Why didn’t we use the Dreyse Needle Rifle in the Civil War?
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
- It seems like a no-brainer: a bolt action rifle is a lot better than a muzzleloading musket! But why did the U.S. Army Ordnance Department refuse to adopt the Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr (needle rifle) in the years leading up to the Civil War?
Were they so staggeringly incompetent and stupid that they missed the advantages of a breechloading rifle?
Or were there other reasons why they decided to pass on the Prussian Wunderwaffe?
Also, check out the video on Royal Armouries channel, on the trial versions made for the British tests of the needle rifle
• The British version of...
Sounds like perfect weapon for dragoons: surprise, dismount, use up all your ammo and horseback to supply.
it is a superweapon when one side uses regular muskets and the other those rifles ....
@@gehtdichnixan3200 Yes, the Austro-Prussian war was very one sided.
@@ObsceneSuperMatt ok thhe rifles where only part of the problem .. the austrians had old school bayonet charge tactics ... and well that is a shitty idear when the enemy has a fast firing middle range accurate gun .....
@@gehtdichnixan3200 Did they actually try to bayonet charge in thick forest?!
@@ObsceneSuperMatt nur shure about that specific battle but they had a lot of "old school" generals same problem as in the civil war some generals fought like in the napoleonic wars
In historical context the objections to the needle rifle are pretty logical and solid. Your video on soldiers not making full use of rifle muskets in the Civil War also indicates that even if the US army had adopted it the troops may not have been able to fully utilize it in a similar way.
To get the most of a Minie range you needed lots of training, to get the RoF advantage form a Dreyse, not so much.
@@trauko1388 the higher rate of fire was a limitation given the logistical situation at the time, especially with fresh or minimally trained like in Civil War units
@@Corvinuswargaming1444 Given that the average combat range was 100m, it wouldnt have been a problem, any unit standing in a line in front of them wouldnt last a minute, which is less than 10 rounds per rifle.
Battle over.
The only issue is that while you can delay opening fire... getting them to stop is another matter but, given the tactics of the time the enemy wont stay in range for long.
It is a pretty valid conceern, if you look at the War of the Pacific, Chilean troops ran out of ammo in an hour of combat, 130 rounds per man for their Comblain and Gras... and had to retreat with the Bolivians and Peruvians in pursuit... until THEY ran out of ammo when trying to fight off a Chilean counterattack adn were defeated.
I will say an advantage the needle rifle would have had over the rifle musket in the American civil war is the amount of times (anecdotally though) were it was said panicked soldiers would continue repeat loading without firing. Billy Yank won’t load a second round without firing the first one.
Also it would have been an extremely expensive weapon to mass produce
We used the Dreyser here in Brazil during the Paraguay war and we had issues with how it performed in the marshes and swamps of Paraguay.
And there were very few of them, I believe like, two battalions max.
Standardisation was not in the Paraguayan War dictionary. Battles would see Spanish pike heads and cannons from the 1600's alongside metal cartridge rifles
and yoou think an oother gun wouldnt have had problems with wetness?
@@tavish4699 Yeah, I do think that simpler guns with less moving parts would had less issues.
@@tavish4699 i guess the needle would be even more a problem in moist conditions ....
And how well would a muzzle loaded musket fair in a swamp?
Another thing to perhaps consider is that by 1855 the US military was aware of other breechloading guns like the Sharps rifle, which was being made in America and, on paper at least, is just as capable as the Dreyse. If they did adopt the Dreyse, it probably would have been in small numbers for sharpshooters and cavalry, which is exactly what they did with the Sharps. I'm not sure how they compare in price, but I imagine it can't be far off. Great video!
The Sharps was WAY better than the Dreyse. The Dreyse's acorn shaped bullet really limited it's range and accuracy.
@@sharonrigs7999 I've never fired either, so I can't comment too much, but yea the Sharps was firing a big 52 caliber roundnose with alot of powder behind it. 50 grains of powder was alot back then, and it would have been almost as fast to reload as the Dreyse.
@@astrotrek3534 Way more reliable. Especially once the Sharps switched from the Maynard tape primer to normal caps
@@sharonrigs7999 Well I think even the Maynard version could still use normal caps too, so really there was no downside there. The Sharps is really underappreciated IMO, super cool gun with lots of history in America.
@astrotrek3534 I wouldn't say underappreciated. It's a legendary American firearm that's as associated with the Civil War sharpshooter as it is with the Buffalo Hunters. The .45-90, .50-110 and .50-140 Sharps cartridges are very potent, even by modern standards.
The Sharps is legendary enough for reproductions to be produced by several gunmakers, of varying quality and price.
that thing was a gamechanger in the austrian prussian war 1866 .... the fact that austrians where keen for bayonet charges just helped
the funniest part about the Austrian love for excessive charges was because the French had successfully used it against them 7 years prior... they forgot to take into account that the French were charging against poorly trained troops armed with muzzle loaders. and even then there still were many battles where this actually resulted in horrible losses (but it did achieve victory)
Had the French charged into better trained troops people would have probably been more keen to revise their favor for 18th century tactics.
Yup. When the Austrians were able (and decided) to stay at range, such as the Bistritz sector of the battle of Koeniggraetz, their superior artillery and the longer range of the Lorenz negated the advantages of the Dreyse.
