4. COMING TO AMERICA
WHEN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR ERUPTED, SKILLED MARKSMEN ARMED WITH LONG RIFLES WERE ABLE TO HIT BRITISH TARGETS FROM 300 YARDS.
After British forces bayoneted American leader Hugh Mercer during the Battle of Princeton, General George Washington arrived to rally the troops. Painting by William Tylee Ranney, 1848.
The New World
COLONIAL GUNSMITHS ADOPTED RIFLING, A TECHNIQUE FROM 15TH-CENTURY GERMANY THAT IMPROVED A GUN’S ACCURACY.
KENTUCKY LONG RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: 1800s–1900s
Barrel Length: 39in
Caliber: .45
MUSKET
Country: France
Date: circa 1779
Caliber: .69
FLINTLOCK PISTOL
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1750
Caliber: .71
General Edward Braddock gave this pistol to George Washington, who used it in several campaigns.
BRITISH SHORT LAND SERVICE MUSKET
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1779
Nicknamed the “Brown Bess,” this long gun was used by the British Empire’s land forces until the mid 19th century.
Images of the pilgrims of the 17th century often show settlers with flintlock blunderbusses, but in all likelihood the early colonists brought with them more basic matchlocks, with perhaps the rare wheellock thrown in for variety. By the early 18th century, however, American gunsmiths, many of German descent, were producing flintlock weapons the colonists could call their own. Settlers used firearms for military service and personal protection, and also for hunting, an important source of food and commercially valuable pelts in the heavily forested “new world.” Marksmanship became an important and honored skill.
One of the most notable American designs was the “long rifle,” also known as the Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Kentucky rifle, depending on where the rifleman resided. Derivative of the classic German Jäger rifle (“hunter rifle”), the American versions evolved to have longer barrels for greater accuracy and slender wooden stocks that extended the full length of the barrel. The rear of the stock, held against the shooter’s shoulder, had a gradual downward curve. Well-to-do colonists paid to have their long rifles decorated with pewter or brass inlays depicting animals or shapes such as hearts or stars.
As the designation “rifle” indicates, American gunsmiths sought enhanced accuracy by making the transition from smoothbore weapons to “rifled” long guns. In a smoothbore weapon, the ball fit loosely in the barrel. Once propelled by exploding gases, the round careered down the barrel, banging from side to side and emerging at an unpredictable angle from the muzzle. This effect made early pistols and muskets notoriously inaccurate.
Carving spiral grooves into the interior of the barrel, or rifling, caused the ball to spin gyroscopically, which kept it on a straight course over a far longer distance. German gunsmiths invented the technique back in the late 15th century, but because of the expense of precision metalworking and the talent required to do it well, rifles remained relatively rare. There were other downsides as well: Rifles were more susceptible to clogging because of powder residue, and tighter-fitting rifle balls were more difficult to load into weapons that for the most part were still muzzle-loaders.
Panic Among the Redcoats
When the Revolutionary War erupted in 1776, American forces included snipers and light infantry equipped with long rifles. Skilled marksmen in specialized units could hit British targets at a range of 300 yards, compared to less than a third of that distance with a smoothbore musket. The ability of riflemen to target and kill British officers helped the Revolutionary forces disrupt their foes’ command structure and spread panic among the redcoats.
But American soldiers with rifles still needed protection from larger infantry units armed with smoothbore muskets that were easier to operate. The Brown Bess, a British musket imported to the colonies, and later copied in the breakaway states, became a common weapon on the Revolutionary side. It could be loaded with a single ball or a cluster of shot. The Short Land Pattern version of the Brown Bess was, as the name implied, a shorter, lighter variation of the more common Long Land Pattern.
Bayonets remained vital firearm accoutrements throughout the Revolutionary War, as the musket’s inaccuracy meant that many battles were decided by means of massive charges and hand-to-hand struggles to the death. Because of the absence of effective medicine, a tearing flesh wound rendered by bayonet was actually just as likely to be lethal as a puncture wound by small lead ball.
