Forum: Author Hangout

The reason, they were faster to load than rifled muskets and the added accuracy of a rifled musket didn't matter with mass volley fire.

And this is really the key difference.

Most people in the earle US owned a rifle, but it was primarily for hunting. A rifled musket, because accuracy mattered when hunting to put food on the table.

But for military uses, accuracy did not matter. It was all line up, volley fire, and reload and fire again en masse. Accuracy did not matter at all, especially during any volley after the first as the clouds of smoke obscured accurate fire anyways.

Rifles were used on occasion. Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Volunteers were armed with rifled muskets at the Alamo, and it helped a lot because they were not using traditional volley fire and were behind defenses, so we able to put the accuracy of the weapons to use.

It was not until the US Civil War that this finally started to change. Paper cartridges and fighting from behind defenses started to become the norm, especially with the introduction of explosive artillery and early machine guns. These forced changes in how battles were fought. This is why the Civil War started with Napoleonic tactics, and ended with what was close to World War I trench warfare.

Of course, the rifled musket was already becoming the norm even as the war started. The Minié ball ("Minni ball") had pushed range and accuracy to the point where the US had already switched to rifled muskets before the war started (Springfield model 1855), and smoothbores were already reduced to use primarily by cavalry as a form of shotgun.

One thing I constantly shrug about is the way most people just interchange weapon terminology. But I recognize that most are just ignorant, and do not want or care to know anything about them. Hence, reading about somebody who picks up a revolver, and uses the safety. Or one where the character went out and bought a "silencer" for their revolver.

For hunters and military, we use the correct terms because they are critical tools for us. Just as a carpenter will ask for a ripping saw or a coping saw, while most will not know the differences.

one where the character went out and bought a "silencer" for their revolver.

They may have purchased one. It just doesn't work very well.

Another area where rifling became important, and then not so much, is in artillery and armor (meaning tanks). Old artillery was smoothbore, because it was all muzzle loaded. That's why the old time artillery teams had to train and work together. As soon as the round was fired, you had to run the swab down to clear out any remaining powder, otherwise you'd have premature detonation. Then shove the powder bag in with the ram, followed by the ball. On the other end, the sharp spike was shoved into the firing hole to penetrate the bag and get some powder out. Then once the wheels were clear, you'd set it off with the torch. The cannon would recoil backwards when fired, roll it forward, and repeat the process.

Accuracy didn't matter so much as grazing shots did. The original cannon balls didn't have any explosives in them. They didn't need them. They were instead meant to skip off the ground, literally like a flat stone on a pond, hopefully bouncing for the first time about 30 feet in front of the enemy. They'd bounce up, cut through a dozen men or so, breaking bones, tearing off limbs, or just plain eviscerating them, and then bounce again, doing a rinse and repeat.

Grapeshot and chain shot were also designed to cut through large clusters of advancing troops. The problem with smoothbore artillery, of course, was accuracy and distance. The round cannon balls would spin in a random direction, and could literally act just like a curve ball thrown by a baseball pitcher.

Rifled cannons increased both the range and accuracy of the rounds being fired. Adding breechloading capability meant that more modern, explosive rounds could be used. Modern field artillery has an effective range of about 9 miles. Naval guns were also rifled, with the 16" guns on the Iowa class battleship able to send shell weighing 2,700 pounds just over 23 miles. Every 30 seconds.

Tanks started with rifled barrels, but have now gone to smoothbore cannons because they're no longer shooting regular rounds, with high explosive charges. The main round today is nicknamed the 'silver bullet'. In military terms, it's an APFSDSDU round. That little collection of letters means Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot Depleted Uranium round. Basically you have something that looks like a regular round, but once it fires, the Sabot (shoe) falls off, and what you have left is a little dart. Instead of explosives, the round relies on kinetic energy to punch a small hole in the armor of the enemy tank. Which makes a larger hole, with stuff flying off inside the enemy tank, turning the inside of the enemy tank into an abattoir.

Then there's the rifling through the historic uses of "rifles", which smoothly bores most of us. ;) - Still the King of thread drift and humorous, pointless asides!