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Magazine Rifles. By Lieutenant-Colonel G. V. Fosbery, V. C. Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, No. CXVI.
In his excellent lecture on magazine rifles last May, Colonel Fosbery states some well-known truths, which in the present condition of our small-arm armament and of our small-arm men, it may be well for us of the Navy to seriously consider. And, indeed, in view of the fact that we constantly hear able officers expressing themselves as doubtful of the expediency of putting magazine rifles in the hands of seamen, and as certain that “Jack” can never arrive at that condition of responsibility in which he could be trusted to manipulate a doubleacting revolver, it would seem absolutely necessary for the service to decide upon the acceptance or rejection of some of Colonel Fosbery’s axioms and to govern itself accordingly.
If the small-arm fighting machine consists of a human and a mechanical part, and if the mechanical part “should be the quickest and best attainable; and the other part, i. e. the man, should then be levelled up to it by careful instruction,” it is evident that the Navy should have magazine rifles and doubleacting revolvers, and that the men should possess that degree of intelligence necessary for using them effectively; but if this degree of intelligence is unattainable, either through lack of opportunities for suitable instruction or through incompetency of the officers or stupidity of the men, then the arms should be such as could be understood, single-loaders for example, or bows and arrows, or spontoons, or brickbats; in which case it is evident that our fighting machines, being so very inferior in both human and mechanical parts, should be carefully kept from coming in contact with those of other nations.
If it be true that the end and aim of all tactics and of every manoeuvre are but to place the man in the most favorable position for using his weapon with effect, then our practice and tactics should point in that direction; aboard ship and within certain limits they do this. As nearly as may be, the men are trained to get in position for using their small-arms in repelling boarders, in boarding, and in pouring in small-arm fire upon an enemy’s decks or through his ports. But ashore, the end and aim of our tactics seem to be to get the men in two straight lines and make them look well. This has been attempted for a great many years, without success in a single instance; every renewed attempt strengthens the conviction that the two shoulder-to-shoulder lines are not straight and that the men do not look well. This kind of amusement may be indulged in indefinitely if we accept the dogma of a high authority— that no officer now living will ever hear the report of a gun hostile to the United States—and consequently do not consider it the duty of the Navy to, in any way, provide for an impossible contingency; but if, on the other hand, we consider it our duty to get ourselves in condition to meet the homo-mechanico fighting machines of other nations ashore, it behooves us to change the end and aim of our tactics and make them conform to the conditions required ashore, conditions so plainly given by Colonel Fosbery: “For as he will never again stand shoulder to shoulder with his comrades and fire volleys at similar lines at 400 paces, so he will seldom find a skirmisher waiting to receive his fire at 300, but he will continually be called on to take snap shots at running, bounding, dodging men at every conceivable distance within the range of his rifle, to hit heads half shown above shelter, trenches, bushes or tufts of grass, or pay in his proper person the penalty of his bad shooting: and he will have, moreover, while lying under cover himself, to learn to judge the distance of his enemy.”
If we accept these conditions as those that must obtain in shore fighting, it is evident that we must either be prepared to meet them or must abandon the idea of putting our men ashore to meet, even in small numbers, civilized or only semi-barbarous enemies. In this connection it is well to consider, in passing, why and how we might wish to throw an efficient naval force on shore. In case of a foreign war brought on by Isthmian Canal complications, or by the fact that, shirk them as we may, the United States have, as a member of the family of nations, certain national duties to perform, it is generally conceded that there would be no attempt to defend our coasts in their entirety, but only to hold, as best we might, the richer seaports and the more important stragetic points. A strong enemy would throw forces ashore at the undefended points, not perhaps with the idea of making any material advance into a country with so strong a fighting population as ours, but for the purpose of harrying our coasts, destroying supplies, &c., as was done by the British in 1812-14. Under our present policy the Navy would never be strong enough to oppose such a landing; but if it were able to throw on shore an efficient shore-fighting force, however small it might be in comparison with that of the enemy, it could give a good account of itself in hanging on the enemy’s flank, harassing and possibly checking him until a sufficient shore force proper could be brought up to effectually dispose of him altogether.
