Artillery innovations of the civil war between North and South
Gilland's double-barreled cannon, Athens, Georgia, USA
Oh, how many wonderful discoveries to us
Prepare an enlightened spirit,
And the experience of the son of errors difficult,
And genius, the paradoxes friend
And the case, god is the inventor.
AS Pushkin
Prepare an enlightened spirit,
And the experience of the son of errors difficult,
And genius, the paradoxes friend
And the case, god is the inventor.
AS Pushkin
Weapon from museums. In front of the mayor's office of the city of Athens in Georgia, USA, stands an unusual cannon from the American Civil War. It is a double-barreled cannon, but unlike other multi-barreled cannons of the past, the Athens double-barreled cannon was designed to fire two cannonballs connected to each other by a long iron chain. The two barrels spread slightly apart from each other, so that when they fired at the same time, the cannonballs had to spread out to the sides for the entire length of the chain and mow down the enemy soldiers like a scythe of wheat. If anything, it should have been in the opinion of a man named John Gilland, who was a dentist by profession but was in the local militia.
Gilland believed that weapons of such lethal power could serve the interests of protecting his community and help the Confederate army. He managed to interest several wealthy citizens of Athens with his idea, who gave money to make a weapon made by the Athens Steam Company. The barrel was cast in one piece and had two bore bores next to each other. Each caliber was just over three inches, with the barrels slightly diverging to the sides. Each barrel had its own ignition hole, but both barrels were also connected by a common ignition hole, so which of the barrels was set on fire did not matter. All the same, both barrels fired at the same time.
Captain David Williams' Cannon
Gilland decided to test the finished cannon near Athens, in a field near Newton Bridge. However, on trials, things did not go at all as it was intended. However, this happens often with inventors. Life very rudely invades their fanciful plans and destroys their most beautiful dreams.
So, when Gilland fired from his cannon for the first time, for some reason the two barrels fired not simultaneously, but with a delay, because of which the cannonballs, chained by one long chain, began to randomly circle around the field, plowed about an acre of land, destroyed the corn field and mowed many saplings at the edge of the field before the chain broke and both balls flew in two different directions.
During the second shot, the cannonballs flew towards the pine forest and left a gaping hole in it, as if, according to one of the eyewitnesses, "a narrow cyclone or a giant mower had passed."
The third shot was the worst. This time, the chain broke immediately. As a result, one cannonball flew off to the side and hit a neighboring house, from which a pipe was knocked down, but the second ... hit a cow, killing it instantly.
Incredibly, Gilland considered his trials to be successful. After all, everything happened as he expected. It was not his fault that the chain was fragile! He tried to sell the weapon to the Confederate army arsenal, but the arsenal commander found it unusable and sent it back to Athens. Gilland persistently tried to offer his invention to other military leaders, but was refused everywhere.
In the end, it was decided to use the gun as a signal and leave it in Athens to warn the townspeople of the advancing Yankees. After the war ended, the city sold its double-barreled cannon, but bought it back in the 1890s and installed it in front of the mayor's office as a local landmark. After all, there is no such thing anywhere else, not in the USA, not in the whole world! And she still looks north - as a symbolic defiance of the southerners' foes!
The breech of the gun by David Williams
But the gun of Captain David Williams, who also developed it for the Confederate Army of the Southern States, was more fortunate. It was a one-pound rapid-fire cannon, which was put into service in the same year 1861.
The Williams gun had a steel barrel 4 feet (1,2 m) long and a caliber of 1,57 inches (about 4 cm). The maximum range to which it could send its projectile was 2000 meters, the aiming range was half as much - 1000 meters. The bolt was opened and closed by turning the lever on the right side of the breech of the gun. In this case, the charge with the projectile was simultaneously sent to the barrel. At the same time, the drummer's spring was cocked, which, of course, was very convenient. Well, the shot itself was fired with the same handle as it moved forward and downward.
Side view
However, the loading of the gun was not mechanized. It was still manual and, moreover, separate: that is, after the bolt was opened, the loader put a projectile on its tray, then a powder cap made of waxed paper, and then put the capsule on the ignition tube. All these operations slowed down the firing process in order, however, as tests showed, a well-trained crew consisting of a shooter, a loader and a carrier of ammunition when firing with a constant sight could develop an unprecedented rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute. And this despite the fact that the rate of fire of muzzle-loading guns of the same caliber did not exceed then two rounds per minute.
A typical XNUMXth century muzzle-loading gun from Špilberk Castle in the Czech city of Brno could have successfully fought in the years of the American Civil War, although it would probably have been considered morally obsolete. Technological progress was so slow then ...
It is clear that it was impossible to sustain such a high rate of fire for a long time with manual loading. The crew, of course, got tired, the ignition tube was clogged with carbon deposits, it had to be cleaned, and the gun itself became very hot from frequent firing. Therefore, it also had to be cooled, for which it was poured with water from a bucket. But when repelling enemy attacks, it was Williams' guns that were very convenient.
Proof that this gun was made in 1795!
However, they had another very serious drawback that prevented their wide distribution during the war: they were difficult to manufacture and, as a result, their price was very high. Its cost was $ 325, while a conventional infantry capsule rifle cost only about three dollars then! Therefore, for the money that could buy just one such quick-fire, it would be possible to purchase weapons for more than a hundred soldiers.