But to the right of that, other Austrian corps commanders fed their infantry into exactly the worst circumstance against the needle gun, close firefights and combats in the Swiepwald wood.
This rifle quite literally changed European warfare, its system would be to use until the 1950s and was simple and reliable
@@TenOrbitalwhich, ironically, the French failed utterly to learn from until late fall 1914.
@@josephahner3031The bayonet charge in WW1 worked just as well, or even better than in the 19th century. The problem is that they had no cover before the line of contact before trench warfare was truly discovered. Once it was, suddenly, melee was back on the menu, shock troop tactics was in fact the most effective way to fight in WW1. Canadians in particular, who were feared by the Germans, basically used the rifle mainly as a spear, as it was very unreliable when in contact with mud. It made them into one of the most dreaded and effective forces of the war. Charging as fast as possible was key, standing out in the open meant being shot by machine guns by an entrenched enemy.
It’s hard to argue for the needle rifle when the Spencer rifle was available.
I think the spencer wasn't a standard issue infantry rifle. But I agree, any 1850's rifle was outclassed by this gun. Especially for it's rate of fire, range and metal cartdriges it was beyond compare.
Two issues, cost of ammunition and how many tens of thousands were available for issue?
@@trauko1388 the ammo was about a wash cost wise, metallic machine made cartridges vs hand made paper cartridges and the metallic cartridges were much hardier in the field … and waterproof. I think all told the Spencer company made 200,000 rifles and carbines and they were both adopted but the US. I don’t know how many actually saw service, Reynolds had 9000 carbines at Gettysburg.
@@taggartlawfirmI agree. for both a needle rifle and a metal cartridge one, substential manufacturing capacities on industrial scale were needed. Then the costs for one cartridge sure wasn't way different.
It was reported that the paper cartidges for sharps rifles got easily "busted" (probably due to moisture) if stored over a longer time. So, yeah - probably with the Spencer available at the time of the war, the needle fired guns were completely obsolete.
Or a Henry?
The Greene bolt action under hammer rifle was produced from 1859 to early 1860s. Around 1500 rifles were produced, of which 900 were made for the U.S. Army. It used an oval bore style rifling like the modern HK91 rifle. The Greene was actually the first bolt action rifle adopted by the U.S. military.
I have a Greene and made a video a year or two back. Definitely superior to the Dreyse in every ballistic aspect, and had a much better breech sealing system with locking lugs on the bolt. A little clumsy to shoot though!
@@papercartridges6705 Thanks for your reply! I found your older review of the Greene rifle. It was excellent! I also own a Greene rifle, in excellent (95%) condition which I got from N. Flayderman & Co. the old Civil War antiquities purveyor. You did a lot of research on it, that I didn’t even know, especially the construction of the paper cartridge. Did you have a .53 caliber mold made for your bullet, or resize a .54 bullet? I found your website, excellent. I also own an excellent condition Swiss Vetterli rifle too. I was fortunate to get that one from Military Antiques & Museum (Petaluma CA) where I worked over ten years ago.
Very interesting video, its curious that today sometimes we only see the advantages of the Dreyse because we know what happend in 1866 and after that with the muzzleloaders, but back then i understand even more watching the video, how one could think adopting such a rifle as a bad compromise and even a risk.
Its interesting that the prussians were always since the adoption of conical touch holes and cylindrical ramrods in the 1780s, trying to imroove the rate of fire.
Here in brazil german merceneries that were contracted in 1850 received a few Dreyse M1841 rifles adquired in Hamburg basically for trials.
In 1866 during the Paraguayan War a lot of Breechloading systems were trialled, so the dreyse were taken out of storage, a few M1857 Dreyse rifles were adquired and equipped a company during an assualt against a paraguayan fortified position.
Probably because of bad quality of the cartdiges produced here, the rifles were misfiring all the time and is described in several sorces that the soldiers throw their rifles away and catch the Minié rifles of their dead comrades.
The dreyse ammo was produced with assistence from german merceneries in Laboratório Pirotécnio do Campinho.
After the failure in this assault in 1866 the M1841 & M1857 Dreyse would be on storage again forever, about 150 to 300 rifles in total.
Sorry for my english, my best regards, best channel
In Latin America soldiers have also had similarly bad experiences with the Chassepot rifle. For some reason there has always been a problem with these needlefire cartridges. Maybe because of the humidity.
@@FantadiRienzo this is a valid point, the field tests in Paraguay were in a very swamp area, the humidity might play an very important element in the Dreyse problems here, problems with quality of the cartridges also existed probably, since the first Spencer carbines issued were unreliable, but just 6 months after with corrections in production of cartridges they were issued and really loved.
An thats also totally True with the Chassepot, in 1872 just after the Paraguayan War, Brazil adquired around 5000 chassepot for large trials fearing a new War, this rifles were also not considered reliable at that time. The result was adopting in the next year the Metallic Cartridge rifle as standard, the Comblain
Thank you for taking the time to explain!
1866 - yup, tactics implementation difference was the key element.
I am looking forward to hear your take on it very keenly. I already watched and rewatched Balasz of capandball channel fame describing it.
Zundnadelgewehr was good for tactics implemented on the field that day and also on operational level it was awesome undertaking.
