WWI with "Needle Guns"

What if, through whatever course, the American Civil War is delayed until the 1880s or 1890s? What is the probability that one or more sides could adopt Prussian-style "needle guns"?

Further, as a broader question - how would a delayed Civil War effect global war strategy, seeing as tactics developed in OTL ACW were utilized in WWI?

EDIT - Oops, I meant to say "American Civil War with Needle Guns"!
 
What if, through whatever course, the American Civil War is delayed until the 1880s or 1890s? What is the probability that one or more sides could adopt Prussian-style "needle guns"?

Further, as a broader question - how would a delayed Civil War effect global war strategy, seeing as tactics developed in OTL ACW were utilized in WWI?

EDIT - Oops, I meant to say "American Civil War with Needle Guns"!

Most likely, the weapons used in an 1890 Civil War would be whatever gun the US army issued in the years before that. That's what'll be in the armories the !Confederates capture, and that's what the Union soldiers will have to work with. Which means something close to either the Springfield 1884 (a trapdoor weapon) or the Model 1892, a bolt-action repeater. Needle guns are unlikely.

While I don't see the UK or France taking much interest in a Confederate insurrection at the heart of a major trade partner, I can also see arms dealers in Europe running French or Italian or Belgian or German bolt-action guns to the rebels.

Furthermore, it's debatable how great an influence (if at all) the ACW was on WWI. Europeans had plenty of chances to study the effects of bolt-action fire and heavy artillery on troops between 1871 and 1914 (the Russo-Japanese War, for example), but still expected 1914 to most closely approximate 1871. A circa-1890 American Civil War would be somewhat shorter than OTL's, up maybe even a war of a single year, because of a probable lack of industrialization of the TTL South (without a reduction in cotton plantation economy), and greater industrialization of the North. So the war would probably not make a significant impression.
 
and here i though these were what we were talking about :p

H4_needler_trans.png


more seriously, what exactly were the advantages of the needle gun over what they were using at the time? is this an innovation of smokeless powder caliber?
 
(snip) more seriously, what exactly were the advantages of the needle gun over what they were using at the time? is this an innovation of smokeless powder caliber?

I'm not sure, but I believe the OP was referring to the Dreyse Needle Gun, which was the first bolt-action rifle, & IIRC, the first general-issue breech-loader adopted by a major military, when it was adopted by the Prussian Army in 1841. It was known as the needle gun, because it used a long, needle-like firing pin to get at a percussion cap that was located between the powder charge & the bullet in a paper cartridge. It had a number of drawbacks, including poor gas sealing of the breech, poor range compared to other contemporary rifles, frequently breaking the firing pin which was a PITA to replace, especially on the battlefield, and rapid fouling of the barrel. However, compared to the muzzle-loading muskets & rifle-muskets that were almost universal when it was first adopted, the Needle Gun allowed for a much greater rate of fire, soldiers to be able to easily fire & load while prone, and helped drive the shift to more open-order tactics as opposed to the traditional linear and column formations.

It was already obsolescent by the time of the Franco-Prussian War in comparison to more recent breech-loaders, and was outclassed by French Chassepot rifles in that conflict, and it was replaced right after the Franco-Prussian War by the Mauser Gewehr 71.

In a delayed ACW scenario, the only reason I'd see for anyone to be using Needle Guns would be to equip second & third line units in face of an arms shortage that they tried to remedy by buying anything they could find in Europe, as I'd imagine that most troops in an 1880s-90s ACW would be using one of the versions of the .45-70 trapdoor Springfield or its equivalent TTL, breech-loader conversions of old rifle-muskets such as the Allin conversions of the M1861, and possibly modern bolt-action repeaters such as the Krag-Jorgensen or whatever the US Army would adopt as an alternative TTL (IIRC, designs from Springfield Armory, as well as the Lee-Metford, Mosin-Nagant, & Mauser Gew.91 were all in contention for that competition IOTL)

Foreign rifle purchases to fill gaps, assuming one was willing to deal with the complications of all sorts of extra cartridge types in the supply system would most likely be of things like Martini-Henrys, Russian Berdans, Gras rifles, Mauser Gew.71s, & whatever the Austrians were cranking out at this time.
 
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What if, through whatever course, the American Civil War is delayed until the 1880s or 1890s? What is the probability that one or more sides could adopt Prussian-style "needle guns"?

Mondragons gas operated semi auto infantry rifle was patented in 1888. I wonder if a few had found their way into this 1890s ACW if it would have accelerated the replacement of manual bolt rifles with the autoloaders, and all that follows.
 
Mondragons gas operated semi auto infantry rifle was patented in 1888. I wonder if a few had found their way into this 1890s ACW if it would have accelerated the replacement of manual bolt rifles with the autoloaders, and all that follows.

It wasn't a semi-auto, it was a fully automatic battle rifle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_rifle

Also, if the ACW is this late, say hello to Mr. Chemical Warfare.
 
If you're fighting the American Civil War in the 1880s, needle guns are the least of your worries.

Indeed. I'd say the Union still wins unless the South has radically industrialized and begun bringing in more people, but still, the death tolls everywhere will be much worse. Much worse.

I'm not entirely sure as to how WWI might be impacted, but I can see it being at least just as bad as IOTL, though perhaps not if the lessons of the Civil War are still fresh in people's minds.
 
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