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The AMerican Civil War and its effects on other wars

Cainkane1

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Cainkane1
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The Civil War saw advances in rapid fire weapons. It saw armored ship firing guns at each other and it saw the beginnings of submarine warfare. The CSS Alabama inspired the German Uboat campaign.

After the war was over the northern discovered a brand new version of a rapid fire weapon that out performed the Gatling gun. It was a true machine gun that the south couldn't make because of the poor quality of Southern steel. The North had no such problem and from this prototype the first machine guns were made. The South produced volley gins but could not make a viable machine gun.

During both world wars Americans and other armies fell to the very same developed weapons that the south had planned to make.
 
Cainkane1 said:
The Civil War saw advances in rapid fire weapons. It saw armored ship firing guns at each other and it saw the beginnings of submarine warfare. The CSS Alabama inspired the German Uboat campaign.

After the war was over the northern discovered a brand new version of a rapid fire weapon that out performed the Gatling gun. It was a true machine gun that the south couldn't make because of the poor quality of Southern steel. The North had no such problem and from this prototype the first machine guns were made. The South produced volley gins but could not make a viable machine gun.

During both world wars Americans and other armies fell to the very same developed weapons that the south had planned to make.
Click to expand...

Which machine gun was this?

CSS Alabama did not inspire the U-Boat campaign.
Commerce raiding was an already well established practice in time of war as were convoy systems to counter them.
Surface raiders employed by the Germans in both WW1 and WW2 were a more direct continuation of the tactic.
 
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The Gatling guns were made during the Civil war but never used in battle, they were having too many problems in testing. THey were not issued until after the Civil war during the Indian Campaigns, and were never considered to be reliable.
Custer has been criticized for leaving his attached gatlings behind at the Little Big Horn, but in reality most Army commanders did that.They were too unreliable to justify the considerably logistical tail taking them along on a campaign would require.
 
I think some of the most important technologies to see application in the US Civil War were not weapons.
Logistics saw revolutionary advances in the Union. Food preservation technology, particularly canning, mass production of all sorts of impedimenta, and distribution by rail gave the North the ability to keep larger armies in the field longer. The railroads also allowed the forces to be moved quickly over long distances without wearing out troops or horses (or boots).
Another area was communications, with the telegraph network in the North the President was able to keep in touch with the far flung battlefields, getting news the same day. I can recommend the book "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails" by Tom Wheeler.
 
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Pope130 said:
I think some of the most important technologies to see application in the US Civil War were not weapons.
Logistics saw revolutionary advances in the Union. Food preservation technology, particularly canning, mass production of all sorts of impedimenta, and distribution by rail gave the North the ability to keep larger armies in the field longer. The railroads also allowed the forces to be moved quickly over long distances without wearing out troops or horses (or boots).
Another area was communications, with the telegraph network in the North the President was able to keep in touch with the far flung battlefields, getting news the same day. I can recommend the book "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails" by Tom Wheeler.
Click to expand...

Canning was invented by the French about 1810, and introduced initially to support naval service. It was used first during Napoleonic wars. Canning was widely used prior to the civil war in the US.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21689069

George Canning of course was secretary of the navy and subsequently prime minister at the time that this preserved food in metal containers was introduced.
 
I'm not sure I'd count the railroad and the telegraph as military innovations at the time, either. They influenced the war, sure, but they were really just using and, in the case of telegraph, partially expanding, an infrastructure that had been built by civilian investors for civilian use.

It's kinda like when later Rommel would drive his Panzer division to civilian gas stations. Sure, it's a smart thing to do, but hardly the kind of thing that illustrates military technology advancements.

And the USA wasn't the one to even discover their military use.

E.g., rapid transporting troops by rail had already been done for example by Prussia in the Schlesswig war, or by the UK in the Crimean war long before the USA did the same. It was also massively used in the 1848 revolutions that swept through most of continental Europe. Both revolutionaries and government troops discovered very quickly that packing your guys with guns or their supplies on a train beats sending them on foot.

E.g., the first use of telegraph in warfare was done actually by the British, first in the Crimean war, and then in the Indian mutiny. In the latter, the fact that the Brits controlled the telegraph network actually gave them a major advantage. In fact, it may have been the deciding factor, depending on who you ask. Again, both happened like a decade before the USA went and had a civil war.

