I have always wondered if a nervous soldier ever dumped the caps all over the ground. There's so many things that could go wrong due to nerves, just like shooting your ramrod downrange.
Yes. However, they wore a small leather pouch ok the right side, next to the belt plate. They were pretty much designed to hold the caps inside. But, it probably happened anyway.
it totally happened im sure it was even more nerve wrecking to have a jam/misfire cause if your gun really got jammed you where just there for when the bayonett charge came ig
I've read about soldiers having fired so many rounds that they had to resort to hammering their ramrods with rocks. It's also an interesting statistic that 70% of wounds were to the extremities because loading a musket left the soldier completely exposed requiring him to stand. I'm sure everyone knows about the Ordinance Department recovering 37,000 muskets off of the Gettysburg battlefield and nearly a third of them having more than one load in them. Also during the Petersburg siege the soldiers were bored and with plenty of wrecked muskets laying about they started firing ramrods deliberately trying to see who could create the most fantastic whirring noise-along with enjoying the crazy flight of the ramrod towards Confederate lines who probably were just as impressed.
Not really sure what point Mr Ashish Kumar Belladhi is trying make. I can only assume he accidently replied to the wrong comment. Also I believe that there is some truth to what he said but that the fat issue is also somewhat of a myth, and there were also other underlying issues which lead to the Indian revolt. That aside It should be noted that reloading a muzzle loading rifle or musket is possible and was also taught from the crouched and prone positions in certain armies. However this slowed the process/rate-of-fire significantly and particularly from the prone position had more safety implications. I doubt very much through the majority of the US Civil War that troops were taught as standard how to load from anything other than the standing position as training was limited to the bare essentials in most regiments.
During the height of the military supremacy, the Prussian Arm had been trained to load and fire 5-6 rounds in a minute whereas their other Europeean musketeers could average around 4.
I agree, no offense to reenactors but most of the time no matter how accurate their clothing is they look nothing like the type of personal they are recreating because of size, age, or race
@@guerillarice1129 yeah they look young and fresh where as you look at an old civil war picture the soldiers look weathered and aged as life was hard back then
I agree it took real veterans not to fall apart. This time period of line fighting was insanely mentally damaging, and knowing you could literally die just by having to reload your weapon was a good motivator to move faster.
Absolutely. Being caught off guard while reloading would be much easier. Having that kind of pressure on your mind repeatedly, for as long as the war lasted, would certainly leave plenty of mental wounds. The kind of danger war possesses for your mind, in addition to your body, isn't discussed as often as it should be.
Call me crazy but I always found breechloaders, flintlocks, matchlocks etc... so much more satisfying then repeating or automatic rifles. I wish weapons stayed at this level and never went further. There's just some really nice finesse to appreciate when you see someone with very good hands rapidly load one of these.
As much as I already know how to load a musket or a rifled musket this video is always a great reminder of the step by step procedure. I will even admit even though I have been shooting muzzleloaders for 4 years there have been times where I have completely forgot a step or even sometimes made a huge error like not putting powder down the barrel first.
This is such a useful video. I'm not a gun guy and I had trouble visualising what all the parts of loading and firing looked like until I watched it. I particularly appreciate the close ups of cartridges, Minie balls and percussion caps.
It's incredible that men stood in a line facing other men in a line and banging away at each other, with virtually no other movement than to stay alive long enough to reload. That type of warfare took a lot of courage to just stand there and be a target. When I was in the Army back in 1958, our tactics employed a term from Patton; no man won a war by dying for his country. He won a war by making the other dumb bastard die for his country.
@@TemenosL Aside from Patton's assholeish behaviour, he evidently didn't believe in the existence of PTSD or combat stress reaction. That was shown when he maligned some soldiers as malingerers and shirkers when they were likely suffering from combat stress reaction.
The close order battle formations were necessary to maintain tactical control over units once a battle started. Shouted orders and drum and bugle calls carried only so far over the noise of battle.
This formation was designed in the days of smoothbore muskets where if you were more than a few hundred yards away you would be lucky to hit the broadside of a barn with your shot. But the development of the minie ball round and rifled bores turned them into death factories. There’s a reason that the casualties in the civil war were so much higher than the revolutionary war.
@@jcolinmizia9161false, casaulties weren't higher simply because rifling and minie balls = more deadly. It was more a function of the number of men fighting and size of battlefields being orders of magnitude larger. They were still volleying each other at extremely close range most of the time, close enough that smoothbores would have been racking the kills up just as well
They look really good. I saw a video, years ago, of a group of Civil War reenactors, doing a video on the Infantryman. They went through talking about pretty much everything. Food, equipment and weapons, uniform, etc. Including loading and firing.
No not on a rifled gun. For say a 1853 enfield Mississippi rifle or later Springfield’s you would bite the tail dump the powder in and rip the Minnie ball out of the paper and put it in the bore then ram it home. On smooth bore models using round ball or buck and ball you would ram the paper down after dumping the powder in, the paper acts as somewhat of a wadding and also is abrasive so it can get some of the fouling out of the bore to a point. But smooth bores foul much quicker. The rifles guns if the bullets are sized decently and lubed well will go much longer sometimes beyond what I’d dare even want to go out and do and count. But if the bullets are sized poorly they can run into the same issues as smooth bores.
Thomas Aagaard This is true, but I ment in most cases, as it was hard to load a rifled weapon traditionally with paper and bullet with a rod, as it got stuck commonly.
@@desertsane In a well maintained gun using the correct cartridge the weight of the ramrod is all that is needed to push the bullet down. (Most people shooting replicas today, use too big bullets) Back then the big issue was the soldiers not maintaining their guns properly. The CSA ordinance department did a good deal of work in this because they got reports of oversized bullets. But the problem was poorly maintained guns. And this was caused by Inexperienced men and sergeants. And even after years of warfare, they never learned it. The same with marksmanship. Most soldiers had no clue about how to use their rifles outside of point blank range. And plenty of soldiers had a hard time even loading their guns correctly. In early 1864 Meade ordered that every soldier in AoP should be issued 10 rounds for live firing. and the company officers should make sure then men could load and fire them correctly. This is after 3 years of war.
