The British army beat the French army to the punch and officially adopted the weapon in 1682. They also did incredible damage to the human body, shattering bones and pulverizing internal organs. During the Crimean War of 1853-56, which pitted Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia, the bullet so improved the effectiveness of infantry troops that 150 soldiers using the minié could equal the firing power of more than 500 with a traditional musket and ammunition. But the Civil War soldier armed with a rifle-musket and minié bullets could hit a man at 100 to 200 yards; a horse and rider made an even more inviting target. It eventually became the standard infantry firearm of Europe and America and remained so until the muzzleloading rifle-musket replaced it in the 1850s. The smoothbore had an effective range of 50 yards and an extended range of 200 yards. This article was written by Allan W. Howey and originally published in the October … Of the several hundred thousand wounded men treated in Union hospitals over the course of the war, surgeons noted only 922 bayonet wounds! Developed over a generation, its final design was the fruit of independent work by men from Great Britain, France, and the United States. Inventors and military men devised new types of weapons, such as the repeating rifle and the submarine, that forever changed the way that wars were fought. The minie ball was used to be the most dangerous weapons in the civil war. During the course of the Civil War breechloading weapons and repeaters proved they could provide a much higher rate of fire than the rifled musket (their conical bullets with attached cartridges evolved from the Minie´ball). What made the smoothbore flintlock musket so dominant an infantry weapon for so long was that it was easy to load; an experienced soldier could load and fire up to four times a minute, a rapid rate of fire for the time. This article was written by Allan W. Howey and originally published in the October 1999 issue of Civil War Times Magazine. Union Won. His design was improved on in 1836 by a London gunsmith named William Greener, who created an oval-shaped bullet, one end of which had a flat surface with a small hole drilled into it. Between 1861 and 1865, the Springfield armory manufactured nearly 800,000 of the guns; private contractors built 880,000 more; and slightly modified 1863 and 1864 models accounted for an additional 500,000. For more great articles, be sure to subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today! In the earliest models, after the chamber was filled with gunpowder, Delvigne rammed a standard soft, round lead ball down the barrel and pounded it against the lip with the ramrod until it flattened just enough to grip the rifling grooves. An improved version of the rifle-musket–the 1861 model built by the federal armory in Springfield, Massachusetts–became the principal infantry weapon of Northern soldiers in the Civil War. Widely recognized as one of the war’s most brilliant commanders, Hancock served at the Battles of Williamsburg, Antietam and Chancellorsville ...read more, Though neither the Union nor the Confederacy had a formal military intelligence network during the Civil War, each side obtained crucial information from spying or espionage operations. It seemed a small jump from there to making a bullet with a base that would expand from the pressure of firing. Minie ball manufacture and blacksmith tools. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The bullet was much more efficient than earlier musket balls, and it was feared for its awesome destructive power. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, most state arsenals contained smoothbore muskets, and these were used extensively by both sides out of necessity. Original file (3,351 × 915 pixels, file size: 2.09 … It was adapted for use by the U.S. military in 1855. That gun was the muzzleloading rifle-musket, and with it came the improved bullet that made it possible. But before all this came to bear, inventors and sportsmen were working to perfect a new ignition system. The flintlocks misfired 922 times (15 percent of the time), while only 36 (0.6 percent) of the percussion weapons misfired. Soldiers armed with a minié-loaded rifle could hide behind trees or blockades and take down approaching forces before they could get close enough to cause any damage. The origin of firearms began with gunpowder and its invention, mostly ...read more, Civil War culture in America–both North and South–was greatly distinct from life in the antebellum years. The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié invented the bullet that would bear his name in 1849. That did not mean that the average Civil War soldier could hit anything at the more extreme distances, but improving the old smoothbore’s 75-yard range by 125 yards dramatically increased the effectiveness of even the most inept infantryman. Confederate General. 655 655. Instructional Videos. The soft-lead Minie´ball, as noted above, expanded to fit the rifling of the barrel, giving it greater accuracy. The Springfield rifle-musket was a .58-caliber percussion weapon that weighed nearly 10 pounds and cost about $15. Robert E. Lee. Both sides in the Civil War used the Minie Ball which were the Unions and Confederates because it shot more farther and had better accuracy. What the infantryman needed was a firearm that combined the best of the smoothbore flintlock musket with that of the rifle–a gun that was easy to load and could hit a small target at 200 yards. As the war dragged on, the soldier’s life was one of near-constant hardship and deprivation, from substandard clothing and equipment to barely edible and usually ...read more, On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of ...read more, The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. The origin of the (false) story was a gag article