The most popular caliber of the North and South
Adult uncles "play a cannon" ... So what? When you have everything, why not play?
I saw how in glory the Lord himself appeared to us,
How He, with a powerful foot of a bunch of anger, swept away
As He drew a metal sword with a terrible lightning.
He holds the truth step.
Republic Battle Hymn
How He, with a powerful foot of a bunch of anger, swept away
As He drew a metal sword with a terrible lightning.
He holds the truth step.
Republic Battle Hymn
Weapon from museums. Among the weapons of the Civil War in the USA between the northern and southern states, monsters are undoubtedly remembered - monstrous Columbiads of 381 and 508 mm caliber, "Dictator" mortars. But they did not decide the outcome of the battles between the American armies and they were not the most numerous in the arsenals of both. The most numerous, massive and popular were three-inch, or 76,2 mm, guns. And it was on them that many innovations occurred during the years of this war. Moreover, the most famous gun of this caliber was a muzzle-loading rifled gun made of wrought iron, which was adopted by the United States Army in 1861 and was widely used in field artillery. She fired a 9,5-pound (4,3 kg) shell at a distance of 1830 yards (1670 m) with a barrel elevation of 5 °. The 3-inch gun was not as effective at firing shotguns as the heavier 12-pound Napoleon, but it turned out to be very accurate at long ranges when firing high-explosive shells or shrapnel. There was only one recorded case of a 3-inch gun blast during operation. You can not say anything about 10-pound rifled guns of Parrott of the same size, which exploded quite often. The Confederate States of America lacked the technological capabilities to produce successful copies of such a tool. But the army of the Confederate States used them, getting them from the federals as trophies.
Three-inch Parrotta. Cheap, quick-fire, but ... explosive!
It so happened that in 1835 so many six-pound cast-iron cannons exploded during the control tests, that the American Artillery Administration decided to abandon the cast iron and have field artillery guns exclusively made of bronze. So the completely successful six-pound field gun M1841 was born. However, American engineers did not abandon attempts to make wrought iron guns, however, without much success. So, in 1844, during tests on board the Prinseton ship, the 12-inch Mirotvorets welding gun exploded, and many members of the test commission died. The reason, as it turned out, was the low quality of the starting material. However, over time, the quality of the metal was raised. As early as 1854, the Safe Harbor Iron and Steel Works in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, produced iron bars of such high quality that they began to be used in the construction of lighthouses. And then the company’s superintendent John Griffen suggested making the gun by welding its barrel from forged bars, and drill a hole in the barrel channel. Later, the process was improved by winding the rod in a spiral around a metal cylinder, after which the resulting billet of the barrel was subjected to welding heating. Then trunnions were added and the bore was drilled. Samuel J. Reeves, president of the parent company Safe Harbor Phoenix Iron Works, approved the Griffen method, and already at the end of 1854 the first gun with a barrel weighing 700 pounds (318 kg) was made using this technology.
Three-inch John Griffen. The most massive and popular weapon of the US Army during the Civil War era on the Gettysburg Field
Griffen’s gun was sent to Fort Monroe, where in 1856 it was tested by Captain Alexander Bridy Dyer, together with Griffen himself as a witness. It was decided to find out how many shots the barrel could withstand, but the gun fired 500 shots without any visible damage. Then they began to shoot from it with increased charges of gunpowder. The cannon was torn apart on the tenth shot, when the barrel was filled to the muzzle with 13 cores and 7 pounds (3 kg) of gunpowder. It was a success, after which, as well as a very favorable report by Dyer, four more Griffen guns were manufactured and sent for testing.
On February 21, 1861, the Ammunition Department requested four forged 3,5-inch (89 mm) guns. The government paid $ 370 for each of these two guns. (None of them survived.) Phoenix Iron Company also produced several 6-pound 3,67-inch (93 mm) guns, of which seven survived date from 1861 and bear the 1855 Griffen stamp printed on one of the pins. On July 24, 1861, US Army General James Wolf Ripley ordered 300 wrought iron guns at a factory in Phoenix. The ammunition department finalized the design of the gun, removed all the jewelry from the barrel, so that the barrel took on a gentle curve. The cost of production ranged from 330 to 350 dollars per barrel.
The bronze Napoleon was not bad in certain situations.
However, pretty soon the same Samuel Reeves discovered that using the original Griffen technique only allowed one of three good guns. The technology was still imperfect. 40% of the trunks were ultimately unsuitable for use. Frustrated Reeves decided to try to invent a new method of production, and he succeeded. He took a hollow tube or iron rod and wrapped them in sheets of iron. It turned out the barrel of the desired diameter. Then the convolution of the sheet was welded, and the finished trunk was bored from the inside. Reeves convinced patent examiners that his method was different from the patent on April 29, 1862, issued to David T. Yickel, and received the patent on December 9, 1862. And although the Confederate enterprises were able to arrange the manufacture of Parrott guns, they did not succeed in making copies of the 3-inch gun.