Essentially all the USA did was look at what other people were doing, and go, "hmm... we could do that too..."
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Which machine gun was this?
Click to expand...
dudalb said:
The Gatling guns were made during the Civil war but never used in battle, they were having too many problems in testing. THey were not issued until after the Civil war during the Indian Campaigns, and were never considered to be reliable.
Click to expand...
Gatlings, and other mechanical machine guns, were used during the ACW.

The Agar gun (the 'coffee mill gun') was deployed by the 28th Pennsylvania on a few occasions in West/Virginia in 1862 and a number were captured (and used) by the Confederate army on a small scale due to ammunition supply problems.
About a dozen Gatlings were deployed by the Union army (all private purchases by commanders), for example at the siege of Petersburg in 1864.
The US Navy, not hamstrung by Ripley, used more and a number were deployed by Butler on his gunboats.
The New York Times purchased two and these may have been deployed, but were not fired, during the riots of 1863.
The Confederates also used a small number (under fifty) of the Williams gun, more of a light automatic cannon than a machine gun.
Various 'battery', 'volley' or 'concertina' guns with multiple barrels were deployed, but these were a feature of warfare for many years prior, though breech-loading was introduced.
 
I notice no-one has mentioned the re-introduction of hand grenades (leading to the development of the first 'modern' grenades a decade later) and land mines.
 
OK, now let's talk ironclads.

The first battle between ironclads (both the monitor type and tall type) did happen in the US civil war, but they hadn't invented them.

In fact, ironclads weren't even an evolution from wooden ships, but from the first all-iron ships in the "false start" of metal ships in the 1830's. The first being the HMS Nemesis, built by the Brits.

Unfortunately, iron has these two different phases separated by the brittle-ductile transition line. If it's warmer than that line, it's ductile, and can absorb tremendous shocks by deforming instead of breaking. The Brits tested the armour for their Nemesis on a nice warm summer day, and it performed absolutely amazingly. Unfortunately if it's colder than that line, it becomes brittle, and it just shatters on impact. Guess on which side of the line was a ship in cold water :p

NB, MUCH later they discovered how to lower that temperature massively by alloying (see Nickel Steel armour in later steel ships), so it stays ductile even in freezing water. But in the 1830's, yeah, metallurgy wasn't there yet, and iron ships turned out to suck.

The ironclad was invented by the French as a way to still be able to use iron armour on a ship, by making it a composite material. It used flexible wood as a backing, to disperse the shock, and iron plating on top as the hard face. You may notice that it's the same principle as would later be used in face-hardened ship armour, such as Harvey steel plates. Except that one used softer steel as the backing, while the French just used wood as a backing.

The first such ironclad ship was the Gloire, built by the end of the 50's by the French.

The monitor is even earlier, as is its use in warfare (albeit for shore bombardment at this stage, not against another ship) in the Crimean war. Again, by the French.

ALL that the USA did first was actually have them shoot at each other.
 
catsmate said:
I notice no-one has mentioned the re-introduction of hand grenades (leading to the development of the first 'modern' grenades a decade later) and land mines.
Click to expand...

Well, RE-introduction being the key word, it's not as much worth mentioning as the first time it was used :p
 
dudalb said:
The Gatling guns were made during the Civil war but never used in battle, they were having too many problems in testing. THey were not issued until after the Civil war during the Indian Campaigns, and were never considered to be reliable.
Custer has been criticized for leaving his attached gatlings behind at the Little Big Horn, but in reality most Army commanders did that.They were too unreliable to justify the considerably logistical tail taking them along on a campaign would require.
Click to expand...

Ammunition logistics was a big thing.

Soldiers were given one round when they were issued with a gun to use for practicing loading and firing.
There was no marksmanship training.

Out in the wilderness it could be many weeks between supply wagons arriving and they had to have a heavy escort to protect them.
It is one of the main reasons the US Army stuck with single loading rifles for so long, they were worried that a repeating rifle would use too much ammunition.

InRange has done a two parter on the Apacheria wars where this is touched on.

 
One thing that surprised British Officers observing battles was the reluctance to use the bayonet and run home a charge.

They noticed that both sides would advance towards each other then stop and fire volley after volley causing huge numbers of casualties.
Experience from the Napoleonic campaigns and the Crimean war had taught that a volley followed by a charge home with the bayonet would have cleared the field and saved a lot of lives.

It's not that the bayonet itself would have done a lot of killing but it needs a very disciplined force to stand against a mass bayonet charge by motivated troops that look as though they are determined to run you through.

