Stryker65
Captain
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2023
- Location
- William & Mary
The "baboones" thread reminded of this one brief paper I wrote two years ago, which I've condensed down a bit here. I was studying how rifled artillery against brick/masonry fortifications was first introduced into the US military during the Civil War:
(eliminated the three introductory paragraphs about rifling because I think most of us know the difference between smoothbore and rifled artillery)
[...] But the final test still remained: would rifled artillery change how fortifications were demolished? Through two significant tests, one British and one American, rifled artillery demonstrated their vast improvements on long-range bombardment against fixed fortifications.
The British were in fact preceded by the Prussians, but while the Prussian trials, as historian Friedrich Engels noted, "proved that rifled guns with [light] percussion shells … [were] able to breach brick fortifications at 1,200 paces [960 yards]" (Marx & Engels 293), they were only tested on obsolete 17th-century Carnot walls as seen below, and the result were therefore rather untrustworthy.
The British, meanwhile, conducted their experiments on a condemned Martello tower in Eastbourne, England in August of 1860, as shown below. The tower was built in 1804, was approximately 39 feet in diameter, and "[was] 7 feet 6 inches thick at the level of the ground, and 5 feet 9 inches at the spring of the vault" (Burgoyne 2).
Exactly 1,032 yards away (six-tenths of a mile), the British engineers placed three rifled cannons, and proceeded to fire on the tower for approximately eleven hours. This was the tower after twelve shots (image 1), after twenty-one more shots (image 2), and after eighteen more shots (image 3). The experiment subsequently proved the accuracy and precision of rifled cannons, as forty-seven of the fifty-one shots fired were able to hit the tower at that distance.
Over the next week, the British redid the test on another tower, from the same distance of 1,032 yards, but with smoothbore cannons. British engineer John Burgoyne was rather ambiguous about the test, but stated that "the result may be deemed altogether a failure, both accuracy of fire and velocity of the missiles being quite deficient for such a range" (Burgoyne 6). The Eastbourne tests remained the most significant rifled tests for almost two years – until the Fort Pulaski tests. In August of 1862, Union military forces began a siege of Confederate-held Fort Pulaski. Chief engineer Quincy Gillmore proposed that the fort be reduced with the new rifled artillery, and his plan was dubiously approved.
(<-- Fort Pulaski)
(<-- Union batteries)
It is pentagonal, with walls "seven and a half feet thick, [that] rise twenty-five feet above the water" (Gillmore 1). As the experiment's control, Gillmore placed seven smoothbore batteries in the larger red circle, and then placed the independent variable – the three rifled batteries – in the smaller red circle, a mean distance of 1,700 yards away from the fort. The goal of these batteries would be "to breach the pancoupé between the south and southeast faces" (Quarstein) -- the pancoupé is the corner of the fort in the center of the image.
After two days of firing, the fort surrendered. Here are some of the statistics for each rifle:
Conclusively, the fourteen rifled cannon had destroyed the southeast casemates; there was now a thirty-foot hole in the wall and seven cannon had been disabled. Compared to how the fort looked before the bombardment, this was it afterwards:
What does this prove? Before Fort Pulaski, land batteries had "been considered practically harmless against exposed masonry" (U. S. War Department 164-165) beyond 900 yards, but rifled technology would triple that number. Gillmore would later destroy Fort Sumter using the same knowledge, with rifles five times as big, batteries over 3,000 yards away, and still reduce the fort with 75% accuracy (Marx & Engels 294). The advent of rifled artillery revolutionized siege warfare in the mid-19th century and beyond -- all artillery became rifled. The Eastbourne and Pulaski tests forced engineers to rethink the construction of fortifications, and helped militaries reduce positions from safer distances. Time and time again, rifled cannons would annihilate brick fortifications, punching deep into their walls. With similar strategies used at sieges such as Verdun and the Maginot Line, it is clear that these 19th century tests changed the course of artillery forever.
Sources (not including images):
- Burgoyne, John F. "Memorandum of the Increased Power of Breaching to be Obtained by the Use of Rifled Ordnance." Papers on Subjects Connected with the Duties of the Corps of Royal Engineers, ed. by P. J. Bainbridge, vol. 10, Woolwich, London, 1861. https://archive.org/details/nspapersonsubjec10grea/page/n13/mode/2up. Accessed 08 April 2024.
- Gillmore, Q. A. "Siege and Capture of Fort Pulaski." Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 2., pp. 1-12, Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds. Castle, Edison, n.d.
- Hogg, Ian V. Weapons of the Civil War. Crown Publishers, New York, 1987.
- Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. "Marx and Engels Collected Works: Marx and Engels 1861-4", vol. 19. Lawrence & Wishart, London, 2010 (digital edition). https://koorosh-modaresi.com/MarxEngels/V19.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2024.
