John Wilder
Private
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2013
I am getting a little confused by this thread. If Wilder's first choice was the Henry rifle, but he was unable to obtain them because the factory could only produce 200 per month, then how exactly was Ripley supposed to arm the entire army with them?
Ripley was under enormous pressure to arm an entire army with modern arms as quickly as possible. He chose not to gamble everything on a new unproven technology. The army had spent a fair amount of time field testing the early breechloaders and had found them wanting. It was not unreasonable for the army to award contracts to make the Model 1861 rifle musket instead of the Henry or Spencer. The massive difficulties encountered with producing the much simpler weapon on a large scale can, and do, fill up an entire book.
You can believe what you want. There are some of us who simply think the idea that the entire army could have been equipped with Spencer's or Henry's ignores the realities of the day. Ripley certainly made mistakes and can be justifiably criticized, but replacing him with someone that would have jumped at the chance to adopt the Spencer still doesn't change the realities of the difficulties that were encountered in trying to produce weapons that plagued the army in '61-'63.
Amongst the realities being ignored:
1) Ripley placed an order for 10,000 Spencer rifles on Dec. 26, 1861. Commissioners Holt and Owens reduced the order to 7,500 rifles on May 31, 1862 because not a single weapon had been delivered yet!
2) The navy had placed an order for 700 Spencer rifles in July, 1861. It took Spencer until June, 1863 to complete even that small order!
3) The Burnside factory, which already existed, was in operation, and also had previous experience producing breechloading firearms was given a contact for Spencer carbines in June, 1864. They didn't deliver a single arm before the war ended!
4) The 1861 contracts for the much simpler Model 1861 rifle-musket that were placed with firms unfamiliar with firearms production did not result in substantial deliveries for the first 2 years of the war. The contractors were unable to find enough skilled workers, machinery, and raw materials to meet the demands. Many contracts went completely unfilled, and most contracts were consolidated, the numbers reduced, or were cancelled altogether due to lack of deliveries.
5) The reality is that both Spencer and Henry were given contracts that exceeded their capacities as it was.
Recognizing these facts doesn't make us "historians" that "simply cannot accept that things could have been different", but simply people that realize that getting rid of Ripley would not have solved the problems inherent in attempting to produce the repeaters on a large scale.
Two points were obvious. First, if the Union deployed many repeaters it would have a decisive combat advantage because the Confederates had no hope to getting many. Second, putting most any new invention into volume production is challenging.
No organization had more volume production experience than the Springfield Armory, which Ripley had managed. He could have helped Spencer and Henry, but instead he resisted them in every way.
Franklin Roosevelt authorized government support for the atomic bomb in October 1939. Not much happend for three years until General Leslie Groves took charge in September 1942. Less than three years later the nearly impossible had been accomplished.
As a rule, only very learned and clever men deny what is obviously true. Common men have less brains, but more sense." —William T. Stace