Why did the U.S. army turn their back on the lever gun after the Civil War?

[James K]

As I recall, the T48 (FAL and HS-made FAL) didn't perform all that well, sand/dust failures being the biggest problem, but the ability of the likely manufacturers of the new rifle to use experience gained with the M1 was definitely a contributing factor in adoption of the M14. As it turned out, that was an illusion. The M1 tooling and expertise no longer existed; H&R had a lot of startup problems, though it ended up being the largest producer. Another large producer, TRW, had no prior firearms experience. Another idea was that adopting the T44 would minimize transition training problems for troops previously armed with the M1, and that was probably true.

My first M14 experience was in the Army when post Ordnance got in two of them for "evaluation." (I don't think anyone ever evaluated them; they went to the guards at Post HQ to show them off.) I got a chance to fire one, both semi and full. In semi, it was a kinder, gentler M1. In full it was uncontrollable and I still think, useless.

A few years later, thanks to a friend who worked at Aberdeen, I had an opportunity to fire all three of the main test rifles (the other was the T47, of which the less said the better) and I cared not at all for the FAL. It was superior to the M14 in full auto, much more controllable, but I thought (and still think) it is too heavy and awkward. (I have a Commonwealth semi-auto from Century Arms, so I am not without other experience with the rifle.) Admittedly, my M1 experience in and out of the service was a factor in my liking the M14, but I still consider it useless in full auto fire.

Yes, the Army people mostly did prefer the M14, for some very good reasons (though Studler was a big fan of the T25/T47). I don't go along with the beliefs that 1) the FAL was far superior, head and shoulders above the awful M14, or that 2) everyone involved was either totally biased or was taking bribes right and left. I may be naive, but I don't believe any one I knew had any interest other than getting the best possible rifle for our armed forces. Of course cost was a factor; it always is. But the civilian "gun nut" idea that every soldier has to be issued some $20,000 super match rifle is absurd.

One supposed "proof" that the FAL was superior was that it was adopted by so many other countries. But that had little to do with the rifle; it was because the FAL was available when it was needed and the U.S. Army had no intention of selling M14's on the world arms markets.

Jim

 

[TimW77]

""Unlikely, not a lot of trench warfare going on at that time..."

Mike Irwin said, "Actually a lot more than you think.
The Siege of Plevna involved significant trench works by the Ottoman forces, as well as their use of Winchester lever action rifles.
There was also a significant amount of trench warfare conducted in the later phases of the American Civil War."


Sorry Mike but per the OP the discussion was about the US Army not continuing the use of lever actions AFTER the US Civil War...

The "Seige of Plevna" has NOTHING to do with the discussion...

And, how much trench warfare occurred "in the later phases of the American Civil War" has NOTHING to do with the OP question.

So please reread, question referred to "the US Army" NOT the Russians and Turks/Ottomans AND "AFTER the Civil War" CLEARLY does NOT included ANY phase of the Civil War let alone later phases.

So my statement "Unlikely, not a lot of trench warfare going on at that time..." is true...

As "that time" would be 1866 to maybe 1890 give or take a few years...

T.

 

[gyvel]

Yes, very true; The FAL was adopted by ca. 96 countries. Many of them are still in service today. It's been dubbed "The World's Right Arm."

From what I have read, the T48 performed very well in cold weather tests and, apparently other rigorous tests

I know little to nothing of the T25 or its successor, the T47 other than what I have seen in pictures. Says it's a Springfield prototype, but I have no idea who the designer(s) was(were).

I do have the privilege of owning a transferable L1A1, and I find it to be a very pleasant, instinctive weapon to shoot, and is very controllable in FA.

Overall, since the M14 had a short 11 year career, I still see it as a cost cutting measure to try to make an "improved" Garand.

When I went in the service the standard service rifle was the M16, but, due to the need in SEA, we still qualified with M-1 carbines in the U.S.

I do have an M1A, which I enjoy shooting, but I don't see it as any great advancement in firearms.

Subjectively, of the two, I am of the opposite opinion in that I think the FAL is better balanced and much quicker handling than the M-14 (or more correctly, my M1A).

I do envy your experiences of being able to actually test fire some of the experimentals at Aberdeen. That is a rarity that 99.99% of the rest of us will never experience.