General George Washington, interestingly, focused on the rifle’s drawbacks: the expense of manufacture, slow reloading process, and need to do extensive training for those recruits not already skilled in hunting. While Washington urged limited use of rifle companies, other Revolutionary leaders showed more enthusiasm and scraped together the resources to outfit sharpshooting units that played significant roles in the battles of Saratoga and New Orleans.
MARKSMAN STYLE
The colonial militiamen who became soldiers in the Continental Army arrived for battle against the British in a variety of sartorial styles. For his forces, General George Washington favored the traditional hunting shirt popular in his home state of Virginia. A homespun garment, the hunting shirt was made from basic linen, fit loosely and allowed easy movement. In cold weather, better-equipped American soldiers also donned a wool overcoat. Washington noted an additional benefit: The hunting shirt, he observed, communicated “no small terror to the enemy, who think every such person is a complete marksman.”
CLUBBING THE ENEMY
During the 1600s and for centuries thereafter, troops generally fired their muskets in massive volleys similar to the waves of arrows launched by archers. Given the difficulty of aiming at a far-off target, musket men typically did not pause to reload, but instead followed a volley by charging at the enemy with bayonets. Infantry units generally did more lethal damage in hand-to-hand combat, stabbing and clubbing the enemy, than they did by firing their guns.
SPRINGFIELD: ARMORY FOR A NEW NATION
Beginning in the 17th century, colonial militia conducted training exercises on a bluff near the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. After the American Revolution began, military officer Henry Knox and George Washington established an armory on the site, in 1777, and it was used to supply forces in upstate New York.
1787 During a short-lived antitax and antidebt rebellion, former Revolutionary soldier Daniel Shays and his renegade forces tried to capture the armory but were repelled by Massachusetts government forces.
1795 Manufacture of firearms at the Springfield Armory began; it continued through the late 1960s.
1812 The Springfield Armory produced muskets used by U.S. troops in the War of 1812 against Great Britain, a conflict sometimes referred to as a “second war of independence.”
1845 After visiting the amory during his honeymoon, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published “The Arsenal at Springfield,” a poem that referenced racks of muskets as an antiwar metaphor.
1861–1865 The Springfield Model 1861, a Minié-type rifled musket, was used by Union forces and the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. It weighed about 9 pounds and was favored for its accuracy, reliability, and range.
1866–1871 Following the Civil War, the armory received permission to create an on-site collection of weapons that could be used by staff engineers for reference during the research and development process. In 1871, the collection opened to the public as a museum.
1900 The armory began a three-year process of replacing the Krag-Jorgensen magazine rifle. Work on the design continued until 1903, when the Model 1903 was officially approved. It was a standard military rifle for over three decades, and a special-use rifle through the Vietnam War.
1919 John Garand was hired to head the Model Shop and work on semi-automatic rifles and other small projects. The final design for the M1 was adopted in the mid 1930s and the gun was embraced by the U.S. military. By the end of World War II, the armory had produced 3.5 million semiautomatic Garands.
1962 The armory was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, then in 1964, U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara announced the armory would be closing. It shuttered its doors in 1968, with the National Park Service taking stewardship of the site and museum collection in 1978.
An Armory’s Legacy
AMAZING INNOVATION STARTED WITH A COPY OF A FRENCH FLINTLOCK MUSKET.
MODEL 1795
Country: United States
Date: 1795–1845
Barrel Length: 44 1/2in
Caliber: .69
MODEL 1861 RIFLE MUSKET
Country: United States
Date: 1862
Barrel Length: 40in
Caliber: .58
Featured a percussion ignition system and a rifled bore.
MODEL 1903 RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: 1903–1974
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: .30
Over one million were made through World War I and into the 1930s.
M14
Country: United States
Date: 1957
Barrel Length: 22in
Caliber: .30
M1 GARAND
Country: United States
Date: 1937–1950s
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: .30
Over 13,500 employees worked 24 hours a day during World War II to produce this semiautomatic.
Originally an arsenal for the Continental Army, the Springfield Armory became a full-fledged factory in 1795 on the order of President George Washington. His directive: produce flintlock muskets for his young nation. A year later, the armory issued a copy of a French Charville flintlock musket and over the next two centuries continued with innovations that spanned gunmaking and industrial production. Probably the most famous rifle ever produced by the armory was the M1 Garand.