Probably one of the most informative descriptive videos I have seen on the presentation of musket protocol and procedure! It would be good to go into a bit more detail. Example: who makes the black powder cartridges, what percentage or proportion of sulfur/carbon/potassium nitrate used, were the barrels rifled, when did caps replace flint, etc..
@josephmamah4124 The "rifle muskets" used during the Civil War were rifles. They were mainly Springfields, Enfields and their clones produced by state armories and private contractors.
First of all, I am not a gun and ammunition expert, I knew that is how they used their muskets, but I never knew that they actually put a bullet in the front. I always thought they only had to rely on the powder. So, now I have learned something new today!! Thank you for this great video!!
When you go to grab the ramrod when it's just about outside of the bands, your suppose to put it in the crevice between your thumb and index finger, your palm facing outwards past the ramrod, but the Ramrod should not be directly in the palm until you pull it out from the bands by then you would wrap your index around the ramrod and bring it down in a swift motion with the rest of your fingers to be holding the ramrod upside down gripped in your hand, it always for better control of the ramrod in such limited space and grinds down the edges on the time taken to load.
The U.S. style cartridge was typically torn off below the bullet and the round squeezed out into the muzzle; the British Pritchett cartridge had an inverted bullet, after the powder was poured the cartridge was inverted, bullet end inserted into the muzzle and broken off and then rammed home- this was a paper patched bullet and very efficient design. See "British Muzzleloaders" page for an excellent demo of this.
I see Travis, thank you for the reply. The reason I asked was that. I have shot muzzeloaders before and the powder fouling would be a problem! Again, thanks for you're reply. :)
The one thing with this process that always baffled me is the ramrod being in the gun backwards to where it needs to be. Surely reload rates would be vastly improved if they devised a ram rod with the ram end down and the handle end up.
It has worked that way for several hundred years. The rammer the other way would have slipped out, and it would have taken a bigger channel to hold it. Notice, actually that many rifles, still had cleaning rods stowed under the barrel, on the same way. The Model 98 Mauser, the Arisaka, Moisin-Nagants, the SKS-45 and most models, even the AK-47 and others.
We had a civil war gun demo at our club and it was great. We got to handle and shoot an array of weapons, everyone had a great time. All the guys who’d brag about their big calibre, this rate of twist, this mega optic scope etc, they couldn’t hit didly squat with open sights on a 25 yd range 🤣😂🤣 not even skittles with the cap and balls at 7 yds 😂🤣😂
And yet, shooting trials conducted between Union soldiers and British Fusiliers armed with the same three-banded 1853 Enfield found that the slowest Poms were at least one round per minute faster than the fastest Yanks. Experience and training certainly had a part to play in this, yet modern analysis suggests that it was the more time-efficient and fewer gross movements of British drill that led to this result. Ah, and the British Pritchard cartridge not being quite so adversely affected by fouling meant that this difference in firing rates only swelled over time.
I mean, the overwhelming majority of American civil war soldiers were volunteers with no prior experience using firearms. So it makes sense that trained british soldiers were faster than even the fastest American volunteers.
The Calvary used the Henry Rifle and not in many substantial numbers, the Calvary were using mostly breach loading Sharps carbines and Spencer Repeaters by the end of the war, basic infantrymen were still using muskets.
@@seanjohn2312 People tend to be poor shots when others are shooting at them. Add this to the problems of black powder smoke and the very high trajectory of relatively low velocity rounds.
@@seanjohn2312 because nearly all men in both armies were volunteers, not trained soldiers. On top of that, many of them were as young as 16 years old and many had never even held a firearm before. Also the biggest reason - muskets were ridiculously inaccurate and had very poor range.
Might be a bit late, but it’s a percussion cap. Uses mercury fulminate to detonate when hit by the hammer, which sends sparks into the loaded powder and fires the rifle-musket
No one walks with a loaded weapon ever. Today, people use safety locks. Back then, the only safety lock was an empty barrel. That wasn't 100 BC, the ambushes outside the battlefield weren't possible anymore due to extensive reconaissance. As for the ambushes on battlefield, perhaps everyone were walking in battle formation with ready weapons.
What you would do is load the gun but leave it halfcocked. (This is the setting used when replacing the cap). To shoot the gun, you would have to cock it back all the way, and then fire. That's how you could go around with a loaded gun without accidentally shooting it. It is also the origin of the phrase "Going around halfcocked."
" "No one walks with a loaded weapon ever. Today, people use safety locks. Back then, the only safety lock was an empty barrel." This is factually incorrect. Cheers
Wait a minute! I thought in the Civil War the smooth barreled musket had given way to the rifle with it's grooved barrel. This was one reason the war was so gruesome as the rifle is so much more accurate.
For the first few years of the war, the union army had plenty of regiments armed with 1842 pattern springfield's, some of which had still not been converted to rifles. Those that still had the smoothbores would use buck and ball cartridges.
I doubt minié balls were ever used in unrifles muskets. These are rifles, once breach loading and metal cartridges became the norm, old muzzle loading started to be called rifled muskets by some to differentiate them from the newer weapons. I also think it should be noted that both the amount of shots fired per casualty (about 75 shots per kill at gettysburg), and the relative amount of dead or wounded is fairly comparable compared to the napoleonic battles, so all those rifled muskets might not have made that much of a difference, probably because of the increased ranges, and the fact that smoke could fairly fast make accurate fire hard or impossible (no smokeless powder yet).
@@fifemaster100 I'll add to this comment- Not only did some regiments use smooth bore at first, but when they changed to rifled, some guys were actually upset and preferred the smooth bore. I can't remember why they liked the smooth bore better, but some guys did for some reason.
Why was there no paper wrapping on the bullet or why was the bullet not integrated into the cartridge that it could be inserted with the paper like the brits did it. BVetter for the gun and faster.