While 'our guys' had perfect long reach accurate and destructive rifle perfect for shooting tactics long range engagements of smaller sized units company or less, yet Austrian doctrine of the time was battalion sized Stoss taktik of brute close assault (that worked so perfect in 1800s and 1810's) skewed more recently by experiences from 1859 campaign of Solferino and so on reassuring the command staff in their decision to go with less shooting more bayonet charging.
Also whole bait and switch game that drag whole wing in to Svib Forest was absolute disaster ...
Only effective units of infantry on Austrian side were Feldjaeger units as they were company and lesser sized detachments that opened up on their enemy from greater distance, yet lot of them ended up bound in close forest fighting of Svib (Sweib) losing their accuracy and distance advantage over their adversaries.
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I just KNEW they’d not like the fact that the troops can fire too fast LOL that mind set was so strong
Though we have to applaud both sides for the incompetence no tell how much longer and far more bloody the civil war would have been with breach loaders.
@@hexapon133In fairness if troops can shoot five times as fast then they'll consume five times as much ammo and that would strain the hell out of a Civil War-era logistics chain.
A higher rate of fire is wonderful until you've got nothing left to shoot.
@@hexapon133I mean for the CSA it was already struggling with Arms and Ammo Procurement, to the point most CSA Soldiers ended up bringing their own rifles to War.
Which ended up helping the CSA get more casualties on the Union thanks to familiarity with Terrain and Weapons.
Blowing that Ammo 5 times as fast *per Solider* would wipe out the fleeting Logistics chain from Atlanta far better than Sherman tearing up Train tracks and burning down towns would have.
I spit when I heard that. Okay, so don't arm the militia with these rifles. Firing as fast as possible, when you should be firing, is the most important thing.
@@ssjjshawnhaving a faster rate of fire will save ammunition, if you're only firing when you're supposed to. May as well go home, and not fight, if your solution is to use inferior weapons.
You can get them legaly in Germany without licence because they are patented early enough.
But black powder still needs a licence here to get
Make your own black powder
And dont tell anyone either
Concerning paper cartridge breechloaders in the Antebellum United States, there were actually two American gunsmiths who designed breech-loading conversions during the late 1850s: Edward Lindner and James H. Merrill. Both the Lindner and Merrill conversions were used to convert several M1841 Mississippi rifles into breechloaders. Neither designs were widely adopted by the US Army before the American Civil War for various reasons, but mostly because of their obsolescence in favor of metallic cartridges. Ian McCollum of _Forgotten Weapons_ has done separate videos about the Lindner and Merrill breech-loading conversions.
let us just appreciate them adopting automatic rifles in the end.
my father owns one that was passed through our family used in the Boshin War.
i never knew what it was until my husband recognized it
That’s really incredible, what a journey that rifle must have had
@@elkpants1280 my husband is a gunsmith so he checked the integrity of the rifle and made ammunition for the rifle and she shot perfectly all those years and the rifle is still 100%
I am just over twenty two seconds in, and by look alone I am convinced this man is a 1910's gun smuggler who has somehow evaded justice this entire time and turned his profession into a youtube channel.
Pssst… hey bud… wanna buy a musket?
Professor of Musketry Brett von Gettysburg!
Great expose as always, thank you! May your deployment runs fast for you and save way home.
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In Prussia's grip, the needle gleams,
A weapon worthy of soldier's dreams.
With Dreyse's pride, they march in line,
Valour bound to every spine.
Through fields of fire, their honor sealed,
The needle rifle, their battlefield shield.
Yeah, yeah the usual suspects Kaiser. Thanks man that was great.
The Tactics used with a new weapon is often more important than the weapon itself
Covers the ground well. Thank ‘ee kindly young Brett.
Once again a fantastically informative and well reasoned and explained video.
Brett, Thank you for another great video on an obscure but interesting topic. Keep up the good work. I am counting the days until your deployment is over..
Because cycling the action would’ve knocked our funny hats off.
Well you can’t have a war without your troops wearing silly hats. I mean, come on! The sillier the hat, the better the soldier.
Always love hearing when you get all bullet nerdy! 😂. Great video as always! I am always interested in hearing more about this rifle.
Dude!
So good!
Thanks yet again for an entertaining and informative presentation. You speak very well and give actual evidence and actual practical analysis. Warm regards, Gus
I love my Dreyse Fusilier. Although I need to make another needle as my homemade replacements don’t last too long. Although the paper sabot are very cool, and I do make them from time to time, it’s far easier to load a round ball over a fiber wad.
That really is a key factor people forget. These people were not in a world where wartime mass production for fully mobilized armies was a thing.
At best, you had an army of roughly just 100,000 that was being supplied by craftsmen in workshops and then transported via horse and cart.
Even for Prussia itself, it wasn't the adoption of the needle rifle that made them dominant in the 19th century, it was the fact they learned how to efficiently supply their army with said rifles via rail.
I did indeed enjoy it! Paper Cartridges is a favorite channel where I’ve learned much! I can understand a single shot musket compared to this would be an advantage in some respects but the rapid fire thing certainly has some big advantages. Thanks Kindly and Many Blessings! DaveyJO in Pennsylvania
Very well researched and presented. Thank you for this. Subscribed!