Trying it against a force that has cover to fire from is a different matter of course but it still worked.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, RE-introduction being the key word, it's not as much worth mentioning as the first time it was used :p
Click to expand...
Hey, some poor bastard didn't have to light a fuse anymore...


It's interesting how much emphasis is placed on the ACW, while the real war of innovation was the Franco-Prussian war; needle-gun versus Chasspot, the Montigny mitrailleuse, mass mobilisation, general staff planning, et cetera
 
catsmate said:
Hey, some poor bastard didn't have to light a fuse anymore...


It's interesting how much emphasis is placed on the ACW, while the real war of innovation was the Franco-Prussian war; needle-gun versus Chasspot, the Montigny mitrailleuse, mass mobilisation, general staff planning, et cetera
Click to expand...

French Chassepot was a needle gun.



Prussian Dreyse Needle Gun

 
Captain_Swoop said:
French Chassepot was a needle gun.



Prussian Dreyse Needle Gun

Click to expand...
True, though only the Dreyse is generally called one (blame the journalists, "deadly hail of the needle-guns" and all that). All the 'combustible cartridge' weapons were a classic of transitional design, between the older paper cartridges and the metallic cartridge (once the primer/base issue had been fixed with Boxer/Berdan priming.
 
Pope130 said:
I think some of the most important technologies to see application in the US Civil War were not weapons.
Logistics saw revolutionary advances in the Union. Food preservation technology, particularly canning, mass production of all sorts of impedimenta, and distribution by rail gave the North the ability to keep larger armies in the field longer. The railroads also allowed the forces to be moved quickly over long distances without wearing out troops or horses (or boots).
Another area was communications, with the telegraph network in the North the President was able to keep in touch with the far flung battlefields, getting news the same day. I can recommend the book "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails" by Tom Wheeler.
Click to expand...

Yep railroads, the Prussian noted they could use railroads to mobilize and move troops to the border in greater speed and efficiency.
 
How closely were other nations watching the American civil war? Were they sending observers or otherwise studying it at the time? If not, it's hard to imagine it having much impact globally.

I was under the impression that the Napoleonic and Crimean wars had much more impact simply because more people were paying close attention.
 
Britain had officers as observers.

I don't think that weapon wise there was anything to learn.

Some of the biggest advances of the period had already happened, the introduction of the Minie Ball with the 1853 Enfield Musket and then the breech loading Snider Enfield in 1866 for example.

US rifles always lagged behind the what was in service with the rest of the world. For example the first magazine rifle didn't come in to service until the Krag of 1892, up until then they were still using the 1866 Springfield trapdoor which was a conversion of the 1861 muzzle loader.
Even the 1903 Springfield which served until the 1930s was just a copy of an 1893 'Spanish' Mauser.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
How closely were other nations watching the American civil war? Were they sending observers or otherwise studying it at the time?
Click to expand...

Yes. The European powers sent observers, and many European military officers gained direct experience by joining on one side or the other (notably the Prussians). Large-scale applications of existing and emerging technologies are always closely watched by military professionals.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
How closely were other nations watching the American civil war? Were they sending observers or otherwise studying it at the time? If not, it's hard to imagine it having much impact globally.

I was under the impression that the Napoleonic and Crimean wars had much more impact simply because more people were paying close attention.
Click to expand...
There were British, French, Prussian, Austrian, Swedish, Russian and Italian observers. The first of dozens arrived in 1862, but several officers attached to diplomatic staffs observed matters earlier.
Scheibert, amongst others, wrote extensive studies of the war for von Moltke the Elder. For the British Freemantle spent more than a year criss-crossing the USA/CSA.
There were also journalists, and several thousand foreign volunteers fighting for both sides (mainly the Union) though this is often forgotten.
 
theprestige said:
Yes. The European powers sent observers, and many European military officers gained direct experience by joining on one side or the other (notably the Prussians). Large-scale applications of existing and emerging technologies are always closely watched by military professionals.
Click to expand...

catsmate said:
There were British, French, Prussian, Austrian, Swedish, Russian and Italian observers. The first of dozens arrived in 1862, but several officers attached to diplomatic staffs observed matters earlier.
Scheibert, amongst others, wrote extensive studies of the war for von Moltke the Elder. For the British Freemantle spent more than a year criss-crossing the USA/CSA.
There were also journalists, and several thousand foreign volunteers fighting for both sides (mainly the Union) though this is often forgotten.
Click to expand...

Did those observers report being surprised by any of it all?

I mean, the tech was not revolutionary - but were there surprises in the way it was applied?

