TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Drew Wagenhoffer has a short review up of Earl Hess’s The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth. Although he calls it “the best single volume treatment of the subject so far,” he does raise some significant questions, including one I hadn’t thought of (showing, again, the value of distributed intelligence). There is […]

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I found several emails from Bill Adams, who is kind enough to provide me with a lot of information about black powder period arms. As for the higher muzzle velocity for the smoothbore musket, he points out three factors: Many musket cartridges came with a paper patch, which helped sealing somewhat The round ball upset […]

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The 19th Century saw the most rapid improvement in the rifle of any comparable period in history. At the beginning of the century the exemplar of the standard arm was the smooth bore .75 cal. Brown Bess musket, and by the end we have the modern .30 cal. bolt action, box magazine repeater using smokeless […]

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