- Quarstein, John V. "The Siege of Fort Pulaski." marinersmuseum.org. 22 June 2022. https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2022/06/the-siege-of-fort-pulaski/. Accessed 24 April 2024.
- U. S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, vol. 6, The National History Society, Harrisburg, 1971. https://books.google.com/books?id=HXBKXjH2UncC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed 08 April 2024.
(eliminated the three introductory paragraphs about rifling because I think most of us know the difference between smoothbore and rifled artillery)
[...] But the final test still remained: would rifled artillery change how fortifications were demolished? Through two significant tests, one British and one American, rifled artillery demonstrated their vast improvements on long-range bombardment against fixed fortifications.
The British were in fact preceded by the Prussians, but while the Prussian trials, as historian Friedrich Engels noted, "proved that rifled guns with [light] percussion shells … [were] able to breach brick fortifications at 1,200 paces [960 yards]" (Marx & Engels 293), they were only tested on obsolete 17th-century Carnot walls as seen below, and the result were therefore rather untrustworthy.
The British, meanwhile, conducted their experiments on a condemned Martello tower in Eastbourne, England in August of 1860, as shown below. The tower was built in 1804, was approximately 39 feet in diameter, and "[was] 7 feet 6 inches thick at the level of the ground, and 5 feet 9 inches at the spring of the vault" (Burgoyne 2).
Exactly 1,032 yards away (six-tenths of a mile), the British engineers placed three rifled cannons, and proceeded to fire on the tower for approximately eleven hours. This was the tower after twelve shots (image 1), after twenty-one more shots (image 2), and after eighteen more shots (image 3). The experiment subsequently proved the accuracy and precision of rifled cannons, as forty-seven of the fifty-one shots fired were able to hit the tower at that distance.
It is pentagonal, with walls "seven and a half feet thick, [that] rise twenty-five feet above the water" (Gillmore 1). As the experiment's control, Gillmore placed seven smoothbore batteries in the larger red circle, and then placed the independent variable – the three rifled batteries – in the smaller red circle, a mean distance of 1,700 yards away from the fort. The goal of these batteries would be "to breach the pancoupé between the south and southeast faces" (Quarstein) -- the pancoupé is the corner of the fort in the center of the image.
After two days of firing, the fort surrendered. Here are some of the statistics for each rifle:
Conclusively, the fourteen rifled cannon had destroyed the southeast casemates; there was now a thirty-foot hole in the wall and seven cannon had been disabled. Compared to how the fort looked before the bombardment, this was it afterwards:
What does this prove? Before Fort Pulaski, land batteries had "been considered practically harmless against exposed masonry" (U. S. War Department 164-165) beyond 900 yards, but rifled technology would triple that number. Gillmore would later destroy Fort Sumter using the same knowledge, with rifles five times as big, batteries over 3,000 yards away, and still reduce the fort with 75% accuracy (Marx & Engels 294). The advent of rifled artillery revolutionized siege warfare in the mid-19th century and beyond -- all artillery became rifled. The Eastbourne and Pulaski tests forced engineers to rethink the construction of fortifications, and helped militaries reduce positions from safer distances. Time and time again, rifled cannons would annihilate brick fortifications, punching deep into their walls. With similar strategies used at sieges such as Verdun and the Maginot Line, it is clear that these 19th century tests changed the course of artillery forever.
Sources (not including images):
- Burgoyne, John F. "Memorandum of the Increased Power of Breaching to be Obtained by the Use of Rifled Ordnance." Papers on Subjects Connected with the Duties of the Corps of Royal Engineers, ed. by P. J. Bainbridge, vol. 10, Woolwich, London, 1861. https://archive.org/details/nspapersonsubjec10grea/page/n13/mode/2up. Accessed 08 April 2024.
- Gillmore, Q. A. "Siege and Capture of Fort Pulaski." Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 2., pp. 1-12, Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds. Castle, Edison, n.d.
- Hogg, Ian V. Weapons of the Civil War. Crown Publishers, New York, 1987.
- Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. "Marx and Engels Collected Works: Marx and Engels 1861-4", vol. 19. Lawrence & Wishart, London, 2010 (digital edition). https://koorosh-modaresi.com/MarxEngels/V19.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2024.
- Quarstein, John V. "The Siege of Fort Pulaski." marinersmuseum.org. 22 June 2022. https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2022/06/the-siege-of-fort-pulaski/. Accessed 24 April 2024.
- U. S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, vol. 6, The National History Society, Harrisburg, 1971. https://books.google.com/books?id=HXBKXjH2UncC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed 08 April 2024.
Bringing the