It’s simple
Because it’s extremely expensive, even when things were being mass produced with the same level of health and safety of a Chinese factory, is because everything back then was all hand built, everything from the springs to the barrel itself and considering the delicacy of the internal parts of the needle gun, in order for it to reach a certain standard, vs a musket which as pretty advanced for the time but was mostly tailor made to fit military specifications, ie how cheap and cost effective can the military make it, vs the more finely tuned and detailed versions of say more personal rifles and weapons most of the troops were using, again take the British lee enfield or any bolt action rifle being archaic by design and yet weapons like the noisan negant is still being used including guns from ww1 where most other weapons of much later or even more modern equipment has been used for less than five years before being overhauled or replaced completely since whilst your grandfather might be using the same M2 heavy machine gun that your modern day marines still uses, doesn’t diminish the fact that outside of a few mechanical enhancements and material changes it’s basically the same weapon as used pre ww2 because it’s simple, rugged, reliable and is liable to drop anything or any one of severely motivated enough to dum as many high caliber rounds into a target before it either becomes Swiss cheese or stops being in its entirety as well as the basic fact that it’s simply cheaper to keep the platform going for as long as possible without needing to build a new factory or set up a whole new logistics department for a new weapon that does exactly the same as it’s predecessor
Thank you for helping to better orient the Dreyse on the infantry small arms innovation timeline in comparison with the U.S. Minie rifle-musket in the way you did. I had a big aha moment when you were talking about the large caliber ammo. I knew then where you were going with your argument. Makes a ton of sense!
By 1861, not only is the US Army being re-equipped with the M1855 rifle and rifle-musket, while numbers of older rifles and muskets are being upgraded, such as the .58 "Mississippi" M1841 rifle, but the M1859 Sharps rifles, carbines and rifle-muskets are now available. And not just the Sharps. There's the Merrill, Jenks and others and the Colt Revolving Rifle (mixed reputation, but the 21st Ohio fired 21,000 rounds without any accidents). The Sharps was equal to the Dreyse in rate of fire and superior in effective range. And in any case, no black powder shoulder arm, rifle or smooth-bore, breech or muzzle loading was going to be operable after 40-50 rounds without cleaning the bore and mechanism.
First video I've seen of your's. Really well researched and neat. You earned a sub! Great content m8
That's what I enjoy so much: reading a mid 19th century report, written by a high ranking and certainly well educated officer who's funny misspellings get enshrined in history to be later rediscovered and serve a source of education and amusenment of some foreign history nerd a hundred and seventy years later. In the text at 2:27 the correct spelling is "Zündnadel" or (Zuendnadel if Umlauts don't show up correctly on your computer) - not "Zundnädel". But at least, the officer was trying to include that misterious pair of dots somewhere and he seemed to be aware that they had to fall on some vowel. So 7 points already just for that alone 🤓👍
Please don't use eu to replace ü or any others, ss for ß is alright-ish, but still bad. So please for the love of the German language, use the Umlauts!
There's an option on most computers to be able to switch through multiple keyboard languages by installing a keyboard language package through keyboard or language settings.
Fantastic video, clearly explained as always. I think it is easy to default to technological ‘what-about-isms’ with conflicts of this era, when military technology was advancing so quickly, when we can use hindsight, but that ignores the actual factors which influenced military procurement at the time.
Nice. Concise, accurate & calmly delivered. I'm eager for your Austro-Prussian Wat video.
Subscribed tonight.
DOUG out
very cool episode asking a question i have had myself.
Considering that even smokeless powder bolt-action rifles almost up to the beginning of the XX century had the capability to not feed from the magazine and single-load, ammunition consumption was a real thing to be taken into consideration. It made sense before the advent of smokeless powder and further industrialization when all the cartridges were made by hand, as you said, but stopped making sense afterwards. It's one of those cases where armament development made several great leaps, but doctrine and how to use it was still behind behind.
Ammo consumption is still extremely important today. I am a U.S. Army logistics officer, and fire discipline and ammo consumption rates are very carefully managed and controlled. A soldier today can fire all their ammo they can carry in about 5 minutes, in about the same time as a Prussian soldier could fire his in 1860. Resupply is never guaranteed.
@@papercartridges6705
Soldiers win battles, logistics win wars.
Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (1980): "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
@@papercartridges6705 But that's at what FPF rates?
Met you at the range i love this old stuff,hope to see you this year
Good content! Thanks!
This was cool. I learned something today. I had to do some research on how the needle ignited the cartridge. Thanks man.
Very interesting topic and great presentation!
Fantastic channel, just subbed. Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much. In the sort of history I was taught, the needle-rifle was presented as a major factor. It is enlightening to see it, not debunked, but justly appraised.
It’s kind of mind-blowing that the ability to fire 8 rounds per minute, instead of 2 to 3, was seen as a disadvantage.
But the government was already having difficulty delivering enough ammunition to the soldiers on the field. To the logistics people, it must have seemed that faster firing would increase the supply problem fourfold.
The Dreyse cartridge also required a sabot, that was made by rolling up a strip of paper over a meter long, and then pressing it tightly down on a mechanical press. The sabot held the bullet and the “primer” in the base. That made these cartridges much more complex to make, and several times more expensive per cartridge compared to an ordinary musket round. Once you have all the machinery in place to mass produce them, it’s not quite as bad, but trying to set everything up from scratch, would be massively expensive and difficult.