Just as the cavalry of the shore must in the future be more and more prepared to fight dismounted, so must “the cavalry of the sea” be prepared to fight disembarked.
The necessity for the utmost rapidity of fire for the critical moments afloat and ashore, that grow shorter and more critical as the precision of arms increases, has been so often shown that it would seem to be a work of supererogation to more than refer to it; still in his lecture Colonel Fosbery, and in the following discussion Admiral Boys, both take occasion to accentuate this need; and so, following in the lead of these eminent officers, the writer would submit that for boarding and repelling boarders and torpedo boats afloat, for charging and repelling charges ashore, magazine small arms, in so far as small arms are useful at all, are the—without which nothing.
Colonel Fosbery speaks of the rapidity of fire of the Martini-Henry—a fairly good single-loader, but inferior in breech mechanism to several American guns—and in this connection it may be well to observe that the supply of ammunition is not increased by the use of magazine arms. The opponents of magazine arms are fond of declaring that since it is difficult to supply singleloaders with ammunition, it will be impossible to fulfil the insatiate demands of repeaters. The repeaters, however, give a greater rapidity of fire only when using the charged magazines, and, as a matter of fact, a man can fire a given number of cartridges—great enough to require him to recharge his magazine three times—in less time from a single-loader than from the magazine of a repeater. There seems to be a theory that anything like fire discipline is impossible and that every man in action will proceed to expend his ammunition as rapidly as possible without harming any one; that consequently the slowest firing arm is the best, because that gun best conserves ammunition, and the people who have ammunition at the end of a battle necessarily win the fight; and that men are so constituted that the time used in action is better expended in loading than in aiming and firing. It is evident that the question of ammunition supply is a most important one, be the arms single-loaders or repeaters; but to say that all the time possible should not be devoted to aiming and firing rather than to loading is absurd.
There are a few points in connection with the new 40 cal. Martini-Enfield that Colonel Fosbery speaks of, that it would be well for us of the Navy to consider, especially at a time when questions of a new musket for the service are being discussed.
It is now generally admitted that .45 is too large a calibre; because, in order to get range and accuracy with that diameter of bullet, too great weights of powder and lead are needed and too great recoil ensues. Our own cartridge of 70 grains of powder and 405 of lead gives a sharp recoil, and the 80 of powder and 485 grains of the Boxer wrapped cartridge give rather a heavier recoil than the average man can endure for a long action. At the time .45 was adopted as the army calibre, there was considerable argument by members of the board in favor of .40. One of the points against it was that a bullet of that calibre was too small to stop a man or empty a saddle even when it found its billet in the trunk. Admiral Selwyn makes this point in another way in his remarks on Colonel Fosbery’s lecture, but the Admiral seems to labor under the misapprehension that the smaller calibre necessarily means a lighter bullet, as is indeed the case in the new Martini-Enfield cartridge as compared to that fearfully and wonderfully made affair known as the Boxer cartridge. Now it is apparent that if the bullet of smaller calibre be of the same weight, and if it be not so long that the loss of velocity due to skin friction is greater than the gain due to decrease of diameter, the powder charge being the same, the smaller calibre missile will fly farther, go straighter and hit harder than the one of greater diameter. As regards the size of hole that it is necessary to bore through a man to drop him in his tracks when a vital point is not struck, that depends very much on the kind of man. A 405 grain .40 calibre bullet received in the trunk will stop any civilized man who has nerves; a couple of 500 grain .45 calibre bullets received in the same place will not always stop a semi-vegetable savage.
In the light of present development and while small-arm powder is in its present crude and unworked condition, it seems to the writer that the military cartridge of the immediate future should consist of a 40 calibre canalured bullet of about 400 grains, in front of about 80 grains of powder contained in a non-corrosive, drawn, metal shell, trumpeted as much as conditions of feed in magazine and machine guns will allow in order to give as little movement as possible to extract a miss-fire. Such a cartridge will be long as compared with the present service ammunition, but its weight would be only five grains more and its bulk only that due to increase in powder charge from 70 to 80 grains.