 

[JohnKSa]

Well, the M14 was pretty good compared with the early M16's which gave nothing but trouble, not all of it the fault of the rifle.

As you say, the problems with the M16s were not the fault of the rifle, but rather the fault of an establishment who was sure it was a bad choice and did what they could to make their desire reality.

In any event, the M14 was not competed against the M16, the M16 was chosen independent of trials against the M14, as far as I can tell.

As a semi-auto, full power rifle it was pretty good, better than its main contemporary, the FAL...

It may have fared better in the U.S. tests than the FAL, but that had nothing to do with which rifle was better and everything to do with which rifle the testing organization wanted to be selected.

To determine which rifle was really better, it's only necessary to look at how many countries selected the FAL as a main issue rifle (around 100) and how long it remained in service (around 50 years) as opposed to how many countries selected the M14 as a main issue rifle (maybe 5?) and how long it served in that capacity (5-10 years).

...the U.S. Army had no intention of selling M14's on the world arms markets.

As with FALs and AKs, they could have been made by and in more than one country if the demand were there. It clearly wasn't.

I don't see why the U.S. would have been unwilling to export the M14 when they've exported nearly every other conventional weapon in the arsenal at one time or another and often in huge volume.

I would also think that after they were forced to convert to the M16, that it would have been very attractive to push the M14 hard on the international market. In fact, that's pretty much what happened. The tooling was sold and the rifle was exported. But even that wasn't enough to convince a significant number countries to select it as a primary issue weapon.

I don't go along with the beliefs that 1) the FAL was far superior, head and shoulders above the awful M14, or that 2) everyone involved was either totally biased or was taking bribes right and left.

Don't know about bribes, but there was clearly preferential treatment given to Springfield during the testing. And, in the end, one major argument for the rifle's selection was that it would recapitalize some of the tooling & investment in the M1 which turned out to not be possible.

Read up on the shenanigans that occurred when the M16 was being "tested" prior to being put into service. The establishment was so sure of themselves that they were willing to actually sabotage M16 rifles in an attempt to insure that they could keep the rifle they believed was best.

 

[A pause for the COZ]

Then you had some of the remainder of the old guard to thought that a man given a repeating firearm would simply spray bullets in any direction but the correct one and waste horrific amounts of expensive ammunition.

I suspect this has more to do with it than any single factor.
Since when they finally did come out with a issue repeating arm it was the Kraig.
Chosen simply because it could be fired single shot and then use the magazine feed only in an emergency.
Even when faced with the superiority of the Mauser. When they upgraded to the 1903 they had the magazine lock. Intended it to be fired single shot and only from the magazine in an emergency.

So the idea was not just a passing dumb idea it was ingrained in their thinking at a deep level.

They were definitely NOT proponents of the volume of fire tactics that the union Generals became masters at when they had the proper tools.

 

[gyvel]

It may have fared better in the U.S. tests than the FAL,

It actually didn't. One of the carry-overs from the Garand that I mentioned was the penchant for it not to function in the rain. JimK mentioned that the FAL had problems with sand and dust, which is true, but the Brits overcame that with a very simple mod to the bolt carrier. They cut scraper grooves, which improved desert function by light years. You'll find the same mod in a Sterling SMG.

The Israelis had troubles with their FALs due to desert environment, which is one reason why they adopted the Galil. However, the Israelis made one very significant improvement in the FAL which I think should have been included from the start and that is the very simple forward assist mechanism they designed.

Getting back to the original purpose of this thread, I still see the M14 as a cost cutting measure with the ordnance board members (as JimK pointed out) thinking that existing tooling was going to be able to be used, thus saving money. Quite frankly, the Italians did one hell of a better job with the Beretta BM59.

 

[kcub]

I think it is important to point out the differences in ammunition cost way back then and now.

And what's the cost of losing a war?

No Winchester 1873 in .45 Colt due to it failing to feed.

http://www.leverguns.com/articles/paco/45coltlevergun.htm

According to this article it's because Colt owned the patent on the .45 Colt and wouldn't let other manufacturers make guns clambering it. Perhaps 45 Schofield could have been a possibility or maybe someone other than Winchester owned it's patent. Or perhaps there simply was no lobbyist offering the commensurate bribes necessary to make it happen.