1869/71 Vetterli, showed how rifles were advancing. The Italians took the rimfire tube fed design and said center fire and box mag, and then we'll buy them. Then the Mausers were already starting their advancing of it all. Black powder gave way to smokeless etc.
I'm currently reading about experienced British colonial regiments dealing with smokeless powder for the first time used by entrenched Boers with magazine rifles (Mauser) and how dumbfounded they were by their inability to scout the position of their antagonists. They could see neither the men nor the puffs of black powder smoke. Yet repeatedly they advanced under orders from their officers using outdated tactics with unmatched bravery.
Good video, thanks for sharing.
Great question - and great video. That makes a lot of sense.
A good example of the speed by technology went on back then is the French Chassepot needle rifle, which outranged the much older Prussian design by far. That said, the Cassepot was introduced a year _after_ the American Civil war.
So if the US would have wanted a needle rifle in the late 1850's, I agree they would have had to make an improved design and in addition would have to ramp up an ammo production + infrastructure. In a simple comparison, Prussia's entire territory in the late 1800's was roughly about the size of Wyoming and had largely spread railway and postal services, including long range telegraph networks. So for the European powers in genreal, it guess it was much more realistic to supply large armies with "rapid fire" firearms.
Excellent and illuminating.
Good video, and well presented. Most remarkable of all is your ability to switch from American English to German so easily with no detectable foreign accent in either language.
Trust me, my German is pretty bad! With practice I can do a few phrases without much of an accent.
There was a misconception about the Dreyse. Needle fire rifles did not fire more ammunition than muskets, but rather less - they simply fired this ammunition more quickly, but when the shooters hit their targets, the firefight was over quicker and the troops could move on. The Prussian officer Von Ploennies addresses this very specifically in "Neue Studien über die gezogene Feuerwaffe der Infanterie" ("New studies on the rifled firearm of the infantry") from 1867.
I have an original copy of Ploennies, it is a very great primary source. The relatively low expenditure of Prussian ammo in 1866 (only 1,8 million) launched a lively debate and discussion. Assuming these numbers are correct, a fair conclusion, based on broad research, is that the Prussian infantry were held under such strict fire discipline by officers, who had been inculcated with the need to conserve ammunition, that when they did open fire, it was at relatively close range, and the Austrians conveniently presented themselves as close-range targets with their “Drauflosgehen” bayonet assaults.
Ammunition expenditure was massively higher in 1870.
@@papercartridges6705 I think what's easily overlooked is the shock factor of getting hit with such an increased rate of fire, and how it would be liable to quickly break the morale of and drive back an infantry formation - the same outcome that bajonett charges were normally aiming for. Meanwhile when muzzleloader-wielding formations that weren't willing to use bajonett tactics clashed against each other they would tend to whittle each other down in extended firefights, leading to greater casualties and ammo useage overall just through the sheer length of these attritional gunfights.
It's often the same objection throughout history when it comes to this subject. From muzzle to breechloading, from single shot muzzle loaders to magazine bolt action and from bolt action to semi auto. "The grunts will waste all their ammo,". When magazine bolt action rifles came out, many were fitted with magazine cut offs to disable the magazine and the privates were expected to single load until given the order to use magazine fire (in some last stand scenario). It's also worth remembering that at this point in history, the prevailing military tactic was still volley fire in ranks, so rate of fire was less of an advantage in that type of situation. It wasn't really until you got to WW1/WW2 that rate of fire was especially important. In the days of the Civil war and Crimean war etc, soldiers were expected to charge defensive positions with the bayonet. Besides, by the late 1860's the Dreyse was out performed and outranged by the French Chasepot (as seen in the war of 1870).
If you hunt around you can find some video of the magazine cutoffs in use, and they definitely weren't a stupid idea. Load your magazine, engage the cutoff, then single-load while the enemy is far away and you're taking time to aim carefully. Then when they charge your magazine is still full and you can break the charge with rapid fire at close range where speed matters and you can't miss instead of being caught out with an empty magazine.
Thanks' Brett, very interesting!
Great video. Very interesting!!!
One of the pros of the Dreyse Rifle was that you could easily reload it while lying down, making you a much harder target to hit.
I also really like this gun as I live just ~30km (~19 mi) from where it was invented.
Our military has always been resistant to new technology. For years, we were stuck with single-shot rifles because they didn't trust soldiers with repeating rifles. There were better rifles than this available at that time, which weren't widely used.
Excellent. I think that it is important to remark that some of the advantages of the Dreyse can not be used without a change on tactics
Breech loading rifles were all criticized by the Ordnance Board for excessive ammunition use. The Sharps rifles were not issued by the government for that same reason. Unit commanders would equip their units at their own expense.
I can tell you so much, in Bavaria (who fought on the Austrian side against Prussia) there is still a proverb when someone wants to take a rushed decisions/wants to give up:
"relax, the Prussians don't shoot THAT fast .." "Ruhig bleiben, so schnell schießen die Preusen nicht"
That's almost 160 years after that war and the effect of the dryse is still acknowledge on the receiving end.
Thats something you want to consider when you go and peel back that "myth" that the dyse had a significant effect on the war.
In fairness, Prussians had been known for their rate of fire since 1740.