Patent granted to David T. Yickel on the technology of winding a gun barrel from a metal sheet
So, what was this weapon massively used by both sides of the conflict? Caliber 3,0 inches (76 mm). The gun barrel weighed 820 pounds (371,9 kg), and fired a shell weighing 9,5 pounds (4,3 kg). The charge of gunpowder was 1,0 lb (0,5 kg), which allowed the projectile to report a speed of 1215 ft / s (370 m / s) and throw it at a distance of 1830 yards (1673 m) with a barrel elevation angle of 5 °. When the elevation of the barrel was increased to 16 °, the Griffen gun could have thrown the projectile already at 4180 yards (3822 m). Unlike smoothbore guns, a three-inch cannon shell retained two-thirds of its initial muzzle velocity of 839 ft / s (256 m / s) at a distance of 1500 yards (1372 m), so its projectile was invisible in flight. The shell of the smooth-bore gun retained only one third of its initial velocity, and in flight it was visible. However, a rifled shell could also become visible if the shell flew out without rotating, which was due to the fact that its pallet did not expand sufficiently and did not fully enter the barrel grooves. At the same time, the barrel itself had seven grooves, which twisted from left to right. The speed of rotation of the projectile was one revolution per 11 feet (3,4 m).
The gun barrel was mounted on a used gun mount for a six-pound field gun. Since the shell of the new gun was heavier than before, recoil during firing sometimes caused damage to the barrel mounts and the wheelset. The gun carriage weighed 900 pounds (408 kg), which was perfectly acceptable for transporting guns with six horses, including a charging case.
John Griffen patent for the manufacture of a gun barrel
The gun could fire explosive shells of impact and buckshot. The use of "bolts" (continuous "armor-piercing" shells) was rare. Moreover, the design of the gun made it possible to use a variety of types of ammunition, including Gochkis and Schenkl shells. Parrott shells could also be used, but in an emergency, because they worked poorly - because they were designed for a 10-pound Parrott gun, which had only three rifled, and not seven, as in the Griffen gun.
"Three-inch" for field fortifications
Why was a 12-pound Napoleon shotgun or a M12 1841-pound howitzer more effective than a three-inch shotgun? Firstly, a smaller caliber means fewer “balls” in a card shot. Secondly, due to the cutting of the trunk, the buckshot is ejected by a too wide cone. For these reasons, Union General Henry Jackson Hunt believed that the effective range of the three-inch cannon was about half that of the 12-pound Napoleon, which confidently hit targets with 400-yard-shot shots (366 m).
Samuel Reeves Patent
At the beginning of the war, the Allied batteries had six guns of the same type. At the battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863, 50 of the 65 batteries of the northerners totaled six guns, and 64 of these batteries had three-inch guns. The exception was Sterling's 2nd Light Artillery Battery. For each battery with six guns, 14 calculations of six sleds and seven spare horses were required. The calculations were responsible for six artillery pieces, six charging boxes, one van and one marching forge. Each shell relied on 50 shells in each charging case.
Three-inch cannon of the 1861 model with all accessories at the Rocky's Museum
For 2004, more than 350 trunks of three-inch field guns were preserved in the United States, many of which were located in national military parks. Which, incidentally, is best illustrated by the longevity of this gun. Interestingly, the American army used them until the 1880s. In the years 1879-1881, six of these guns were regrained to a caliber of 3,18 inches (81 mm) and converted to load from the breech. The guns showed good results, and this experiment ultimately led to the adoption of the 3,2-inch gun M1897. In 1903, more than 200 outdated three-inch guns were converted into salute guns.
Three-inch by the road
At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 1861 model was the main weapon of the armies of the northerners and southerners. So, of the 372 artillery pieces at the federals, 150 were three-inch. About 75 on the same battlefield belonged to the southerners. At the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the Union Army used 93 such guns, while the Confederate Army had 48. By the end of the war, only one steel plant in Phoenixville, PA, produced 866 samples of this gun. And another 91 were produced before the closure of production in January 1867. No wonder so many of these cannons have survived.
High accuracy of the fire of this American three-inch was noted. So, during one of the battles for Atlanta in 1864, the Confederate gunner on a Lumsden battery reported that one of his guns was installed in a fortification with an embrasure only about one foot wide (30 cm). For a short time, three shells of "three-inch" northerners flew through this hole, and they did not explode. The first hit the southerners' cannon between the pins and knocked out some metal. The second damaged the left "cheek" of the gun carriage. The third hit the very edge of the muzzle, pressing it inward, completely disabling it.
James Pound Gun Made of Bronze
The Griffen gun had “cousins” from a number of other designers, but made of bronze. With rifling inside, they were not much different from his guns, only bronze was not the best metal for rifled guns. The rifling in them was quickly erased, so that the trunks had to be melted over and over again!
To be continued ...
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