Even if you concede some advantages to a more powerful single shot its hard to argue against having a mix of both especially if the repeater used the same ammo as the revolver.

 

[44 AMP]

The excellent M-14???

Don't make me laugh.

Laugh all you want, I find the M14 to be an excellent rifle.

We can discuss whether it was the best possible rifle for this, or that, but that is something for another thread.

Chosen simply because it could be fired single shot and then use the magazine feed only in an emergency.
Even when faced with the superiority of the Mauser. When they upgraded to the 1903 they had the magazine lock. Intended it to be fired single shot and only from the magazine in an emergency.

So the idea was not just a passing dumb idea it was ingrained in their thinking at a deep level

I don't think the Krag was chosen ONLY because it had a magazine cutoff. The cutoff was a requirement though.

TODAY we think of it as a bad idea, but remember these guns were the embodiment of concepts that predated the proven effectiveness of the machinegun on the battlefield.

The benefit of a fixed magazine lever action in a mass of troops is limited to the first magazine. After that first set of shots whichever action reloads the fastest has the advantage. The pause on the first reload is also substantial if everyone is firing at similar rates.

This doesn't just apply to lever guns. Look at two bolt guns that faced each other in combat, the Krag and the Mauser. Both are fixed magazines, of equal size.

The Krag system is a work of mechanical genius, you open the mag box, literally pour rounds into it, and close it. As long as the bullet is to the front it feeds. Most rifles firing rimmed rounds are not as forgiving.

The Mauser system of stripper clip reloads proved much more efficient and effective in combat, also a work of genius, in a more practical direction.

Tube mag lever guns of the more modern type (king patent loading gate) can be topped up without opening the action, and are less awkward to reload than the Henry type mag.

In theory, you could train your troops to replenish their mag after each shot, saving the full mag capacity for assaults (conduct of /defense against), troops being troops, even the best training is not 100%, but if it was done, it would provide the same (dubious?) benefit as a built in magazine cutoff in practice.

I don't think anyone ever actually did that with lever gun armed bodies of troops though. The usual thing troops do is shoot until empty, then reload, no matter what you teach them...

 

[kcub]

Bolt actions were not perfected enough and seriously considered until the navy dabbled with the M1885 Remington–Lee; and it was bested by the 1892 Krag. So the bolt action wasn't in the picture in this gap of 25 years or so when "the west was won"so to speak. That's all I'm talking about. Once you had practical bolt actions they were much more rugged and powerful and were repeaters and could be fired from a prone position and so on, game over for the lever as a military gun.

 

[pete2]

It was money, the fed isn't gonna spend money they don't have to spend, esp. right after the war and the need wasn't urgent. Also, single shot rifles use a lot less ammo for further savings. The guys in Washington don't serve in the trenches.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"Sorry Mike but per the OP the discussion was about the US Army not continuing the use of lever actions AFTER the US Civil War..."

Yep, you're right. The American Army existed in such an magnificent vacuum that they had NO clue what anyone else was doing.

In fact, it was such a vacuumatic organization that they didn't even know what the hell they were doing...

Right...

To think that events as recent as the US Civil War wouldn't have had some influence in the thinking of the men looking to rearm the service, many of who had actual combat experience is, well, foolish.

And to say that the Army wouldn't have been aware of Plevna (when the army had observers embedded with the Russians, I believe) and its implications from both a tactical and strategic standpoint, especially in terms of the continuing discussion of how to arm US forces, would be equally foolish.

Military development and procurement does not, cannot, and never did exist in snapshots, each completely uninfluenced by what came before or after.

That would be like saying that the outcome of the Spanish American war doesn't mean anything to the US today because, well, the Spanish American war isn't happening today.

 

[James K]

"The American Army existed in such an magnificent vacuum that they had NO clue what anyone else was doing."

That should not have been true, even though it was at times. One of the jobs of the military and naval attaches at American embassies was (and is) to snoop on foreign weapons development and production and report anything of interest to Washington. The attaches did that; the reports are detailed and voluminous. Plus, many makers of small arms, like Mauser, DWM and BSA, were private companies and sent out catalogs with their latest offerings. Those were easily obtained by Army Ordnance.