Also the Prussians (Mauser 1871, design started in 1867) and the thieving hill tribe aka Bavaria (Werder 1969, again design starts 1867) where already developing more modern cartridge rifles and adopted them in huge numbers from 1872 on (2 Million in less than 10 years). So by 1866 the germans knew the Dreyse was outdated
extreemly interesting! The Danish army considered the Dreyse after the 1. Schleswig war, and basically came to the same conclusions. The Dreuse is often named as the "winner" of the 2. Schleswig war, but in reality its the artillery (and numbers) that decides that one.
Amazing video, thank you
Glad you liked it!
Watching this video I can't help but be amazed at how quickly firearms advanced once we had smokeless powder, the percussion cap, and the self-contained cartridge. Separately each of those technologies give, at best, incremental improvements over flint-lock muskets, but together they made modern small arms possible.
It was untested. The moment the results of the Austrian-Prussian war were in, even the Brits started converting their Minie rifles into breech loaders (Enfield Pattern 1853 ->Snider-Enfield).
great video!
.-Great Analysis! Everything Mordecai noted proved true 1848-1870.
Germany was able to impose far greater fire discipline upon its troops than America upon its militias going tinto the Civil War.
The French Chassepot rendered the Dreyse obosolete by 1870 which in turn was rendered obsolete by brass cartridges by 1871.
German Swarm Tactics and Krupp breech loading artillery compensated for the Dreyse's obsolecense in 1870 but neither needle gun made it passed 1871 while the U.S. Allen conversion took America thru the Indian Wars and into the War with Spain which was actually the best point for America to consider a bolt action if not everyone, considering how many bolt guns came up in between, tube magazine vs box magazine.
You make a good point about fire discipline with the Germans, and that’s going to be part of an upcoming video. In the Prussian regulations the fire is always controlled, and given upon an order. There’s no order for “Schnellfeuer.” And I need to get a Chassepot someday but the ammo is a little intimidating to make…
The objection to the waste of ammunition from the ease and rapidity of loading had less to do with the amount of ammunition being fired, per se, but more to do with the effect of a large line of men firing black power rifles simultaneously. As described by officers on every side in almost every war, the first volley went off fine, the second was still effective, but after the third volley, almost then entire line was uniformly firing into nothing but a cloud, and neither officer or individual rifleman could distinguish a target farther than a few feet.
Repeating rifles simply exacerbated the situation by filling the air more quickly and then allowing the rifleman to empty his magazine more quickly, which could lead to the rifleman being out of ammunition to counter a cavalry or bayonet charge.
There were clear situations during the civil war that showed this hypothesis, to be flawed. For instance, Buford's defense of Gettysburg, where his cavalry was spread out behind a fence of a windy day, allowing his repeating rifles to become force multipliers instead of a hindrance.
This would not have been true however on little round top, where the trees precluded the wind from clearing the smoke.
At the end of the civil war, the US army would adopt quick loading rifles, and spread the line out to reduce the concentration of smoke, and make it harder for the enemy line to hit individual soldiers without being accurate. (something that the Dakota Indians were actually pretty good at)
Also, the US army had adopted and had time to consider the American designed Green bolt action rifle which was also already in existence before the war.
amazing effeciency!
I think the thing that held back breechloaders pre war was most breechloaders known at the time either used a paper cartridge with its own quirks in use, or it used a relatively weak self contained cartridge. One of the few reasons the sharps was adopted as a cavalry carbine was due to its easy in loading on horseback. For all the complexity of logistics, cost of manufacturing, and general service complexity, breechloaders pre-war just didn’t offer enough of a leap to justify their existence. Though if you had shown up with a martini-Peabody in 45-70 or 50-70 in 1855, I think that would’ve been enough of a leap for ordnance to have taken notice of.
An excellent overview, thank you. Subb'd.
Thank you, sir.
It’s funny how back then using up all their ammo was a concern. To this day soldiers have relatively low capacity magazines simply because it forces them to pause more often thus increasing overall accuracy.
Think the biggest issue, not in general mass production yet. True also with other breach loaders comming online with Sharps. One fear was overloading and breakage. Still a problem with springfields and Infields but they were known weapons at the time. Fire control was also a concern. Would have been an asset in limited numbers but the minnie targeting also made up for the rate of fire. Not long after the CW bolt actions would be adopted but as of the CW just not ready or availible in numbers.
Yes, Prussian General Staff was really good in the mid-19th century getting the army to perform very well.
I think another factor in the US selection of weapons prior to 1860 was the relative cultures of both Prussia and the US. The Prussians had developed a martial culture after the Napoleonic wars. The US had a gun culture, but a gun culture and a martial culture are not the same thing. The Prussian martial culture was based on discipline, compulsory service as a young man, then refresher service through life. There was a large standing army in Prussia, with a larger reserve to call on in war. Their troops were well trained in weapon use and battlefield tactics, and most importantly disciplined in their use of these weapons. The US by comparison had a 'gun' culture, where most people had access to weapons on the farm or for hunting, but a great variety of weapons and often no training whatsoever in battlefield tactics. Therefore, when the Civil War started, the small professional US army (then divided into two) had to train huge numbers of volunteers very quickly, with more focus on drill and formations rather than weapon discipline and accuracy. The decision in the 1850s to reject breech loading rifles makes alot of sense if you don't have a large full time professional army and reserve. You choose a rifled musket, you also choose standing fire/ reload and Napoleonic line/ skirmisher formations. If you choose the Dreyse, you want your troops firing from the prone position most of the time. You also reject Napoleonic formations and train for more skirmisher formations. This takes more time than was available in the US Civil War (generally speaking anyway, there were exceptions with well trained troops).