published in The American Medical Weekly in 1874. Harry Ridgeway, a fellow relic hunter, said that there are very few places in the Southern States of American that were not battlefields during the Civil War. The Minié ball (or minie ball) is a type of muzzle-loading rifle bullet named after co-developer, Claude-Étienne Minié. The combination of the rifle-musket and minié bullet also made the bayonet nearly obsolete. It was 58 inches long with a 40-inch barrel, and came with an 18-inch bayonet. A nice affordable piece of history. As the name muzzleloading, smoothbore flintlock musket suggests, the gun was loaded (with loose gunpowder and a round ball) at the mouth of its barrel. War Hero. File:Civil War Minié ball, top end.jpg, File:Civil War Minié ball, bottom end.jpg, File:Civil War Minié ball and clay marbles 1.jpg, File:Civil War Minié ball and clay marbles 2.jpg, File:Civil War clay marbles with star.jpg: Kameran sijainti Tämä ja muut kuvat kartalla: OpenStreetMap: Lisenssi. For the first time in history, infantrymen could aim their weapons at a target a fair distance away and actually have a chance of hitting it. ), When the Crimean War erupted between Russia on one side and the British and French on the other, the two western European nations demonstrated the effectiveness of their new weapons against the Russians’ smoothbore muskets. The weapon did not even have a rear sight for precise aiming because aiming was a fruitless effort. Its next closest competitor was the smoothbore flintlock musket, with an index of 47. 0. Doctors … Adding to the damage, some soldiers notched their bullets to insure they would spread out when they hit their target. The principal surgical procedure performed during the Civil War was amputation, accounting for three out of every four operations. This chamber was separated from the rest of the barrel by a strong lip, beyond which the powder could pass, but not the bullet. The Minié rifle and ammunition were used effectively by the British against the Russian army in the Crimean war. When the Minié ball struck a human body, it did enormous damage. (This ignited a legal war between Greener and the British government, which finally awarded him the relative pittance of 1,000 pounds in recognition of his earlier work. The bore, or inside of the barrel, was smooth; unlike the later rifle-muskets, it contained no spiral rifling grooves to force the projectile to spin evenly and thus travel rapidly in a straight line like a spiraling football. The lead minie ball. As early as 1818, Captain John Norton of the British 34th Infantry began experimenting with bullet design. This study compares the wounding characteristics of a reproduction rifle from the American Civil War to one of the Spanish-American War using the wound profile method. In effect, they became the forebears of today’s mechanized infantry. In fact, firing one of these guns would be similar to shooting a marble from a modern shotgun. Minie Ball summary: The Minié ball, or Minie ball, is a type of bullet used extensively in the American Civil War. Increased musketry range caused a revolution in warfare: no longer could an attacker advance to charge range, suffer a volley or two from the defenders, and then attack with bayonets. lead victory to Union Army. As Colonel George Hanger, a British officer who fought in the American Revolution, wrote in 1814: A soldier’s musket if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many are), will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards, perhaps even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, providing his antagonist aims at him; and as for firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you might just as well fire at the moon and have the same hope of hitting your object. The new weapons allowed defenders to inflict heavy casualties on the attackers as they advanced into charge range. Warfare had clearly tilted in favor of the defender. Considering all this evidence, it is no exaggeration to conclude that the rifle-musket and minié bullet greatly affected the overall course of the Civil War and foreshadowed 20th-century warfare. Read more about Civil War guns and bullets. It was widely considered to be the equal of the Springfield. The result was that the bullet fit more uniformly inside the barrel, producing more reliable and accurate fire. The American Civil War Mod: Revived is a single player mod for Mount and Blade: Warband that is built upon an old civil war mod that ceased development, that was called, "A House Divided". And it was here that the minié bullet entered the scene. The bullet was designed by Minié with a small iron plug and a lead skirting. Norton shaped the nose of his new bullet like a cone with a rounded point and made its cylindrical base hollow. Some local tribes used blowguns, and Norton observed the base of their darts was made from pith, the spongy wood from the center of tree trunks. A trained marksman could consistently hit a 4-inch target at 200 yards and a 6-by-6-foot target at 500 yards. The Minié ball, or Minni ball, is a type of hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the French Minié rifle, for muzzleloaded rifled muskets. Cylindrical in shape, with a conical point and a hollow base containing an iron plug, the Minié bullet was smaller than the diameter of a rifle barrel, and could be easily loaded, even when the rifle became dirty. The rifle-musket and minié bullet revolutionized warfare by drastically altering the tactical balance between an attacking army and a defending one. Perhaps that is why Britain’s Ordinance Department rejected the new ammunition, despite a successful test by the 60th Rifles in August 1836. Generals. The reign of the "king of weapons" did not last long. During Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s bloody campaign against Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the