"They could shoot ours but we couldn't shoot theirs"

It is also something of a myth that the Confederate States Army had only old scrap weapons until they captured quality guns from the Yankees.

True, the CS did use what they had, and some less formal soldiers preferred shotguns to rifles, but there is no record of any front-line C.S. unit being armed with junk. While some soldiers reported for duty with family shotguns and hunting rifles, by the time of the first battles, rifles captured from Union depots and arsenals had been distributed to front-line troops, and Gorgas had ammunition production well underway. By late 1861, arms from England began to come through; one ship carried 10,000 Enfield rifles for the C.S. Army, plus 4000 for state governments and 1000 short rifles for the C.S. Navy. Meantime, the U.S. was also buying Enfields and other European arms; their need was not as great, but one purpose in buying those weapons was to deny them to the Confederacy.

That one shipment also included 1 million rounds of .577 ammunition and 2 million percussion caps for the Enfields and 1000 rounds each for the Navy's short rifles. And similar shipments continued for several years until the Union got its blockade organized. The .577 Enfield was officially adopted by the C.S. Army and was so common in the U.S. Army that they began to issue only .577 ammo, which would function in both the .58 Springfield and the .577 Enfield rifles.

Did the Confederates use captured U.S. arms? Of course, but they did not depend solely on them; their main source of supply was Europe. One problem was that, as the war continued and Union forces began to use more "patent" guns (especially carbines), the C.S. had no way of manufacturing ammunition for many of them. But there is no record of any C.S. defeat due to lack of small arms or small arms ammunition.

Edited to add: There were local shortages of ammunition, as in all wars, and the C.S. transportation system was poor. Still, the Southern fighting man almost always had the means to fight. The main shortage in the C.S. Army was not arms and ammo, but food and clothing, especially shoes. And the shortages of both became more acute as Union forces captured or burned areas like the Shenandoah valley that supplied cloth, leather, and, of course, food. Worse, Southern farmers who had supplies refused, toward the end of the war, to sell them for Confederate money. It is to the credit of the C.S. government that they did not simply confiscate civilian property, even in Yankee territory; it was always paid for, even though the money was valueless outside the C.S. (and had little value even there
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This is what General Porter had to say:

Fighting for the Confederacy, General Edward Porter Alexander,

Chapter 3, page 60

It was on the morning after the battle of Bull Run that Gen Beauregard sent for me and told me that I was promoted to the position of Chief of Ordnance of his Army…. My duties as chief of ordnance were to keep the whole army always supplied with arms and ammunition.

We had great trouble from the great variety of arms with which our troops were equipped both in small arms and artillery. Every regiment and every battery would have some apparently of all possible calibers and would want every possible variety of ammunition. They objected always to swapping and the matter only got better materially in the fall of 1862 when we captured enough rifled muskets from the enemy and enough good guns to supply all our deficiencies. We first got a full supply after Chancellorsville.

At the beginning we had not over 10 percent, if so many, of rifled muskets. The balance were old smooth bore muskets and some even had flintlocks.

Chapter 5 page 121

I was occupied in re accumulating supplies of ammunition & in improving our armament of small arms and of artillery, by our captures in the recent battles, as well as by all the arms we could make or get in through blockage. The great point desired was to equip all our infantry with the rifle musket, caliber 58/100 instead of the old fashioned smooth bore musket, caliber 69/100, which nine out of ten of our men had to start with. …My recollection is that Gettysburg was our first battle in which we were at last entirely rid of smooth bore muskets. The captured Federal guns, and artillery ammunition too, were much superior to most of ours….


Up to Gettysburg the South ended up retaining possession of most of the battlefields. If you look at the number of muskets picked up by the North at Gettysburg, about 35,000 after that battle, if the winning side could pick up 10,000, 20,000, or 30,000 muskets after a battle that have surely helped the Army of Northern Virginia in rearming. But as General Porter says, they did get muskets through the blockage.

Now just how many that got through the blockage arrived to the front line would be a interesting number. I have read that the South would have folded in 12 to 18 months without English supplies. However, given that in all the wars I have read about, every REMF gets a nice warm winter coat before one front line soldier gets one, the closest source of supply might have been the Union Army!
 
Dear SIGSHR, 9mms from Italian supplies might have been also 9mm M38, a special (and hotter) reoload for use in the MAB submachinegun.

BTW never fire anything than a 9mm Glisenti in a Glisenti: it would blow up that nice pistol in few rounds.
9mm parabellum, 9mmM38 and 9mmGlisenti are all the same size while the "load" is much different.
 
Years ago I was working in a gun store when a younger guy came in with an old canvas carrying case.

Inside was a gorgeous MAB 38/42 or 38/43 (can't remember if the barrel was fluted or not) with all the goodies, just as it had left the factory.

His grandfather had captured it and brought it back during WW II.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely no evidence that it had ever been registered with BATF.
 
I wonder if someone complained about that in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
The French used .69 caliber, the British .75. Hence you could fire French ammunition in a Brown Bess but not the reverse.
 
It's interesting to see the more historical examples.

It seems these days more people get confused about the interchangeability of all of the various 7.62 calibers (which generally aren't).
 
I did read a story about a GI who brought back a 6.5 Arisaka from WWII, and because he couldn't find ammo for it, he took the weapon to a "gunsmith" and had it rechambered for 3-06. Apparently he fired the rifle a few times but wrote into some rifle forum and complained that it "kicked like a mule", sent it to them to investigate what the problem might be.

Turns out the so called smitty did in fact rechamber the rifle to take the 06 ammo and modified the magazine, but didn't have the sense to rebarrel it! The GI told them that they could keep the darned thing, so they tied the rifle to a tire and attached a very long string to the trigger and touched off a round. It did indeed work, but I can only imagine the recoil as that 308 bullet swaged down to a 264 bore.