I’d generally agree with you. Prussia’s army was an instrument of national survival while the US Army was basically a police force on the frontier to deal with Indians. When the Civil War began, even the rifle-musket’s modest capabilities were squandered on the untrained volunteers that filled the army. Moltke supposedly called the U.S. and CS armies “armed mobs.”
I am happy to have found your channel and have subscribed. Please take it as constructive feedback when I recommend that you invest in a good microphone or similar audio equipment. It is difficult to hear you.
This is a very good analysis. I learned a lot. Thank you. 👍
Does that encyclopedia entry really say "Zundnädel-gewehr" instead of "Zündnadelgewehr"? 🤣
Another thing to bring up would be that with black powder ammunition, a higher rate of fire means the battlefield gets smokier faster, making maneuver and coordination harder.
Yep, definitely
In the biography Memoirs of a Dutch Mudsill, Henry Otto mentioned missing his Needle rifle he used in Germany, while serving in the Union army.
Such an interesting piece of history, the slot the needle guns filled
I love these things! Although I’m more into the Chassepot that came 6 years later, needle fire guns are so cool!
Chassepot is on my list of future acquisitions but I’ll be honest, making the rounds is intimidating me a little bit!
The US had better alternatives that were developed during the Civil War: a number of breech loading Carbines using linen, brass, rimfire copper cartridges and revolvers that used rimfire cartridges. They would eventually lead to post war centerfire cartridges made from drawn brass.
The US had more expensive alternatives that could not be fielded in numbers and used expsensive ammunition... the Dreyse was ready.
@@trauko1388 the Dreyse had bad breech leakage, it could not really properly seal at the breech. There is a term we call that: blowback. Prussian soldiers in 1870 went as far to hold the rifle away from their face.
@@Easy-Eight Did you watch the video? One of the first things he says is to refute that
@@Easy-Eight AS explained in the video, excess gas was vented away from the face, you acn actually atch videos of the rifle.
@@trauko1388 the German troops held them away from their face and the leaking of that rifle proves what I was saying. Anyway, the Dreyse rifle was second rate in the Franco Prussian was, that a matter of record.
Thank you.
I like how the first "defect" of the Needle Rifle according to the Army was that it's "too easy to waste ammunition"; reminds me of reports about the M16A1 that resulted in the A2 variant having burst fire instead. I think this is especially interesting because current M-16/M-4 variants have gone back to full-auto; presumably because the having the option to put out that kind of volume of fire was found to offer significant tactical advantages even if it brings back the issue of troops potentially "too-easily wasting ammunition". To me this sounds a lot like what also ended up happening during the Civil War: people suddenly realizing "hey being able to throw this much lead at the enemy is actually really really useful" and scrambling to find as many breechloaders (e.g. the Spencer) as they could. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison since at the time a rifleman being able to fire so quickly was quite the novelty and the tactics to take full advantage of that ability didn't really exist yet, but it does seem like a bit of history repeating itself.
Now that I think about it, I'd love to know if other militaries at the time had similar concerns about "excessive" rates of fire with these breechloaders. I know the US military has always had a somewhat pathological focus on marksmanship due to being very small for most of its existence and thus wanting to maximize the effectiveness of each rifleman, but I don't know much about other countries.
*EDIT* AH never mind, this was addressed literally 30 seconds later in the video (for Prussia at least) from when I felt like posting this!
I was an army ammo officer for six years and let me assure you, we are still very very much obsessed with fire discipline, and afraid of shooting our ammo supplies away before achieving the desired results in an operation.
The ongoing ammo shortage in Ukraine continues to prove that there is no unlimited supply of ammo, that you can’t just shoot and shoot and shoot forever. NATO has given Ukraine essentially our backup contingency go to war stockpile of ammo, and it’s gone, and we can’t manufacture replenishments fast enough.
@@papercartridges6705 Prussia overwhelmed the superior Austrians and their allies in 5 weeks (even as it is called 7 week war). The dreysa shooting 6 times from prone positions while a musket shoots back twice from a standing position might have bern part of that success.
@@papercartridges6705As far as I'm aware, small arms ammunition is one of the few things nations rarely run out in war. It's really the shells and missiles that run out. As far as the individual soldier goes, I've not seen a lot of footage of soldiers shooting full auto at people that aren't extremely close, and I've watched more footage of military engagements than most sane people probably should. Seems like even Ukrainian conscripts aren't too keen on running dry while on the battlefield and waste ammunition. The only exception I've seen is in conflicts in Africa, it's like every guy with an AK is a machine gunner, destroying all the enemy dirt in front of them. Are small caliber bullets harder to manufacture than I think?
In regards to the Austrains in 1866 it's rather simple. Austrian army was lead by a man who had no experience on this front of the empire, part of his chain of command was refusing to reinforce him playing defence thinking the Olomouc fortress will have to be taken first and they failed ot take advantage of the range. Also doesn't help they were up against Helmut von Moltke, one of the best commanders in modern military history.
