peashooter85:The Springfield Model 1855 rifled musket,The Springfield Model 1855 was one of the most
peashooter85:The Springfield Model 1855 rifled musket,The Springfield Model 1855 was one of the most unusual muskets produced for the US Army. It was also a great leap in technology which ushered the army from an age of Napoleonic Warfare into the age of modern warfare. The Model 1855 boasted several advances that were unlike all other muskets produced before it. First and foremost the M1855 had a rifled barrel and used the new and deadly conical shaped minie ball. Before the M1855 all muskets produced for the military were smoothbore, which mean’t they lacked the rifling of a rifle. This was done because muskets at the time fired a simple round ball. It took a lot more time to load a rifle because the user had to cram the ball against the rifling, whereas with a smoothbore the user only had to drop a slightly under-caliber ball down the barrel. Of course, this cost the smoothbore musket accuracy when compared to a rifle. The M1855 used what was called a minie ball. The minie ball was conical shaped and had a hollow rear end. Thus the user could simply drop it into the barrel like the older round ball. When the musket was fired, the minie ball would expand into the rifling, thus giving it accuracy. The minie ball was an incredible advance in firearms technology because it allowed muskets to have the accuracy of a rifle, but the speed of a smoothbore.Another advance was that the M1855 used a much smaller caliber bullet than muskets before it. Older smoothbore muskets tended to use very large caliber bullets. British muskets, for example, were typically .71 caliber. American muskets where typically .69 caliber. The caliber of the 1855 was scaled down to .58 caliber because ordnance officials found that minie balls were more accurate at smaller calibers. .58 caliber would be the standard caliber used in the American Civil War.The most unusual addition to the M1855 was the Maynard Tape System, invented by a dentist named Edward Maynard in 1845. Unlike other percussion firearms which used copper caps filled with mercury fulminate (percussion caps), the Maynard system used a paper tape filled with blots of mercury fulminate. A mechanism advanced the tape over the nipple of the musket when the hammer was cocked, and when the hammer struck it, a spark traveled down the nipple and ignited the main powder charge in the chamber. It worked much in the same way roll caps work in a toy cap gun today. The theory behind the Maynard System was that it sped up the loading process. Soldiers only had to worry about loading the rifle without placing a cap on the nipple. US Army Ordnance was skeptical of the new system, but Maynard found a friend in then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who was very enthusiastic about Maynard’s system. As a result, the Maynard Tape System was included in the M1855 design. While a great idea in theory, in practice the Maynard System proved to be impractical in the real world. Often the Maynard mechanism malfunctioned or failed to advance the tap directly over the nipple. Tests also found that the Maynard tape itself tended to misfire. The tape was also very susceptible to moisture, humidity, dirt, and mud. Before the American Civil War, most M1855’s were converted to regular percussion cap.The Springfield Model 1855 was later replaced with the Springfield Model 1861 and 1863. Around 60,000 were produced. -- source link