Any reason why the pinky/5th digit is used to place the rod back into the rifle? I often see this technique: at 1:42. Edit: I did some searching and found the answer. Soldiers would use the pinky finger as per regulation to have as little of the hand close to the muzzle of the musket as possible, thus reducing the chance of serious injury should the weapon discharge as they were returning the rammer to its position in the musket.
i guess in battle it make more sence to get more shot off. When greater care is taken when loading you can make some good shots in spite of smooth bore.
If you read period accounts you will learn that officers were thrilled to get 2 rounds a minute out of a soldier. You watch a file mate go down,. you get knocked about in the firing line, you kneel down to load to present a less obvious target.
@@captaindestruction9332 that's what they did as before metal ram rods were a thing they were made out of wood and so were very prone to breaking so youd take one from off the battlefield to replace ur own
@@Th3ch0s3n0n3s Fauchard, the father of modern dentistry, published his book The Surgeon Dentist in 1728. In it he introduced dental fillings, braces, dentures, and the identification of sugar as a corrosive agent. Dentistry was a bit more of a trade than a profession at the time, but diets had less sugar, so the young men in the civil war would have had their teeth.
@@ambrose788 hi, yes thank you for replying to my year-old comment with a literal response to what was clearly an exaggerated statement of mine. Obviously dentistry existed. I was saying that it didn't **practically** exist, as in most people couldn't afford it, and even if you could, most people didn't get it, and because of that, it didn't really exist. Is that an acceptable response for you? You cool with that now? Does it satisfy you?
@@Th3ch0s3n0n3s not at all because dentistry wasn't regulated at that time so even your barber could work on your teeth. They also had less sugary diets so the were less prone to cavities. Next you'll be telling me that they didn't wear shoes because they didn't have access to Chinese sweatshops like you. Wait til you find out that they had lawyers in the savage dark ages of the fourteenth century.
400 men shooting 3 bullets per minute = 1200 bullets per minute. 1200 bullets x 10 minutes = 12000 bullets fires in 10 minutes! He didn’t say 12000 bullets fired by one person.
Loads my pistol, hold its up, faster........ fires, faster........... fires,. FASTER!!........... lol pretty good vid yall, ..for a yankee, lol im looking at a two band Enfield p53 even if i get it, i want a three band, and maybe a springfield 61, but money unfortunately is definitely an object in my case.
When the guy says about union boys shooting out their ram rods i just imagine a Confederate Soldier wondering how the hell a steel rod got impaled into them, i guess a some point is better then getting those nasty minie bullets into ya.
A dude in the Confederate 5th Tennessee Infantry at the Battle of Perryville in my state of Kentucky actually had this happen to him. A frightened Badger fired his ramrod and impaled the man in his breast.
@@nimbly1693 Eh, it happens. Text is a poor conductor of tone. Probably some fault on my end as well. I see so many people idiotically using terms like "magazine clips" these days that any other option did not occur to me.
Dragon_ Nite the trapdoor Springfield wasn’t invented until 1873, also at the time, the war department didn’t want to spend the money on cased cartridges as well as thinking that if a soldier only had one shot at a time, they would make each shot count and take time to aim.
Fun fact: If you fired 3 rounds per minute with 40 rounds in your cartridge box and one in the barrel, you would only last 15 mins before running out of ammo.
Clearly, the United States was lagging behind technologically. Both sides used this muzzle loading rifle when France and Prussia had already developed two bolt action rifles (Dreyse and Chassepot) in 1856 and 1848.
Yes, but also remember that it’s a lot harder to arm a large army with the most expensive cutting edge technology than it is slightly older, cheaper, and perhaps better proven equipment.
The Prussians had their FAR larger army equipped with Dreyses TWO decades before the civil war, the Prussians wouldnt have noticed a battle with the US army...
Goodluck training people for bow & arrow For musket you can easily train recruits plus cavs can decimate archer formations since they don't have bayonets. Just because bow & arrow is faster in reloading doesn't mean it's effective in all situation, they changed warfare based on gunpowder for a lot of reasons including why they entirely discarded bow & arrow as a conventional weapon
People who try to justify their gun craziness with the second amendement don't want the rest of the world to think that the amendement is from an era, where one gun man could shoot three times in one minute.
@@everfaithful9272 It's a relic, to what gun nuts cling on to like fanatics and you can't justify it's existence to someone who lives in country where the usage and ownership of firearms is actually regulated to point that it actually can be seen in homicide statics. How can it protect you from criminals? If someone is going to steal your garden gnome or silver ware and you shoot the poor junkie bastard? That makes you a killer and worst criminal than the junkie ever was. A fact, which has actually been realised in most parts of the civilized world. What was really funny in your comment, was the part about the military. Remember the unmarked uniform dudes during towards the end of Trump administration, which moved in during the BLM demonstrations? Those nut jobs were assigned by Trump's administration and Trump was an huge advocate of looser gun laws. Have you seen any attacks from such forces towards the population during Biden's administration, did you see them During Obama's or even Bushe's administrations? Did owning a firearm actually helped at all? Did having an AR help for example Kyle Rittenhouse - who now is a young murderer? The part about the Anglos was also total bull shit. It's because of the development of military aplications that gun nuts can let their jollies out with their civil versions of the various AR platforms. Also, M4A1 and AR15 variants are the same exact weapon, shooting the same exact 5.56x45mm NATO rounds, just in a slightly different configuration, with various bolt carriers, muzzle devices, receiver packages and barrel types. If you try to actually state with a serious face how one is more superior than the other, you are not even an actual gun nut - just an avid wannabe. Beretta 92F variants also can shoot the same exact rounds than any polymer wrapped swiss origin cuckoo clock glockenspiel can. Besides, the ammount of handgun calibers available for both mention siderarms are just outrageous these days and 92F variants like the Wilson Combat are just crazy. You clearly thought that because I raelly don't like about 2nd, that I wouldn't know or understand anything about guns. It's because of that knowledge why I think that gun nuts are often only destructive idiots, who run UA-cam channels. And the 2nd made some sense back when 3 shots in a minute with muzzle loaders was considered to be rapid fire.