The one lesson I remember seeing in school that has not been mentioned here: The scale of trench defenses. I was taught that was new, but have since been under the impression that it was a common feature of the Crimean war. Before that forts were used, but it was new for the the soldiers in open country to get within shouting distance of the enemy and then stay that close for months, first digging a little to get cover and gradually adding on. Essentially building opposing forts right next to each other in the middle of the fighting.

At least, that's what I was taught. This forum excels at teaching me when I was taught wrong. Was I?
 
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Trench defences weren't new but the advent of the Minor Ball in the Crimea meant that accurate fire on s large scale over long distances made getting 'dug in' important.

British use of the Rifled Enfield musket and Minie came as a shock to the Russians
 
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I've got some of Scheibert's stuff, I'll take a look. AFAIR he split the war into three phases and didn't think the technology was particularly new.
 
By the end of the war they had caught up with Europe but after the war things stagnated again.

Back to skirmishes on the frontier where logistics were more important than rate of fire.

US forces on the frontier were often outgunned by the opposition who actually practiced shooting and adopted repeating rifles much more readily than the army.
 
To be fair, it all boils down to money, including the logistics (to a certain extent.) Unfortunately, the USA was in a bit of an Ayn Rand phase, before the actual Ayn Rand was actually born. Sure, they liked to have an army to kick Injun butt, but they didn't want to pay for it. The percentage of tax income (which wasn't exactly the highest in the world yet) spent on the army was absolutely dwarfed by what the Brits spent on theirs, and that wasn't the highest spender in the world either.

So yeah, ultimately it mostly boiled down to not buying a lot of ammo, nor the best weapons, nor the carts to haul it around, because nobody wanted to pay for it. Even when it was about taking control of gold ore, which is what the war with the Sioux and thus Custer's expedition was about, nobody wanted to actually pay for that gold.

It actually took Custer's defeat to get SOME people to finally scream for more military spending. Although even then most were like, "meh, still don't want to pay for it."

Now mind you, I'm not saying they SHOULD have been more bellicose, but just putting that supposed logistics problem it into the proper historical perspective.
 
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Ammo was so scarce right across the army that none was assigned to any kind of practice and there were no marksmanship standards.

Out on the frontier when there was 'spare' ammo available it was used for hunting game to supplement the food rations.

One of the reasons for delaying the introduction of metal cartridge guns was that it was cheaper and easier to issue powder, lead and a bullet moulds.

Also a lot easier from a logistics point of view if you were in a fort on the frontier and didn't know when you were going to get a re-supply.
Only something like fifty percent of supplies sent out ended up arriving at the destination.
Along the way it was stolen or captured.
 
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Not denying any of that. In fact, I'll even explicitly agree with everything you wrote there.

What I'm saying is just why ammo was scarce, and why transportation (including guard for it) was scarce: because the people, as represented by the Congress, didn't want to pay for more.
 
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I recall reading a historical article on the Spencer rifle, arguably the first metallic-cartridge repeating rifle. The inventor (Spencer…) tried unsuccessfully to get the rifle even looked at by army procurement, but the officer in charge, a general Ripley, was an extreme traditionalist who wanted nothing to do with these newfangled (and ammo wasting) firearms.

Reportedly, he even preferred smoothbore muskets over the current rifled weapons.

Spencer, a dedicated entrepreneur, snuck his rifle onto the White House grounds while Lincoln was having an outdoor breakfast (can you imagine today?) and offered to demonstrate. Reportedly, the president was much impressed and they each fired a few rounds on the grounds. The rifle had a limited issue, but was purchased privately in large numbers, some officers equipping entire platoons.
 
They were issued in Carbine form to the Cavalry but like the Henry they weren't robust enough for general issue.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
They were issued in Carbine form to the Cavalry but like the Henry they weren't robust enough for general issue.
Click to expand...
Also the early rimfire cartridges were not particularly powerful, compared to the rifle loads, more comparable to handguns.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
They were issued in Carbine form to the Cavalry but like the Henry they weren't robust enough for general issue.
Click to expand...

Are you plumb sure of that? Ca. 200,000 Spencers were produced, and .56-56 ammo was made until the 1930s. The rifle version gave good service, but carbines were in greater demand, so carbines it was. The .56 Spencer was a modest musket-power round, adequate for most fights, although long tom muzzle feeders could outrange it unpleasantly.

The Henry was robust enough, but .44 Henry was no more than a pistol cartridge. Again, it was sufficient gun for close action. It was not a govt.-purchase arm, and so necessarily was not used in numbers comparable to the Spencer.

