civil war cannon, info please

[limazulu]

Without question Vern, but a lot of it went to the very foundation of the Confederacy....States Rights!

Unlike the Federal forces, the Confederate Gub'mint didn't own those guns, the STATES did, and in some cases (militia groups), the individual gunners!. Once a battery was organized and equipped by a state or a community, it was pretty much inviolate! E. Porter Alexander tried on NUMEROUS occasions to re-organize the various hodge-podge of guns in his batteries in 1862, only to start gigantic sh*t-storms with the state governors, particular John Letcher of Virginia and Joe Brown of Georgia over the attempted THEFT of state property by the central government! ...

Am I mistaken or didn't the Confederacy nationalize the railroads? They did it to standardize the rail gauge. So much for States Rights.

[John from the Cereal City]

Based on my expierence & observation of both original & repro Civil War field guns firing period style ammunition at at the NSSA national matches, and at the Grayling, Mi. Long range artillery matches http://www.museumandcollector.com/grayling.html
The Parrott rifle will consistantly out shoot the Ordnance rifle. The weight of the two tubes are aproximately the same, so the belief that the Ordnance rifle was a better gun can only be because the wrought iron Ordnance rifle didn't have those occasional problems of bursting like the cast iron Parrotts did.

[John Kepler]

Performance of cannon in N-SSA competition is HIGHLY misleading due to restrictions on the construction of the projectile as well as the reduced propellant charges simple prudence forces on 140 year-old metallurgy. Not saying you're wrong....just that I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt more than 40 years ago, and learned that what works best within the rules extant may or may not mean much! Hint: the Parrott shell design ALWAYS worked better within the N-SSA rule format than any attempt at a Schenkl!

[John Kepler]

Am I mistaken or didn't the Confederacy nationalize the railroads? They did it to standardize the rail gauge. So much for States Rights.

The railroads were owned by private enterprise, not the States. Nationalizing them, something the Federal government did (sort of) as well, (also considering that most of them were owned by Northern interests made confiscating them MUCH more acceptable), was one hell of a lot easier politically than touching property owned by the States!

[John Kepler]

The Parrott was well liked, but the mainstay of the U.S. field artillery and arguably the best field gun of the Civil War was the 3" Ordnance Rifle.

FWIW, 20 pdr Parrott rifle Serial No. 1 is on the square in Hanover, PA.

Jim

The numbers disagree with you rather unequivocally. There were at least 6 Parrott Field Rifles for every M1861 3" Ordnance Rifle. The M1861 3" Rifle was a difficult and VERY costly gun to manufacture, requiring extensive machining, massive amounts of forge-work and many, many highly skilled man-hours to build. The Parrott, like the M4 Sherman tank of a later conflict, had the massive advantage of being more than adequate to the task at hand, and far easier to build in quantity. To quote Joe Stalin, "Quantity has a quality all it's own!". The Parrott epitomized that simple maxim!

Maybe not the best rifle of the Civil War, but based on the numbers, the most significant.

[John from the Cereal City]

Performance of cannon in N-SSA competition is HIGHLY misleading due to restrictions on the construction of the projectile as well as the reduced propellant

I agree with your statement regarding the NSSA (35 yrs as a member, firing cannon most of them) loads. But my observations are also based on the expierence of firing 1200 yds using service loads at Camp Grayling.

[Southron129]

One of the "neat" things about the Parrot Rifle was the way it was made:

The tube and breech re-enforcement band were separate castings. The tube was machined on the OUTSIDE while the re-enforcing band was machined on the INSIDE. The whole point of the mahining was so that the Interior Diameter of the re-enforcing band was slightly SMALLER in diameter than that of the rear of the tube.

Then the re-enforcing band was heated to almost a white hot (the hot metal expanded) and slipped over the rear of the cool tube. When the re-enforcing band cooled is was solidly "locked" on to the rear of the tube. Then the "Touch-hole" was drilled thru to the interior of the bore.

You gotta admit, that is a unique way to make a cannon.

[John Kepler]

Not trying to be anal, but the reinforce wasn't cast, and you've only got Parrott's process kinda right.

The main tube was cast solid and bored like most cannon and the outside turned in a lathe to final shape. The reinforce was made from a wedge-shaped billet of wrought-iron that was heated and bent around a mandrel, re-heated, and forge-welded/hammered into a cylinder. I can find no reference to the reinforce being internally bored/machined, but it's highly likely. However, the above procedure was largely the same with British rifles such as the Blakely, Whitworth, and Armstrong and the American Waird and the Confederate Brooke....but not the Parrott!

The basis of Parrott's patents revolved around how he applied the wrought iron reinforce. In Parrott's process, the bored (or at least pilot-bored) tube casting was placed in a lathe and the barrel continuously rotated. The barrel was also cooled internally during the application process with water. While under rotation, the heated reinforce (at a "bright cherry", roughly 2000 F rather than "white-hot") was pushed onto the barrel tube with a hydraulic press and then allowed to air-cool to a "red iron" temp (1000 F). Parrott's contention was that rotating the barrel while the reinforce cooled while keeping the temperature of the barrel low and also uniform, made for a much more complete and effective "gripping" of the barrel by the reinforce, while reducing the stresses induced in the finished tube.

From an engineering/metallurgical perspective, the process is valid, even if the "benefits" over more conventional application processes are probably overstated.

[limazulu]

The railroads were owned by private enterprise, not the States. Nationalizing them, something the Federal government did (sort of) as well, (also considering that most of them were owned by Northern interests made confiscating them MUCH more acceptable), was one hell of a lot easier politically than touching property owned by the States!

OK thanks. I thought each state established the rail guage and not the individual private company as the companies owned rail lines that went across state lines and had to haul freight over different gauge rails. The Conderacy wanted a standard gauge for the lines and ignored the States authority to set the gauge and standardized it.

[Jim K]

There were certainly more Parrott rifles than Ordnance rifles, but that is confusing quantity with quality. I don't really feel qualified to judge, but a number of artillery experts at the time (many of them on the receiving end of Federal shell fire) felt that the Ordnance Rifle was the best overall.

Jim