In connection with the general question of ballistic power of shoulder-pieces it would be well for us of the Navy to consider that of length of barrel. The Navy uses 28" barrels because arms made up with them are more convenient for stowage under boat-thwarts and for use in contracted spaces generally, and are lighter. But with the service ammunition we lose nearly too feet of initial velocity and corresponding range and accuracy in comparison with what we would have with the 32" barrel of the infantry arm, to say nothing of the loss of accuracy due to shorter distance between sights. It has sometimes been a cause of complaint that the Navy Hotchkiss was less accurate than the marines’ Springfield. As reasonably might one complain because three is less than four. But is not this sacrifice of power to handiness too great? Rather than use barrels shorter than the generally adopted infantry length of 32" the writer would urge following the example of the Argentines, and increasing it to 34"; even with this length, and a breech mechanism less awkward than the Springfield, a detachable magazine 40 calibre arm could be made of the same weight and not more than 1" longer than the present U. S. Infantry gun. In these days of high powered arms large and small, the length of bore is one of the most important factors.
The new Enfield-Martini has, Colonel Fosbery tells us, an increase in the number of grooves and in the twist of rifling, both steps in advance. The quicker twist holds the bullet and allows the powder gases to better do their work, and gives the spin necessary for accuracy at long ranges, while the greater number of driving shoulders of the rifling prevents the bullet from stripping. The three-groove 22" twist Springfield rifling answers the purpose for the present service ammunition, and is an excellent slow rifling—just as the Harper’s Ferry flint-locks are excellent flint-locks.
Colonel Fosbery gives very succinctly his reasons for preferring a magazine near the centre of gravity of the piece, carrying the cartridges laterally, to a tubular one in either tip or butt stock—reasons that a couple of years ago caused the writer to favor the general principles of the Lee magazine—but he omits what would seem to be an important one, viz. that since, in the lateral holding magazine, the cartridges have only to move through distances due to diameters instead of those due to lengths, the work is less and the moving device less powerful and more compact; again, the point made by Admiral Selwyn in the discussion, that the weight of a side-borne magazine would detract from verticality, is extremely well taken, apart from the fact that a magazine so placed causes a side-blow on recoil— a not unimportant feature when the recoil is to be close up to the man’s limit of endurance. Evidently the ideal position of the magazine for distribution of weight is such that its centre of gravity is in that of the piece and does not change as it is filled or exhausted; but since this cannot be done without interfering with the line of sight, cutting away too much of the receiver, or for some other practical reason, the next best location is that in which its centre of gravity shall lie in the central vertical longitudinal plane of the piece, as in Lee and Spencer-Lee guns, and shall not change back and forth as the magazine is filled or emptied. In this respect these systems are superior to the Ward Burton, Eosbery or McEvoy, and to such quick-loading devices as the Metcalfe, called Kruka on the other side of the water. Colonel Fosbery is positive that no magazine should contain less than ten shots. But, of course, this is entirely a matter of opinion upon the duration of a critical moment, since at present no one holds that magazine fire for rapidity can be used for the whole action. Many military authorities think that five or six rounds will decide the failure or success of a charge.
It is more important that an attached magazine have great stowage capacity than a detachable one, since the former could not be recharged in the making or repelling of an assault: while the latter system contemplates the use of several magazines, any one of which could be put in play upon the gun, in less time than it would take to place a single charge in a single-loader, and thus renew the magazine fire in the heat of the critical moment. Taking into consideration the handiness, the protection of the magazine by the trigger-guard and the ease of manipulation, the Lee would seem to be very nearly right in size for a detachable magazine.