@@everfaithful9272 And btw, do you seriously think that any Glock or Beretta or AR platform available for civilians would exist without military developers? Guns are originally created for national defence, not for home defence. Armed forces and law eforces carry the same weapons than the civilian population does - they did so decades before any civilian did. Pricks like the AR packing proud boy beard fans are an threat to national security and eventually douches like them would be reason why military forces would take the streets.
on a bunch of civil war videos they always show union soldiers and not confederate soldiers hmmmmmmmm i wonder why oh thats right cuz everyone will get offended ohhh boo hoo
as proven by the Battle of Balaclava, the rifle makes previous forms of small arms and tactics completely obsolete. A relatively small unit British Soldiers with rifles shot down a substantial Russian cavalry charge using three volleys at 600 yards, 300 yards, and a final at about 100 yards. A bow has nothing on that, even with good sights and a powerful span weight ( which beats most compound hand-bows in velocity), I really have to lob the dart into the target at 150 yds (to the point its like indirect fire)
I have always wondered if a nervous soldier ever dumped the caps all over the ground. There's so many things that could go wrong due to nerves, just like shooting your ramrod downrange.
It probably happened
Totally off context but nice avatar the only chuck 95
@@sargentdornan8623 I’m so glad you pointed that out 😂 I would have missed it otherwise
Yes. However, they wore a small leather pouch ok the right side, next to the belt plate. They were pretty much designed to hold the caps inside. But, it probably happened anyway.
it totally happened im sure it was even more nerve wrecking to have a jam/misfire cause if your gun really got jammed you where just there for when the bayonett charge came ig
I've read about soldiers having fired so many rounds that they had to resort to hammering their ramrods with rocks. It's also an interesting statistic that 70% of wounds were to the extremities because loading a musket left the soldier completely exposed requiring him to stand. I'm sure everyone knows about the Ordinance Department recovering 37,000 muskets off of the Gettysburg battlefield and nearly a third of them having more than one load in them. Also during the Petersburg siege the soldiers were bored and with plenty of wrecked muskets laying about they started firing ramrods deliberately trying to see who could create the most fantastic whirring noise-along with enjoying the crazy flight of the ramrod towards Confederate lines who probably were just as impressed.
Not really sure what point Mr Ashish Kumar Belladhi is trying make. I can only assume he accidently replied to the wrong comment. Also I believe that there is some truth to what he said but that the fat issue is also somewhat of a myth, and there were also other underlying issues which lead to the Indian revolt. That aside It should be noted that reloading a muzzle loading rifle or musket is possible and was also taught from the crouched and prone positions in certain armies. However this slowed the process/rate-of-fire significantly and particularly from the prone position had more safety implications. I doubt very much through the majority of the US Civil War that troops were taught as standard how to load from anything other than the standing position as training was limited to the bare essentials in most regiments.
During the height of the military supremacy, the Prussian Arm had been trained to load and fire 5-6 rounds in a minute whereas their other Europeean musketeers could average around 4.
1:40 not true
@@Joebonjoe They also called the Minnie ball a bullet.
Good stuff, the reenactors look like they stepped out of a 19th-Century photograph.
I agree, no offense to reenactors but most of the time no matter how accurate their clothing is they look nothing like the type of personal they are recreating because of size, age, or race
Yeah
@@guerillarice1129 yeah they look young and fresh where as you look at an old civil war picture the soldiers look weathered and aged as life was hard back then
I agree it took real veterans not to fall apart. This time period of line fighting was insanely mentally damaging, and knowing you could literally die just by having to reload your weapon was a good motivator to move faster.
Absolutely. Being caught off guard while reloading would be much easier. Having that kind of pressure on your mind repeatedly, for as long as the war lasted, would certainly leave plenty of mental wounds. The kind of danger war possesses for your mind, in addition to your body, isn't discussed as often as it should be.
napoleonic fighting is brutal man have you seen the weapons used i wouldn't want a cannon loaded with a canister shell aimed at me
@@jjham6780 It was used on ships along with grape shot basically a artillery shotgun shell.
Just imagine being the man holding the flag in the center of the line, knowing that if anyone is getting shot first, it's you.
Call me crazy but I always found breechloaders, flintlocks, matchlocks etc... so much more satisfying then repeating or automatic rifles. I wish weapons stayed at this level and never went further.
There's just some really nice finesse to appreciate when you see someone with very good hands rapidly load one of these.
well i do love a good sharps rifle
There is a certain aesthetic to it
I suggest you look up the Henry lever action rifle of the 1860's. The reload sequence on those is so interesting, and unique to that rifle.
As much as I already know how to load a musket or a rifled musket this video is always a great reminder of the step by step procedure. I will even admit even though I have been shooting muzzleloaders for 4 years there have been times where I have completely forgot a step or even sometimes made a huge error like not putting powder down the barrel first.
This is such a useful video.
I'm not a gun guy and I had trouble visualising what all the parts of loading and firing looked like until I watched it.
I particularly appreciate the close ups of cartridges, Minie balls and percussion caps.
It's incredible that men stood in a line facing other men in a line and banging away at each other, with virtually no other movement than to stay alive long enough to reload. That type of warfare took a lot of courage to just stand there and be a target. When I was in the Army back in 1958, our tactics employed a term from Patton; no man won a war by dying for his country. He won a war by making the other dumb bastard die for his country.
Patton was an asshole. Otherwise, nice comment.
@@TemenosL Aside from Patton's assholeish behaviour, he evidently didn't believe in the existence of PTSD or combat stress reaction. That was shown when he maligned some soldiers as malingerers and shirkers when they were likely suffering from combat stress reaction.
The close order battle formations were necessary to maintain tactical control over units once a battle started. Shouted orders and drum and bugle calls carried only so far over the noise of battle.
This formation was designed in the days of smoothbore muskets where if you were more than a few hundred yards away you would be lucky to hit the broadside of a barn with your shot. But the development of the minie ball round and rifled bores turned them into death factories. There’s a reason that the casualties in the civil war were so much higher than the revolutionary war.
