A turning point in the history of military firearms — The minie ballAround the 18th and ea

A turning point in the history of military firearms — The minie ballAround the 18th and early 19th century the vast majority of military firearms were muskets.  Muskets differ from rifles in that they are smoothbore firearms, they lack rifling.  The reason why muskets were preferred it that they were fast to load.  A ball (bullet) that was smaller than the bore could be easily dropped into the barrel and compacted with gunpowder with a ramrod.  An experienced musketeer could fire 3 or 4 shots in a minute.  However due to their lack of rifling, and having a bullet smaller than the bore, muskets were very inaccurate, having an optimum range of around 50-100 yards.  That is why in the Napoleonic system of warfare soldiers fight in formations and fire at each other at close ranges.Rifles were much more accurate, with an optimum ranger of 300 yards or more, but they were slower to load.  In order for the bullet to make contact with the barrels rifling a greased patch had to be inserted with the ball.  This made it harder to load, as the rifleman would have to cram the ball and patch against the rifling, which was especially harder when gunpowder residue would build up after a few shots.  A skilled rifleman could only reload his weapon twice a minute.  During the American Revolution rifleman were known as “widowmakers” for their deadly accuracy, but after taking their shots they would have to beat a hasty retreat because they could not reload in time before being cut down.  In 1847 a French Army officer named Claude Etienne Minie changed military firearms history forever.  Perfecting the work of other designers, Minie created a new bullet that was smaller than a gun’s bore size, but could be shot accurately out of a rifle.  Unlike traditional bullets, which were round balls, the new “Minie Ball” was conical shaped and also had two to four grooves near its base.  The most important aspect of its design was that it had a hollowed out base.  When fired, the pressure exerted on the hollow base would cause the bullet to expand, allowing the grooves to make snug contact with the rifling, causing the bullet to spin when it left the bore. Now soldiers could use a rifle but load it as fast as a musket.  Soon smoothbore muskets were being taken out of service and being replaced with rifles, commonly called “rifle muskets”.  There was a grave problem with this new innovation however.  While the technology of warfare had changed, the tactics of warfare did not.  The same tactic of using massed formations was being used, even though soldiers were all now armed with accurate, long range rifles.  During the American Civil War around 600,000 men were slaughtered due to advanced technology being used with outdated tactics. -- source link

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