The advocates of the detachable magazine claim that it is superior to the fixed one in giving a greater number of rounds for magazine fire without lumbering up the piece with mechanism and weight of charged magazines, when it is in use as a single-loader; that it obviates the necessity of cut-offs, that great source of vexation and complication; that it gives the officer a better control over the fire of his men, since a glance tells him whether or not a man is in condition to deliver magazine fire; and that no injury to it can disable the piece as a single-loader.
On the other hand, those who favor the fixed magazine claim that it cannot be lost; is always in place upon the arm; that a cut-off is much more easily worked than its opponents admit; that fire discipline is just as easily maintained with the one system as the other; and that a sufficiently great number of rounds for critical moments can be constantly carried in it without materially increasing the weight or spoiling the balance of the piece.
The writer would favor:
1st A spring-feeding, lateral-holding, detachable magazine like the Lee.
2d. A spring-feeding, quick-recharging, lateral-holding fixed magazine like the Russell.
3d. A positive-feeding, lateral-holding, revolving-acting, fixed magazine like the Cook, or the Green spoken of by Colonel Fosbery.
4th. A spring-feeding, separate end-on holding, fixed, butt-stock magazine like the Chaffee-Reece.
5th. A spring-feeding, end-on column holding, fixed, butt-stock magazine like the Hotchkiss or the Elliot.
The last has two tubes in the butt-stock, so that the stowage capacity is double that usual in magazines of this location. To be sure, the Evans screw magazine in the butt, which Admiral Selwyn mistakes for the Hotchkiss, gives still greater capacity, and, moreover, keeps the cartridges from impinging on each other, advantages more than offset by the fact that it requires just as much time to charge as it does to empty the magazine. At the present stage of improvement in small-arm magazines, it is hardly worth while to consider the under barrel tubular affairs.
The pendulum muzzle sight on the new Martini-Enfield is the application of an old idea for long range sighting, in itself a very good idea. All that Colonel Fosbery says about the difficulty of doing good shooting when the butt-plate is below its proper position on the shoulder is very much to the point; nor does there seem to be any serious practical difficulty in the use of such a sight if the thumb-screw arrangement on the upper band is replaced by a neat spring- clamp that cannot be easily knocked off, and a sheath for the sight provided in the butt-stock. To many of us the contemplation of the use of small-arm fire at 2000 yards and over is utterly absurd; but unfortunately for us, other pqople propose to so use it; and it would be very disagreeable to find ourselves being killed at those ranges while we were entirely unable to return the compliment in kind. The usual argument against long range firing is that no one hits anything, and that seamen never could; but the man who can make a fair target at 200 yards can hit an army or a camp at 2000, and the gun that can kill at 2000 has a longer danger space at 200 than a short range arm. To make our seamen, or part of them, fair long range shots and fair snap shots will of course require more training ashore than has heretofore been given; but this shore practice can be greatly and economically supplemented by use aboard ship of the Winchester tubes and fulminate 22 calibre cartridges in the service arms.
With these aids, even on a deck range of fifty feet, there can be instructive practice at great elevations (by finding the heights above the bull’s-eye at which the small pellets will strike at the various elevations corresponding to sight graduations, and lining off the target accordingly) and at snap shooting at disappearing targets.
To the writer it is clear that if the Navy intends to be in condition to sometimes throw an infantry force on shore, the men must be equipped with a full powered magazine arm, fitted with a rear bolt-handle or other device that will enable them to deliver magazine fire from behind cover or from the shoulder without bringing the piece down between shots, with at least sixty rounds of ammunition, an intrenching tool and sand-bags; they must be amenable to fire discipline, must know the capabilities of their arms and be able to bring them out at long and mid ranges and at snap shooting; they must be accustomed to moving in open formations and in successive lines; and must know how to quickly make and take cover. If these plain necessities for shore fighting cannot be met by the Navy, the idea of landing a force should be abandoned, and small-arm fire used only from aboard ship; in which case the arm should be of a large calibre smoothbore magazine type, devised to use multi-ball cartridges at ranges not exceeding 300 yards.
Wm. W. Kimball, Lieut. U. S. N.