@@jcolinmizia9161false, casaulties weren't higher simply because rifling and minie balls = more deadly. It was more a function of the number of men fighting and size of battlefields being orders of magnitude larger. They were still volleying each other at extremely close range most of the time, close enough that smoothbores would have been racking the kills up just as well
“A good man should be able to fire 3 well aimed shots in a minute.” Good movie
i like how they were playing Oh Susanna while showing a union soldier lol
Trent Greener yes
A lot of Southern Unionist soldiers still played traditional southern songs even though they fought for the North
As a history buff, I'm positively s h o o k
Oh Susanna, gesos kina bhulla amare...
Ami ekhon shishka chalai Dhaka shohore...
Song came out in 1848 so I'm sure it had time to become popular both north and south....
They look really good. I saw a video, years ago, of a group of Civil War reenactors, doing a video on the Infantryman. They went through talking about pretty much everything. Food, equipment and weapons, uniform, etc. Including loading and firing.
So you just ram the paper cartridge down in as well.... Why keep the bullet separated then?
No not on a rifled gun. For say a 1853 enfield Mississippi rifle or later Springfield’s you would bite the tail dump the powder in and rip the Minnie ball out of the paper and put it in the bore then ram it home. On smooth bore models using round ball or buck and ball you would ram the paper down after dumping the powder in, the paper acts as somewhat of a wadding and also is abrasive so it can get some of the fouling out of the bore to a point. But smooth bores foul much quicker. The rifles guns if the bullets are sized decently and lubed well will go much longer sometimes beyond what I’d dare even want to go out and do and count. But if the bullets are sized poorly they can run into the same issues as smooth bores.
Smooth bore? Sure. Rifled? No.
@@desertsane Depend on the army. The loaded with the paper still around the bullet. So did the danish army.
Thomas Aagaard This is true, but I ment in most cases, as it was hard to load a rifled weapon traditionally with paper and bullet with a rod, as it got stuck commonly.
@@desertsane In a well maintained gun using the correct cartridge the weight of the ramrod is all that is needed to push the bullet down.
(Most people shooting replicas today, use too big bullets)
Back then the big issue was the soldiers not maintaining their guns properly. The CSA ordinance department did a good deal of work in this because they got reports of oversized bullets. But the problem was poorly maintained guns.
And this was caused by Inexperienced men and sergeants. And even after years of warfare, they never learned it. The same with marksmanship. Most soldiers had no clue about how to use their rifles outside of point blank range. And plenty of soldiers had a hard time even loading their guns correctly.
In early 1864 Meade ordered that every soldier in AoP should be issued 10 rounds for live firing. and the company officers should make sure then men could load and fire them correctly. This is after 3 years of war.
To bad you guys can't do one of these videos but for drummers!!...like what roll calls they do...where do they stand in line when line is formed!!!...
Teach them properly, Major.
Colonel Robert Ghould Shaw - Glory.
crazy to belive camera quality in 1800s was
so good
Probably one of the most informative descriptive videos I have seen on the presentation of musket protocol and procedure! It would be good to go into a bit more detail. Example: who makes the black powder cartridges, what percentage or proportion of sulfur/carbon/potassium nitrate used, were the barrels rifled, when did caps replace flint, etc..
@josephmamah4124 The "rifle muskets" used during the Civil War were rifles. They were mainly Springfields, Enfields and their clones produced by state armories and private contractors.
First of all, I am not a gun and ammunition expert, I knew that is how they used their muskets, but I never knew that they actually put a bullet in the front. I always thought they only had to rely on the powder. So, now I have learned something new today!! Thank you for this great video!!
how?
Well, if you dont put a bullet in front of the powder, you wont shoot anything but paper and smoke.
When you go to grab the ramrod when it's just about outside of the bands, your suppose to put it in the crevice between your thumb and index finger, your palm facing outwards past the ramrod, but the Ramrod should not be directly in the palm until you pull it out from the bands by then you would wrap your index around the ramrod and bring it down in a swift motion with the rest of your fingers to be holding the ramrod upside down gripped in your hand, it always for better control of the ramrod in such limited space and grinds down the edges on the time taken to load.
Nice film about. Greatings from Germany.
Kai L Punkt You guys had the danish war while we were here with the civil war
@@im.koyami And Austria got Mexico in 1863/4 for few years.😂
Michael Ironside as the narrator...good choice.
Question. After the powder was poured down the muzzle. Was the ball also squeezes out or was it shoved into the muzzle with paper cartridge?
The U.S. style cartridge was typically torn off below the bullet and the round squeezed out into the muzzle; the British Pritchett cartridge had an inverted bullet, after the powder was poured the cartridge was inverted, bullet end inserted into the muzzle and broken off and then rammed home- this was a paper patched bullet and very efficient design. See "British Muzzleloaders" page for an excellent demo of this.
I see Travis, thank you for the reply. The reason I asked was that. I have shot muzzeloaders before and the powder fouling would be a problem! Again, thanks for you're reply. :)
Música
Wow ! Thanks for the reply Gary, I did not know this ! Thanks for the info!
Thank you Gary!
The one thing with this process that always baffled me is the ramrod being in the gun backwards to where it needs to be. Surely reload rates would be vastly improved if they devised a ram rod with the ram end down and the handle end up.
It has worked that way for several hundred years. The rammer the other way would have slipped out, and it would have taken a bigger channel to hold it. Notice, actually that many rifles, still had cleaning rods stowed under the barrel, on the same way. The Model 98 Mauser, the Arisaka, Moisin-Nagants, the SKS-45 and most models, even the AK-47 and others.
If I remember right, the Baker rifle's ramrod was the reverse of the usual.
A good soldier has the ability to fire three rounds a minute in any weather.
We had a civil war gun demo at our club and it was great. We got to handle and shoot an array of weapons, everyone had a great time. All the guys who’d brag about their big calibre, this rate of twist, this mega optic scope etc, they couldn’t hit didly squat with open sights on a 25 yd range 🤣😂🤣 not even skittles with the cap and balls at 7 yds 😂🤣😂
This is how you "bite the bullet."