summer of 1864, for example, Union medical directors recorded only 37 bayonet wounds. The ease of loading the smoothbore musket allowed soldiers to fire quickly, but the shots were not likely to hit their targets. Consequently, the colorful cavalry charges of the Napoleonic era became all but obsolete. I am reluctant to change the article right now but would like to call this to someones attention since it is of historical interest Thanx WarLord 23:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC) I found this article: ]Weaponry: The Rifle-Musket and the Minié Ball. André flew combat medevac missions in northwest Vietnam, rescuing wounded soldiers, and even parachuted into the field to treat severe casualties... HistoryNet, Homepage Featured Top Stories, Homepage Hero. Battle of Gettysburg. In Chamberlain’s case, the … When the natives blew, the pith expanded to form an airtight seal against the pipe’s inner walls. U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy, adopted the rifle-musket and minié bullet for the U.S. Army in 1855. The Thouvenin design was a moderate improvement over Delvigne’s, and the French army selected it for trials in 1846. Product (Civil War era Minie Ball bullet artifact) was as expected. The statistics boil down to this: at 40 yards, the flintlock smoothbore could usually hit a target measuring 1 square foot, but at 300 yards, only 1 shot in 20 would hit a target of 18 square feet. The gun was adapted for use by the United States military in 1855, just six years before the first bombs fell at Fort Sumter, marking the start of the American Civil War. The base of the improved bullet expanded just as well as Minié’s but was much easier and cheaper to mass-produce. In earlier years, the bayonet was often the most decisive infantry assault weapon, because the smoothbore flintlock musket’s short range allowed attackers to approach close enough for hand-to-hand fighting. The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié was not the first to come up with the design of a bullet that expanded when fired, but he simplified and improved on earlier designs–including those developed by Britain’s Captain John Norton (1818) and William Greener (1836)–to create his namesake bullet in 1849. Invented in the 1840s by the French Army captains Montgomery and Henri-Gustove Delvigne, it was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles, an innovation that brought about the … Did you know? However, the poor physical condition of their pat… La balle Minié est dénommée ainsi d'après le nom de son codéveloppeur, Claude Étienne Minié, … Once you see Joe DiMaggio holding a pineapple you can never unsee it... Get inside articles from the world's premier publisher of history magazines. Great Britain took the lead. The era of ramming powder and a Minie´ ball down a barrel from the muzzle lasted less than a quarter of a century, but during that time the new conical bullet and the rifled musket had shown the need for armies to develop new tactics that recognized the increased strength of defenders and the slaughter awaiting troops packed into tight linear battle formations. Although the Minié ball was conical in shape, it was commonly referred to as a "ball," due to the round shape of the ammunition that had been used for centuries. In 1826, Delvigne built a unique rifle barrel with an independent gunpowder chamber at its breech. Due to the deadly accuracy and power of the bullet the American death rate in the war skyrocketed. But it was not these spectacular weapons that drew the most blood during the Civil War. When fired, the expanding gas forcibly pushed on the base of the bullet, deforming it to engage the rifling. Hundreds of thousands of Union troops carried the 1861 Springfield onto the battlefields of the Civil War, and untold numbers of Confederates captured the weapon and used it themselves. The Minié bullet, a cylindrical bullet with a hollow base that expanded when fired, proved lethally accurate over relatively long distances, and was soon used to devastating effect by the British army against Russian forces during the Crimean War. Trying to find out if anyone knows whether molds for making Minie balls might be part of the equipment of a blacksmith of Civil War era? No longer could artillery crews set up just outside musket range to deliver devastating grapeshot or canister fire, as they had done during the Napoleonic Wars, because the rifled musket could easily pick off those crews if they were within the 300 yard-range of canister. The Minié ball, which gave off a terrifying whistling sound as it moved through the air, struck soldiers with tremendous force. "), The British War Ministry was sufficiently impressed with the design to pay Minie´ a royalty of 20,000 pounds in 1852 to use it for British weapons. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. It allowed the bullet to be cast a bit narrower than the bore’s diameter to allow easy loading, since when the gun was fired, the pressure expanded the base to fit the barrel’s rifling grooves tightly. All this is quite a bit of notoriety for a humble-looking firearm with few visible characteristics to distinguish it clearly from its 1850s predecessor. This would be pre-civil war, I think.. Can anyone verify this? The Confederacy purchased about 400,000 of these 1853 model .577-caliber weapons from private manufacturers in England. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. VIDEO: Battery H Of The 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery At Gettysburg, Dan Bullock: The youngest American killed in the Vietnam War, Valérie André, the first woman to fly a helicopter in combat, Yank, the Army Weekly Magazine Proves that Military Humor Transcends Generations. Several years after Norton had begun developing his hollow-base bullet, French weapons experts began working on a similar design. (Rodney Bryant and Daniel Woolfolk/Military Times)... Homepage Featured Top Stories, Homepage Hero, Vietnam War. The British army adopted it in 1834 after comparing the results of 6,000 test rounds fired from flintlock and percussion firearms. He primed the flintlock by pouring some of the loose gunpowder from the cartridge into the frizzen pan and closed the pan cover to keep the priming charge in place and dry. This, and the traditional success of bayonet charges that still influenced many commanders, forced troops to continue to fight in closely packed formations that presented opponents armed with rifled muskets large targets. It was adapted for use by the U.S. military in 1855.During the Civil War (1861-65), the basic firearm carried by both Union and Confederate troops was the rifle-musket and the Minié ball. The hollow base of the bullet allowed the thin skirt to expand and grip the rifling … One persistent urban legend claims that a girl standing near a Virginia battlefield in 1863 was impregnated by a stray Minié bullet that passed through the scrotum of a Union soldier before lodging in her abdomen. He soon discovered, however, that the pounding disfigured the ball and greatly reduced its accuracy, so he designed an elongated, cylindrical bullet with a flat base that would expand more evenly under the ramrod blows. Artillery projectiles accounted for less than 9 percent, and swords and bayonets, less than 1 percent. This pith expanded when a person blew into the blowgun’s tube, closing the space between the tube and the dart to give a tight seal that increased the dart’s range. When fired, the expanding gas forcibly pushed on the base of the bullet, deforming it to engage the rifling. The bullet was first used by General George B. McClellan. In 1855, the United States Army, under the direction of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, adopted the minié ball and the rifled musket. Eventually, three French army officers would share the credit for what would become the minié bullet: Captain Henri-Gustave Delvigne, Colonel Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin, and Captain Claude-Etienne Minié. While firepower had increased, communications hadn’t. In 1849, he came up with one that more closely resembled Norton’s than Delvigne’s. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate ...read more, On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves within any States…in rebellion against the United States,” it declared, “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” (The more than 1 million enslaved people in ...read more, Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-1886) was a U.S. Army officer and politician who served as a Union general during the Civil War (1861-65). The gun and bullet combination was still not practical for widespread military use; the rifle breech was very difficult to clean, and the metal post was prone to breaking. It had also acquired the name that stuck among English-speaking troops–minnie ball, even though the captain’s French surname was properly pronounced min-YAY and his innovation was not a ball but a cone-shaped bullet. He replaced the lip and powder chamber inside the barrel with a hard metal post that screwed into the gun’s breech. The following year, American armories began building smoothbore percussion muskets and converting older flintlocks to percussion weapons. Known to common soldiers as the minié ball (which they pronounced ‘minnie ball), the conical bullet could be loaded quickly and easily down a rifle’s muzzle and still fit the barrel’s rifling grooves tightly when fired. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. This hollow-based design could be mass-produced cheaply. Browse Collections. Generals on both sides continued to send their men on these suicidal attacks. Shop All Products. During the Napoleonic era, attacking infantry could safely approach to within 100 yards of an enemy line with little danger of being shot down. In the early 1850s, James H. Burton, a master armorer at the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, gave the minié bullet the form it would take into the Civil War. It was invented by Richard J. Gatling during the American Civil War, and later used in the Spanish-American War, but was supplanted ...read more, The American Revolution was fought—and won—with guns, and the weapons have become ingrained in U.S. culture, but the invention of firearms started long before colonists ever settled on North American soil. Delvigne’s developments inspired Minié, who had served with the French Chasseurs in several African campaigns, to do further work toward making an efficient, effective bullet. Burton’s version of the new ammunition, along with the rifled musket for firing it, was adopted for use by the U.S. Army by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. During the Civil War, however, because of the rifle-musket’s accuracy at long ranges, stationary defenders could load and fire quickly and hit their attackers. During the Civil War the North and South used a great variety of small arms ammunition, but the type most used was the minie ball. Common practice targets were the head of a tack at 20 yards, the head of a turkey at 100 yards, and the body of a turkey at 200 yards–challenging targets even for today’s sharpshooters with modern rifles and telescopic sights. Armed with a Springfield, a competent shooter could hit a 27-inch bull’s-eye at 500 yards, the best performance to date for a standard-issue infantry weapon. (Minie´is properly pronounced min-YAY, but Americans pronounced the name as "Minnie. It led tissue that will become teared and to broken bones. A smoothbore’s load was a solid ball that rattled its way down the barrel when it was fired; judging what angle it was going be traveling when it left the muzzle was difficult, virtually impossible under the rapid-fire conditions of combat.