Neither weapon actually revolutionized infantry combat, as has been claimed (unpersuasively) at least once. No tube-magazine rifle could. Until the acceptance of the box mag AND some form of fast charger (Vetterli, Mauser, Mannlicher), a single-shot could deliver as many rounds per minute as a repeater. (The Blakesley Tube was not much used in America, because it came along toward the end of the war and, I suspect, added little to the speed of loading a Spencer. I don't know what could.)

The US Civil War had a distinct impact on the study of strategy and tactics, once the Europeans realized that it was not just a contemptible little scuffle among militias. Some of Lee's campaigns -- most of them -- are set subjects in military colleges everywhere. Old stuff, and still worth knowing.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
They were issued in Carbine form to the Cavalry but like the Henry they weren't robust enough for general issue.
Click to expand...

No so much robust, as the early metal repeating rifle cartridges were underpowered for military use. In fact,the famed 1873 Winchester rifle was really closer to a Carbine. Which is why the US army stuck with one shot breechloaders until the early 1890's despite what you see in the movies.
 
No, they stuck with one shot breechloaders for purely logistics reasons.

Never mind the carbine, a repeating rifle wasn't even introduced until the 1892 Krag That was a .30 cal, round-nose 220-grain bullet with 40 grains of powder for a muzzle velocity of around 2000 fps.
First cartridge load for the Winchester 1873 was the .44, 200 grain round-nose, bullet with 40 grains of powder at around 1,1300 fps.
It was within a short time of introduction upped to a .45, 405 grain bullet with 60 grains powder with 1500 fps. That's not a slouch for a carbine.

Cavalry requirements aren't the same as line infantry, especially when they were way out in the wilds for weeks on end with unreliable resupply.


Lever Gun Series: The 1876 Winchester - InRangeTV

 
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Money was a part of it but there were worries that giving everyone a repeater would deplete ammunition supplies faster than they could be replaced.
Resupply was a big thing when it all had to be packed out on carts or mules.
Even up in to the early 20th century this was a consideration.
Many rifles had a magazine 'cut off' that effectively turned them in to single shot rifles.
In British service the magazine cut off was still fitted to the SMLE at the start of WW1 and only removed in an effort to save money, simplify and speed production
 
Logistics still boils down to money, though, especially if we're talking about horse-drawn carts. If you want more carts to haul your stuff, you can just pay for more carts. Someone will make them for you.

WW1 and WW2 introduced other complications, mostly that you can't ramp things up overnight, and you have to distribute your resources among all the things that are all needed immediately. Like, yesterday, if possible. Such as having a finite amount of steel which you need to split between making the trucks and ships (and escort ships) for the logistics and making tanks and battleships. (E.g., Italy for their first tank project literally had to get the government to allocate some steel for that, because they couldn't even get enough for a tank prototype after the Navy got its share.) Or having a finite amount of fuel, and needing a LOT of it for other stuff too. Or having finite railroad rolling stock to go into Russia and no time or resources to expand it before your soldiers freeze to death, so you have to decide RIGHT NOW how much of it goes into carrying ammo and how much goes into carrying winter clothes.

That's WHY logistics is a problem once a war and major campaign are under way. You need that stuff hauled RIGHT now, with what you've got. You don't have another decade to build up your infrastructure first, because by then you've lost the war already. Or at the very least the enemy also gets time to see where you want to go with that infrastructure, and you can forget about surprising them. (See how a lot less warning allowed the Soviets to build layers upon layers of defenses at Kursk.)

But if we're talking a systemic lack of carts that lasted pretty literally half a century after the civil war, in times of peace, then it just simply boils down to not wanting to pay for more.
 
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Blues for Cap'n Swoop

In Range teevee, it do very well.
Yass, In Range teevee, it do mighty well.
But them Forgotten Weapons
Be the one for me.

(Bottleneck solo.)

Forgottenweapons.com
 
There was even opposition to moving to metal cartridge ammunition among some armies.

A soldier can carry a bullet mould and lead and a lot of caps can be carried in quite a small pouch.

Out 'on the range' when you fire a metal cartridge round you have to wait for a new one to replace it, you can't reload it.

This was an important consideration for quite a few years even though the faster loading, consistency and reliability of metal cartridges was obvious.

this was a big consideration mong civilian gun owners cap and ball pistols were still in common use for decades after the introduction of the metal cartridge.
 
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