"Going around halfcocked" was originally a reference of going around with your musket halfcocked.
@@tektrades7539 What does that phrase even mean? Half-cocked is actually the only form of safety on these firearms. And many of the same period.
And yet, shooting trials conducted between Union soldiers and British Fusiliers armed with the same three-banded 1853 Enfield found that the slowest Poms were at least one round per minute faster than the fastest Yanks. Experience and training certainly had a part to play in this, yet modern analysis suggests that it was the more time-efficient and fewer gross movements of British drill that led to this result.
Ah, and the British Pritchard cartridge not being quite so adversely affected by fouling meant that this difference in firing rates only swelled over time.
And the Prussian Dreyses would have been machine guns next to them! XD
I mean, the overwhelming majority of American civil war soldiers were volunteers with no prior experience using firearms. So it makes sense that trained british soldiers were faster than even the fastest American volunteers.
1:08 is he going to spit out the paper or just eat it
Spit it
Is David Carradine doing the narration? Just watched The Long Riders with him last night lol, got a good ol westy kinda vibe.
And to think near the end of the war the North was using Henry Repeating Rifles.... while the south still had muskets..... insane
The Calvary used the Henry Rifle and not in many substantial numbers, the Calvary were using mostly breach loading Sharps carbines and Spencer Repeaters by the end of the war, basic infantrymen were still using muskets.
@@effen_aey_man Yeah but the North also have lots of assortment of machine gun as well, including the infamous gatling gun.
@@cool06alt Not until the end of the war, even then the gatling gun wasn't fielded in large numbers
Vast vast majority of union infantry was using the springfield rifle musket by war's end
I think I saw Jack Black as one of the soldiers.
Time stamp?
thanks LionHeart for the video . See you on the field or around the camp fire pards. -- LT 1st Minn Sharpshooters
Now with the right guns we can fire the same amount of rounds in a minute that an entire regiment with one man
On average, soldiers in both armies tended to be poor shots under combat conditions. Something like 98 per cent of shots fired missed.
How and why?
@@seanjohn2312 People tend to be poor shots when others are shooting at them. Add this to the problems of black powder smoke and the very high trajectory of relatively low velocity rounds.
@@seanjohn2312 because nearly all men in both armies were volunteers, not trained soldiers. On top of that, many of them were as young as 16 years old and many had never even held a firearm before.
Also the biggest reason - muskets were ridiculously inaccurate and had very poor range.
@@MrJohansenas someone who has played War Of Rights, can confirm. Plus with the smoke, it’s hard to tell if you’re even hitting anyone.
You see some men putting their whole hand over the loaded musket to return the rammer, good to see this was done properly.
2:22 rip camera man younwill be rememberd
Great video
What was that golden cap like thing he put under the hammer???
Can anyone explain this plssss????
Might be a bit late, but it’s a percussion cap. Uses mercury fulminate to detonate when hit by the hammer, which sends sparks into the loaded powder and fires the rifle-musket
So how many casualties were caused by firing rammers at enemy soldiers?
time consuming reality of those days 😂🙏
So did only the model 1861 have the tulip tip rammer? This musket looks like a model 1863 with a Enfield type rammer.
So, were they able to march with their muskets loaded in case of an ambush, or was that not possible?
No one walks with a loaded weapon ever. Today, people use safety locks. Back then, the only safety lock was an empty barrel.
That wasn't 100 BC, the ambushes outside the battlefield weren't possible anymore due to extensive reconaissance. As for the ambushes on battlefield, perhaps everyone were walking in battle formation with ready weapons.
@@Slaveknight_gael I would be rather safe to walk with a loaded musket without a cap though. No idea if it was ever done.
What you would do is load the gun but leave it halfcocked. (This is the setting used when replacing the cap). To shoot the gun, you would have to cock it back all the way, and then fire. That's how you could go around with a loaded gun without accidentally shooting it. It is also the origin of the phrase "Going around halfcocked."
"
"No one walks with a loaded weapon ever. Today, people use safety locks. Back then, the only safety lock was an empty barrel." This is factually incorrect. Cheers
@@Slaveknight_gael
What military were you in where people don't walk with loaded weapons lmao
Wait a minute! I thought in the Civil War the smooth barreled musket had given way to the rifle with it's grooved barrel. This was one reason the war was so gruesome as the rifle is so much more accurate.
The rifle shown is an 1861 Springfield, a rifled model.
@@weaponsgradepotato I could be wrong but it actually appeared to be an enfield model?
For the first few years of the war, the union army had plenty of regiments armed with 1842 pattern springfield's, some of which had still not been converted to rifles. Those that still had the smoothbores would use buck and ball cartridges.
I doubt minié balls were ever used in unrifles muskets. These are rifles, once breach loading and metal cartridges became the norm, old muzzle loading started to be called rifled muskets by some to differentiate them from the newer weapons.
I also think it should be noted that both the amount of shots fired per casualty (about 75 shots per kill at gettysburg), and the relative amount of dead or wounded is fairly comparable compared to the napoleonic battles, so all those rifled muskets might not have made that much of a difference, probably because of the increased ranges, and the fact that smoke could fairly fast make accurate fire hard or impossible (no smokeless powder yet).
@@fifemaster100 I'll add to this comment- Not only did some regiments use smooth bore at first, but when they changed to rifled, some guys were actually upset and preferred the smooth bore. I can't remember why they liked the smooth bore better, but some guys did for some reason.
Or fire their ramrod at Yankee soldiers....btw, an average of sixteen pounds of lead was fired per casualty during the war.
Why was there no paper wrapping on the bullet or why was the bullet not integrated into the cartridge that it could be inserted with the paper like the brits did it. BVetter for the gun and faster.
Any reason why the pinky/5th digit is used to place the rod back into the rifle? I often see this technique: at 1:42.
Edit: I did some searching and found the answer. Soldiers would use the pinky finger as per regulation to have as little of the hand close to the muzzle of the musket as possible, thus reducing the chance of serious injury should the weapon discharge as they were returning the rammer to its position in the musket.
i guess in battle it make more sence to get more shot off. When greater care is taken when loading you can make some good shots in spite of smooth bore.