Benedek was an excellent corps commander. He struggled to rise to the enormous demand and vision needed to command an army. A very interesting figure. I wish someone would do a good biography of him.
Rate of fire is a double edged sword when we are talking black powder. The weapon quickly becomes fouled and inaccurate. For instance when you look at Crook's battles with the Sioux both sides fired a ton of ammunition at each other but generated few casualties.
The needle for this gun wears out after about 200 shots. This problem also is an example of why Caseless Ammo is still out of reach.
Lastly the makers of the gun were already busy re-arming the Prussian Army and the Prussian Army was too busy learning how to adapt this weapon into its tactics and doctrine.
Just a guess based on what I know. Still watching the video now!
That’s pretty much correct!
the firerate problem has an interesting parallel later in history when the thompson SMG would be replaced with the m3 which had a more controllable and logistics-friendly firerate.
granted economics was probably a bigger factor, but economics is always a factor with armaments anyways.
we also had a potentially better breach loader in the Sharps rifles.
It wasn't better. You still had to put the percussion cap on. At that time the Prussian had already fired his second shot
@@FantadiRienzoalthough there was the eventual development of the cartridge during the civil war for the sharpes, in the early days they did use paper cartridges with a seperate cap
@@FantadiRienzo The needle on the Dreyse is prone to breaking though so its a trade off. I don't think the percussion cap would halve fire rate but it would reduce it.
@@ronal8824 It would require modification to the gun there's no way an unmodified 1859 sharps is gonna fire without a percussion cap on the nipple.
@@redtra236 later ones in the war had primers in the metal cartridges but this is more late war
Ive got a Chassepot, definitely one of the earlier bolt guns. Paper carteidges are what stops me from shooting it, I definitely prefer loading brass for the Gras
The age old reason for militaries NOT to adopt weapons with better firepower: fear of wasting of ammunition if shooting is fast and easy. I guess men were cheaper than ammunition so it was preferred to employ more soldiers with slower guns to less soldiers with faster guns. The same has been said somewhere every time there was an improvement in small arms firepower, be it the addition of a magazine to a bolt gun, adopting a semi-auto or adding full auto capability.
Obviously it's a matter of training also, a poorly trained person with a full auto (or even semi-auto) weapon will indeed waste all their ammunition very quicly but on the other hand a trained soldier who knows when NOT to use full auto (full auto being of very limited practical use in a personal service rilfle) can in some situations still have some advantage from it.
Of course the needle rifle had some very real problems with reliability and durability, reliable sealing of the chamber on a small arms scale weapon was very problematic before the advent of metallic cartridge cases so breech loading weapons tended to be finicky with maintenance and, especially if not properly maintained, prone to early failure of the sealing surfaces.
TLDR; the logistics were already struggling to supply munitions to muskets
Awesome, never knew this
I would love if you ever did a video on the Norwegian Kammerlader, arguable the best single shot black powder rifle until the invention of the Chassepot, that had the misfortune of never been used in an actual war, so nobody realized how great it was until it became obsolete.
If I recall, the CSA did use small numbers of British Calisher and Terry bolt-action carbines, and president Jefferson Davis and general J.E.B. Stuart each also owned one.
Cool video buddy. I like Prussia's Gloria.
I figured it was same as the Henry rifle, it was too expensive for all troops.
It seems that the British trials showed that this was a fussy rifle, the needles wore rapidly and needed regular changes, the action snarled up when the rifle became fouled and there were problems with obturation. Needles were simple and easy to change but the imponderables remained of a soldier having them at the right time and not being called on to change them at the wrong time.
In its day, the needle gun made a creditable attempt at introducing the new generation of firearms but the problems of introducing the bullet correctly into the rifling, ensuring obturation (gas seal) at the breach and delivering ignition all go hand in hand and not all problems were solved. This was not a soldier proof rifle and it might require running maintenance after just a dozen rounds. I can see the attraction of more conservative and trusted designs because you knew where you were with them.
The only non metallic cartridge rifle worth a damn is the French 1866 Chassepot. Why? Breech leakage. Every paper cartridge up to the Chassepot has a lessor degree of gas escaping from the breech. As firing increases the leakage becomes critical. That is called *Obturation* . The Germans and French were so worried about gas leakage they put channels in the Gras and Mauser rifles. The French solve the obturation issue by putting a rubber seal in the Chassepot. However, after about 100 rounds it has to be replaced. By the early 1870s - just after the 1870 Franco Prussian war - most major powers go over to the center fire cartridge. Paper cartridges were a dead end.
If I remember correctly, was the gas channel in the mle 1874 Gras rifle, done as an later upgrading (M80?) of the rifle. So either they did not know how to solve the problem, or they where not too worried about this kind of gas leakage from metal cartridges at the start.
Another Great Video 💯💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
I love these nerdy videos because I'm a nerdy type of fellow. 👍😌
In the 1866 war the Austrian rifle had a better precision and longer shooting range than the Dreyse. They didn’t exploit that advantage in the war.
I think the armies in 1860 had their doubts about the efficiency of the Dreyse rifle on the battlefield. Therefore they needed a confirmation on the battlefield.