Exactly the same ship cannons near the princely palace in Monaco
It is clear that the command of the Confederate army, under all circumstances, simply could not help but like it, and it, delighted with its firepower, already in September 1861 made an order for a six-gun battery. A year later, on May 3, 1862, a battery of guns, commanded by Captain Williams himself, was already participating in the Battle of Seven Pines. The debut of the gun was very successful, so new orders followed from the army. The data in different sources differ, but it is believed that the southerners managed to make from 40 to 50 Williams design guns. They distinguished themselves in many battles, inflicted serious losses on the enemy, but due to the fact that there were very few of them, they did not have a noticeable effect on the course of the war.
So the civil war in the United States, like all other wars, in the most significant way moved military affairs forward and contributed to the development of industry as a whole. Moreover, much of what was previously proposed in peacetime has not been embodied in metal, but more technologically advanced and easily feasible solutions have appeared in the war years. Here, for example, is the patent of R.T.Loper from 1844 for a tool made of a variety of steel rings. To some extent, this was a reanimation of the design of XNUMXth century guns, but at a higher level. The idea was not embodied in metal, since a very high precision was required for the manufacture of these rings and the shirt itself, into which they would be inserted. Speaking in Russian, it wasn't worth the candle!
R. T. Lopera patent
In 1849, a similar design, only this time a breech-loading gun, was proposed by B. Chamber. Also a barrel of separate rings, assembled together and with a screw bolt in the breech.
V. Chamber's patent
The weapon never saw the light, but it was on the battlefields of the Civil War that the piston breech block of Whitworth's design, which stood on his guns with a hexagonal bore, was tested.
The device of the Whitworth piston bolt and the shells for his gun
Here, however, all the designers of new guns were surpassed by R.P. Parrott, who received a patent for his gun on October 1, 1861. Without further ado, he simply pulled a metal pipe (casing) onto the breech of the then gun (it doesn't matter, smooth-bore or rifled!), Which immediately sharply reduced the likelihood of a barrel rupture in this part of it. Here in the muzzle, let it break there, God bless her. And it got to the point that the crews of the guns simply sawed off the torn part of the barrel and ... fired on!
R.P. Parrott patent
However, the design of Columbiades by Thomas Jackson Rodman was even simpler, although it had a technological "flavor". The barrels were cast from ordinary cast iron, but at the same time they were cooled from the inside and heated from the outside, which made it possible to obtain a very strong crystal structure in the finished product. Moreover, in the course of time, they thought of inserting liners into the channel of smooth-bore guns and turning the guns into rifled ones!
Rodman Cannons at Fort Trumbull
Scheme of converting Rodman's smooth-bore 13-inch cannon into a 10-inch rifled gun, loaded from a muzzle. The fastening pins holding the liner are clearly visible
It is interesting that immediately after the end of the war, a book was published in the United States, which summarized almost all the experience of creating and using artillery pieces during this war. Descriptions, statements of experts and even discussions on certain issues - everything got on its pages, including very interesting graphic schemes of guns that appeared or were offered at that particular time, that is, from 1861 to 1865, with the main attention being paid to heavy guns. shooting at armored ships.
Cover of this edition
Diagram of a fastened weapon under the Lancaster patent
Diagram of the 68-pounder Parrotta gun
Diagram of one of the first guns with a barrel screwed from several pipes. Later it became common, but in 1865 it was a truly revolutionary proposal.
And, finally, this fantastic project: the "accelerating" multi-chamber cannon of the American Azel Storr Lyman, who received federal patent No. 14568 for it on February 3, 1857. This gun had several powder chambers, the charges in which were ignited sequentially.
Lyman-Haskell multi-chamber cannons as part of the coastal battery of the future. Illustration from Scientific American, January 28, 1882
From 1857 to 1894, Lyman, along with Colonel Jace Haskell, even managed to build several of these multi-chamber guns, although they used ordinary black powder. True, these guns did not show a special increase in the initial velocity of the projectile. So, for a 6-inch (152-mm) gun in 1870, the projectile speed was about 330 m / s, and during the tests in 1884 - 611 m / s, that is, only 20% higher than in "normal" guns of the same caliber, with a disproportionately greater mass and undoubted technical complexity of a multi-chamber gun. So the project was not needed and soon everyone forgot about it.
Layman's multi-chamber gun scheme. No, it is not for nothing that it is said that everything new is a well-forgotten old!
But the idea is not dead! She again embodied in metal, only this time in Nazi Germany, where on the banks of the Pas-de-Calais the Germans even began to build a super-powerful multi-chamber cannon "Centipede" (or "High pressure pump") for shelling London, and even not one, but in the amount of 50 pieces. The allies, of course, bombed the stationary positions of this battery with super-powerful Tallboy bombs, but its lightweight version even managed to shoot at Luxembourg, which was occupied by American troops. Here is such a curious zigzag of technical creativity!
A prototype of a multi-chamber cannon designed by German engineer August Könders at the Laatzig test site, 1942. Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1981-147-30A
To be continued ...
- Vyacheslav Shpakovsky
- Mortars "Dictator" in the battles of the North against the South
Shuvalov's "secret howitzer"
North and South: smooth-bore and rifled guns
US Civil War ammunition
The most popular caliber of the North and South
Cannons of Tredegar and the Noble Brothers
Cannons of Brooke and Viard
James and Sawyer cannons: rifled versus smoothbore
"The parrot gun." Man and his instrument
Faceted bore gun
Information