If you read period accounts you will learn that officers were thrilled to get 2 rounds a minute out of a soldier. You watch a file mate go down,. you get knocked about in the firing line, you kneel down to load to present a less obvious target.
So what if you lost your ramrod, or spilled some powder, or the minie ball slipped out of the paper was... yikes
Id assume it wasn’t uncommon that a soldier would either pick up a fallen soldiers rifle next to them or just take out the ramrod from that rifle.
@@captaindestruction9332 that's what they did as before metal ram rods were a thing they were made out of wood and so were very prone to breaking so youd take one from off the battlefield to replace ur own
F
Why didn't they use the Henry rifle? Or those guns used in the Zulu wars.
Those hadn't been invented yet
Very Good!
How would one load while kneeling?
Placing the rifle at an angle off to the side of the body so that the muzzle is low enough to pour in the powder.
If yr fighting for your life,you'll mange it
0:28, not how you hold your piece.
Also you use your right molars to tear the cartridge.
You use whatever teeth you have left, realistically. This is the 1860's we're talking about. Dentistry wasn't a thing.
@@Th3ch0s3n0n3s Fauchard, the father of modern dentistry, published his book The Surgeon Dentist in 1728. In it he introduced dental fillings, braces, dentures, and the identification of sugar as a corrosive agent. Dentistry was a bit more of a trade than a profession at the time, but diets had less sugar, so the young men in the civil war would have had their teeth.
@@ambrose788 hi, yes thank you for replying to my year-old comment with a literal response to what was clearly an exaggerated statement of mine.
Obviously dentistry existed. I was saying that it didn't **practically** exist, as in most people couldn't afford it, and even if you could, most people didn't get it, and because of that, it didn't really exist.
Is that an acceptable response for you? You cool with that now? Does it satisfy you?
@@Th3ch0s3n0n3s not at all because dentistry wasn't regulated at that time so even your barber could work on your teeth. They also had less sugary diets so the were less prone to cavities. Next you'll be telling me that they didn't wear shoes because they didn't have access to Chinese sweatshops like you. Wait til you find out that they had lawyers in the savage dark ages of the fourteenth century.
@@ambrose788 Thank you for proving my point.
Springfield rifle?
0:48 Rammer? I hardly know her!
With rifled barrels, does the paper go in after the powder to act as a patch, or does the bullet seat directly against the powder?
Bullet seats directly onto powder; bullet goes on top of bullet as wadding.
Good old percussion rifles.
Where normal rifles at?
Interessante.
1:09 oh so you just eat the paper huh? i dont think thats right
Fiber
Don't forget the huge gunpowder clouds
Yankee doodle is coming to feast on a zombie Yankee doodle is coming to show u macaroni
1:18 I think he cheated the bullet disappeared
he’s using reloading hacks
shooting live rounds. I was actually surprised to find, minnie balls can easily jam in the barrel. :c
wait how does he shoot 12,000 rounds in ten minutes?
@My Moni is XD I wonder how many soldiers would that be? accordingly how fast they reload & how fast they shoot...
400 men shooting 3 bullets per minute = 1200 bullets per minute. 1200 bullets x 10 minutes = 12000 bullets fires in 10 minutes!
He didn’t say 12000 bullets fired by one person.
Reloading of flintlock musket is faster then musket with capsule.
Oh Susanna in the background lol
My grandpa said my great grandpa said he’d put the blasting cap on first
Camptown races
I would have to say fk the putting the ram rod back and just hold it it my hand.
Loads my pistol, hold its up, faster........ fires, faster........... fires,. FASTER!!........... lol pretty good vid yall, ..for a yankee, lol im looking at a two band Enfield p53 even if i get it, i want a three band, and maybe a springfield 61, but money unfortunately is definitely an object in my case.
450 shoot and when they are reloading have the other 450 shoot, that dps tho
Ok general grant 😂
When the guy says about union boys shooting out their ram rods i just imagine a Confederate Soldier wondering how the hell a steel rod got impaled into them, i guess a some point is better then getting those nasty minie bullets into ya.
A dude in the Confederate 5th Tennessee Infantry at the Battle of Perryville in my state of Kentucky actually had this happen to him. A frightened Badger fired his ramrod and impaled the man in his breast.
After all that effort, even with the miniball he was loading, your odds of hitting your target were poor. Better than a smooth bore & ball however.
Firing 3 rounds a minute? That's soldiering.
Crazy to think today, in California, civilians have ghost guns with 30 caliber magazine clips.
Magazines and clips are two different things, and there is no such thing as a "magazine clip".
@@VonArgylle Totally missed the jab at the California senator huh?
@@nimbly1693 Yes, yes I did.
@@VonArgylle I do that a lot, think I'm being clever and funny, then nobody gets it because it's lost in (internet) translation.
@@nimbly1693 Eh, it happens. Text is a poor conductor of tone. Probably some fault on my end as well. I see so many people idiotically using terms like "magazine clips" these days that any other option did not occur to me.
Why dont they used the trapdoor version instead, make it 10x easier to reload
Dragon_ Nite the trapdoor Springfield wasn’t invented until 1873, also at the time, the war department didn’t want to spend the money on cased cartridges as well as thinking that if a soldier only had one shot at a time, they would make each shot count and take time to aim.
Okay I got u go here
i invented rammer in musket loader 1973
No wonder the ordnance guys didn’t want repeating rifles, 12,000 rounds a regiment in 10 minutes? Yikes that’s a lot of rounds!
They’re gonna get tooth enamel wear overtime...just tear the cartridges with your hands....
Fun fact: If you fired 3 rounds per minute with 40 rounds in your cartridge box and one in the barrel, you would only last 15 mins before running out of ammo.
Trust me you won’t be firing at the same rate consistently for 15 minutes
@u666sa Not really. Of 560 000 dead in the ACW, over 2/3 died to disease or in prisons. At Bull's Run, 1 in every 90 combatants got killed.
@u666sa I'll add that Sharpe is a pretty good series. It's worth watching.
