The Lorenz Rifle,With the invention of the minie ball many nations began to rifle their muskets, imp

The Lorenz Rifle,With the invention of the minie ball many nations began to rifle their muskets, improving accuracy substantially while with the minie ball allowing for the same loading speed as earlier smoothbore muskets.  Created by an Austrian officer named Lt. Joseph Lorenz in 1854, the Lorenz Rifle was Austria’s first rifled musket, and first updated service firearm in decades.  While the design was revolutionary like most new rifled muskets, the Austrians would get it all wrong through bad decision making and quality control.A percussion lock musket, the Lorenz used three barrel bands and were fitted with either block or leaf sights.  At .54 caliber it fired a smaller bullet than others, such as the British Enfield (.577) or American Springfield (.58).  This would have technically given the Lorenz slightly superior accuracy and range, but some bad decisions by Austrian ordnance officials would completely negate these advantages.  What gave the rifled musket its accuracy was not only the rifling, but the use of the minie ball, a conical bullet with a hollow base. Because the minie ball had a hollow base, the pressure from expanding gasses would cause the bullet to expand and make contact with the rifling. The Austrians chose to use a solid bullet, which did not expand at all when firing.  The result was a bullet that gave the Lorenz no better performance than if it was using regular round musket balls.  Worse yet, quality control on the Lorenz rifle was pretty terrible.  Due to demand Austria subcontracted many firms to produce the rifle.  Since the Austrians did little to maintain the consistency of their rifles among private firms, the quality of the Lorenz rifle could vary from producer to producer.  Worse yet, bore diameters were often inconsistent, causing terribly poor performance for many models.Despite its flaws, there was a demand for arms in Europe and the Americas, and the Lorenz helped fulfill that demand.  The Lorenz was used by both Austria and Italy during the Italian Wars of Unification.  During the American Civil War the Lorenz became the third most popular rifle, with  226,924 purchased by the Union and 100,000 purchased by the Confederacy.The dawn of the Lorenz Rifle came in 1866 during the Austro-Prussian War.  During the war the Prussians were armed with the Dreyse Needle Rifle, which was a single shot bolt action rifle which used a combustible paper cartridge.  The Dreyse gun could fire 10-12 rounds a minute where as the Lorenz could achieve 3-4 rounds a minute at best.  As a result the Austrian Army found itself at a grave disadvantage and sustained heavy casualties during the war.  After the Austro-Prussian War the Austrians switched to repeating and breechloading designs. -- source link

More pics about