Then they got crazy with it and decided to test it to destruction, first filling it with a compressed load of rifle powder, all the way to filling a handload full of pistol powder. At that stage, they said that flames erupted from the action, and they had to remove the barrel from the action, and put the bolt into a lathe to remove the case from the bolt face! But surprisingly, the bolt didn't suffer much damage and neither did the locking lugs.

That must have been one really strong action.
 
The reference to a Confederate general "Porter" threw me, as I couldn't recall him. But Edward Porter Alexander was one of the South's brightest and best engineers and technicians. I am sure his assessment of C.S. armament after First Bull Run (First Manassas) was correct, but that was the first major battle of the war (July 1861) and the South had not yet gotten its ordnance supply and foreign purchase systems organized. The smooth bore muskets he mentions were probably the Model 1842, which the C.S. seized in considerable numbers from southern depots and arsenals, good weapons, though not the latest rifled models.

Alexander later became the artillery chief for the Army of Northern Virginia. He was one of the first Confederate officers to recognize the value of balloons for observation and actually ascended in one to scout Federal positions. He had a somewhat unique role at Gettysburg, being ordered to fire the cannon shots that would signal Pickett's attack to begin at his discretion and when he judged the best moment. That kind of faith in a subordinate officer was unheard of at the time, and indicated how much trust Lee placed in the young (28 year old) general.

Jim
 
They could shoot ours but we couldn't shoot theirs

People do stupid things. I was in a local military surplus store and a guy came in wanting to buy ammo for a 6.5 carcano. They didn't have any on hand so he asked for some 38spl ammo. The owner asked him if it was for the rifle and he answered yes. The owner wouldn't sell it to him for use in the carcano because of the danger involved in using the wrong ammo. The guy informed him that he usually shot 38spl out of it anyway since he couldn't find the 6.5 carcano ammo and it worked just fine. He did state that it kicked like a mule. Another case of guardian angels working overtime. The lead 38 bullets were swaging to fit the bore when fired. The Carcano action isn't known for its strength either..
 
I can't imagine even being able to close a Carcano bolt on a .38 special, much less firing it. The 6.5 is a rimless round, while the .38 Special is a rimmed round.

This sounds like a "tall tale" to me.
 
Siege of Acre

The Saracens could shoot the Crusaders long arrows back at them from their recurve bows which were fitted with over-draw arrow rests. The Saracen's arrow were short stubby shafts that could not be used in the Crusaders lowbows. Thus, in the exchange of arrows over the walls of Acre, the Saracen archers had no small advantage. Not quite gun related, but definitely shooting related.....
 
With the understanding that I do not recommend firing any cartridge except in a firearm made for that cartridge, I think it would be possible to get a .38 Special to fire in a 6.5 Carcano. The base of the .38 Special will fit into the bolt head of the Carcano. BUT the chamber is much larger than the .38 case and firing the .38 would certainly result in a burst case with gas escape and danger to the shooter. A soft lead bullet would probably swage down enough to exit the barrel, but all in all, I think use of the .38 Special in a 6.5 Carcano would create enough of a problem that it would not be done routinely or without the shooter noticing it. Just another "war story" that is best ignored.

Jim
 
When I was a kid I shot 7.65's out of a 7.7 Arisaka. They shot fine and were very accurate but it pushed the shoulder up until there was just a very thin ring of neck left and I do mean thin. God only knows what would have happened if I'd fired one with a short case.
 
That kind of faith in a subordinate officer was unheard of at the time, and indicated how much trust Lee placed in the young (28 year old) general.
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and when he told Lee he could move the union artillery from the hill but could do nothing if they came back because he would be out of ammunition. The union artillery moved and then returned.

F. Guffey
 
Turns out the so called smitty did in fact rechamber the rifle to take the 06 ammo and modified the magazine, but didn't have the sense to rebarrel it! The GI told them that they could keep the darned thing, so they tied the rifle to a tire and attached a very long string to the trigger and touched off a round. It did indeed work, but I can only imagine the recoil as that 308 bullet swaged down to a 264 bore.
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and no one has explained how the reamer moved the chamber forward without a cutter, the reamer has a pilot. The reamer could have been one of those pilotless reamers, you know the ones that cut chambers that form banana shaped cases.

Ours in theirs? Theirs in ours. We don't need theirs. An expert in zeroing scopes offered to zero a rifle for a friend. After the first round he took the rifle to a gunsmith in the area. The expert purchased new 308 Winchester ammo
for a 25/06. The funniest line " The bullet must have been 3 incest long when it left the barrel".

F. Guffye
 
The version I heard was that the "gunsmith" tried to get the .30-'06 reamer into the 6.5 barrel and when it wouldn't go in all the way, he ground down the pilot. The result was that a .30-'06 cartridge could enter the chamber and be fired.

Actually, that is not too surprising. At those pressures, a lead core bullet will act almost like silly putty, deforming to accommodate itself to the barrel as necessary and without raising pressures greatly.

Jim
 
and I have always said: "Forget the rifle I want the cases, the rifle did not swarm, the cases did not swarm".

F. Guffey
 
The difference between rendering the rifle scrap and paying someone to separate the rifle from the case was the price of a good bullet.

F. Guffey
 
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Not exactly the same as shooting differently chambered rounds, but in the Falklands conflict the British could have used the magazines for the Argentine FAL rifles in their own L1A1 SLRs, but the Argentines would not be able to use a captured SLR magazine in their FALs.

Whether or not the Paras or Marines ever had the opportunity or the need to do this in the heat of Battle I don't know. I do know that supply was a constant issue for the Brits, so it potentially could have come in handy.

I doubt the Argies ever had the chance to capture any British weapons.
 
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