Clearly, the United States was lagging behind technologically. Both sides used this muzzle loading rifle when France and Prussia had already developed two bolt action rifles (Dreyse and Chassepot) in 1856 and 1848.
Yea but they had lever actions which had more than 1 round, while bolt actiond had a single shot but were fast to reload
Yes, but also remember that it’s a lot harder to arm a large army with the most expensive cutting edge technology than it is slightly older, cheaper, and perhaps better proven equipment.
Americans had revolvers and bolt action rifles. But muskets were just cheaper and in large supply.
The Prussians had their FAR larger army equipped with Dreyses TWO decades before the civil war, the Prussians wouldnt have noticed a battle with the US army...
Sooo- They had those types of guns in the US then as well lol.
52 Rebs are still salty about Atlanta.
bro had the opposite of slight of hand
Cleburnes troops could get off 5 a minute
What would you do if it was raining?
I wish I was in Dixie
Hooray, Hooray!
In Dixie's land i'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie!
Away, Away, Away Down South in Dixie!
Jesus Christ loves everyone and be safe 😊😊
The Union soldier would carry 60 to 80 rounds
Too bad they didn't have uzis
Just use a bow, its quiker to reloud and deadly too, musket relouding takes to much time, your dead before you can fire a shot.
You’ll be dead before you can even get close enough for a bow when going against rifles
The indians lost, but gave a huge blow to the americans, with their bows, il never forget that history, and i preffer a bow then a musket.
@@ibrahimbey8749 define huge blow (against civilians maybe)
@@gabrielnguyen5580 no against the law and military.
Goodluck training people for bow & arrow
For musket you can easily train recruits plus cavs can decimate archer formations since they don't have bayonets.
Just because bow & arrow is faster in reloading doesn't mean it's effective in all situation, they changed warfare based on gunpowder for a lot of reasons including why they entirely discarded bow & arrow as a conventional weapon
Lol getting clapped by rammer
Garndioose
I will get 2 more extra pistol loaded. so i fire 3 round in few second.
People who try to justify their gun craziness with the second amendement don't want the rest of the world to think that the amendement is from an era, where one gun man could shoot three times in one minute.
@@everfaithful9272 It's a relic, to what gun nuts cling on to like fanatics and you can't justify it's existence to someone who lives in country where the usage and ownership of firearms is actually regulated to point that it actually can be seen in homicide statics. How can it protect you from criminals? If someone is going to steal your garden gnome or silver ware and you shoot the poor junkie bastard? That makes you a killer and worst criminal than the junkie ever was. A fact, which has actually been realised in most parts of the civilized world.
What was really funny in your comment, was the part about the military. Remember the unmarked uniform dudes during towards the end of Trump administration, which moved in during the BLM demonstrations? Those nut jobs were assigned by Trump's administration and Trump was an huge advocate of looser gun laws. Have you seen any attacks from such forces towards the population during Biden's administration, did you see them During Obama's or even Bushe's administrations? Did owning a firearm actually helped at all? Did having an AR help for example Kyle Rittenhouse - who now is a young murderer?
The part about the Anglos was also total bull shit. It's because of the development of military aplications that gun nuts can let their jollies out with their civil versions of the various AR platforms. Also, M4A1 and AR15 variants are the same exact weapon, shooting the same exact 5.56x45mm NATO rounds, just in a slightly different configuration, with various bolt carriers, muzzle devices, receiver packages and barrel types. If you try to actually state with a serious face how one is more superior than the other, you are not even an actual gun nut - just an avid wannabe. Beretta 92F variants also can shoot the same exact rounds than any polymer wrapped swiss origin cuckoo clock glockenspiel can. Besides, the ammount of handgun calibers available for both mention siderarms are just outrageous these days and 92F variants like the Wilson Combat are just crazy.
You clearly thought that because I raelly don't like about 2nd, that I wouldn't know or understand anything about guns. It's because of that knowledge why I think that gun nuts are often only destructive idiots, who run UA-cam channels.
And the 2nd made some sense back when 3 shots in a minute with muzzle loaders was considered to be rapid fire.
@@everfaithful9272 And btw, do you seriously think that any Glock or Beretta or AR platform available for civilians would exist without military developers? Guns are originally created for national defence, not for home defence. Armed forces and law eforces carry the same weapons than the civilian population does - they did so decades before any civilian did.
Pricks like the AR packing proud boy beard fans are an threat to national security and eventually douches like them would be reason why military forces would take the streets.
You sound ignorant.
Found the European
@@fries3187 How does any european change the fact that 2nd amendement is an exuse for grownups to keep playing with guns?
If only the Union armed their troops with the Henry 1860. War would've ended much quicker.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
perfect killing machine..... really?
on a bunch of civil war videos they always show union soldiers and not confederate soldiers hmmmmmmmm i wonder why oh thats right cuz everyone will get offended ohhh boo hoo
i mean you can definitely find them
it more easy and faster to load arrow use bow than this type of rifles..
So? It takes years to be proficient with Bow and Arrow. It took only hours to be proficient with rifle
This rifle also shoots 900 yards accurately; most Native American bows had a maximum range of about 150 yards.
@@thecivilwarhistorian and that would be one heck of a lob to do that lol
as proven by the Battle of Balaclava, the rifle makes previous forms of small arms and tactics completely obsolete. A relatively small unit British Soldiers with rifles shot down a substantial Russian cavalry charge using three volleys at 600 yards, 300 yards, and a final at about 100 yards. A bow has nothing on that, even with good sights and a powerful span weight ( which beats most compound hand-bows in velocity), I really have to lob the dart into the target at 150 yds (to the point its like indirect fire)
Just yankee propaganda
MisterUnknownSmith explain how
Us alabamians willed our rifles into a loaded state
@@loliprotectionservices9953 these fancy northern rifles are nothing against a bajonett and southern spirit
MisterUnknownSmith I wonder who won the war and what rifle they used, I’m not American so please tell me
@@loliprotectionservices9953 not sure, but I know which side killed 300,000 and which one didn't