetzer cartridges. Dont forget that up until that point many nations used tube mags, including France and Germany.
The Mauser 1888 used en bloc clips, and the Mannlicher 1885 precedes it.

Ignoring your facetious tone, im not saying that what the US does is just go buy a ton of Winchester's newest shit like a spendthrift Apple fanboy.

Maybe i should clarify a POD.
Say that in late 1866 the army tests a winchester, decides they like the idea of a large capacity, breech loading, intermediate caliber lever actions but wants something a bit stronger. Winchester decides he REALLY wants a nice steady government contract rather than selling to hunters and frontiersmen, so he pits a lot of effort into making a gun the military will like. 1869 comes around and Winchester goes at it again with an improved design, what OTL would have been the 1886 design with a locking block action instead of the of the orignal toggle lock of the Henry. Its a very strong action that can take the more powerful ammo the government wants. And just so happens to be strong enough for smokeless powder when it comes to the states. The military adopts it as the model 1870 Winchester. Thus the military has one really good and strong rifle that they can use for 20 some years with minimal improvements.
I still don't see it, barring a major war scare leading to the military finally being given a bigger budget.
 
It almost sounds like it was inevitable that the army used the trapdoor and then the kraig. Are there any viable designs America could have adopted besides the trapdoor?

Would they have adopted a Remington-Kneene rifle if it was available/present at the 1873 trials? True, it does have a relatively slow loading tube mag, but in 1873 thats not yet a obsolete mechanism. Actually, its a massive improvement compared to the single shots that were popular in major militaries (like needle guns). And the mauser 71/84 and the label 1886 also had tube mags, so a 73 kneene would be ahead of the curve in that reguard. It wouldn't be hard to make it strong enough for smokeless. Its not a particularly compicated or fragile design, either.
The one thing i don't know about is how expensive it is, and whether it would be a strain on the military budget.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
The rifles do not change a thing. The side with "bigger battalions", better/more artillery/machineguns and supply wins.
As long as the rifles are not muzzle loaders, their specifics matter little in the greater order of things.
 
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