But there seems to have been a problem in communications and understanding at lower levels. One report on the development of what became the M1903 indicated that Mauser patented features were used under the impression that they were US property by right of capture. What they overlooked was that the patents were not Spanish, but German and American, and those were not subject to capture rights.

Jim

 

[Jimro]

There is also the point that had the average grunt been armed with a lever action rifle tactics wouldn't have changed one bit. The US Army had lever action rifles available in the Civil War, so it wasn't an exotic new weapon to the US Army.

The height of military thinking was still mired deep into classical formation warfare, despite the trench lines of the Civil War being an indicator of things to come. The world would see that indicator again in the 1905 Sino Russian war.

The military world took a long time to abandon the tactics of classical warfare.

It took WWI to show the military forces of the world that technology had utterly made formation based warfare obsolete. In the freedom that followed all sorts of new things were tried, combined arms doctrine matured, air land battle came into its infancy.

But the poor grunt on the ground for every nation on the ground went into WWII with a rifle designed at the turn of the century or before. We didn't have enough M1 Garands to outfit the USMC so they went into the Pacific with Springfields, and fought bravely, for over a year. Of course they were against an enemy armed with Arisakas, so it wasn't like they were outgunned.

The M1 showed the world that giving the individual soldier an advantage in firepower enabled small unit maneuver. The maneuver unit got smaller, for the first time we had "LGOPs" running loose on the battlefield operating under intent.

The Cavalry after the Civil War did have a habit of picking up lever action rifles at personal expense, as reloading a single shot from the back of a horse is a bit of a chore and not easily done. But still they preferred the lower powered but higher capacity carbines instead of a "full power" rifle at least as we think of it today.

Anyways, it was the adoption of fire and maneuver tactics by the Infantry that led to massive adoption of more rapid fire to suppress allowing another element to maneuver in for the kill. It's hard to keep up supressing fire with any manually actuated rifle.

Jimro

 

[kcub]

It took WWI to show the military forces of the world that technology had utterly made formation based warfare obsolete.

Sadly. Lee's vacuum-between-the-ears mistake of Pickett's charge need not have been relearned the hard way in blood 50 years later. A fence and canister wasn't all that different than barbed wire and the Maxim.

 

[Pathfinder45]

I read that the Army ordered 10,000 Winchester model 1895 rifles for the Spanish-American war, but the war ended before they could be delivered to the front. However, Rooseveldt had already armed his unit at his own expense with the model 1895, so it did see action there. One hundred of this model were sent to the Philipine-American conflict for evaluation relative to the Krag and the Krag was regarded as better in that conflict.

 

[johnwilliamson062]

And what's the cost of losing a war?

Well, many post 1500 CE wars have been decided by one side or the other running out of money, so the two go hand in hand. It might manifest itself as running out of oil, mercenaries quitting, or equipment in disrepair, but it usually goes back to money.

 

[emcon5]

It took WWI to show the military forces of the world that technology had utterly made formation based warfare obsolete. In the freedom that followed all sorts of new things were tried, combined arms doctrine matured, air land battle came into its infancy.

Even still, the weapons were still largely designed around it, even after WW1. The Mosin Nagant was reworked in 1930 still had sights out to 2000 Meters, as did the Kar98K from 1935, and the Steyr M95/30. The Arisaka Type 99 from 1939 had sights to 1500 meters.

 

[gwpercle]

Politics and the politicians who didn't want to spend the money.
The repeaters cost more than converted muzzle loaders and the following trap door Springfield rifle. Some were afraid the repeaters would just encourage wasteful shooting of ammo.
During the war the cost of a Henry was around $50.00 compared to $20.00 for the cost of a Springfield .
So the politicians voted for single shot breech loaders....not surprisingly !

Gary

 

[Jimro]

Even still, the weapons were still largely designed around it, even after WW1. The Mosin Nagant was reworked in 1930 still had sights out to 2000 Meters, as did the Kar98K from 1935, and the Steyr M95/30. The Arisaka Type 99 from 1939 had sights to 1500 meters.

This is true, the Infantry largely saw the development of the tank and airplane as ways to provide firepower when needed to make the path easier for the Infantry. Not as a fundamental change towards maneuverability and mobility instead of massed formations.

Even in the US Army, the bulk of our indirect fire support in WWII came from machine gun companies firing in the indirect mode, not mortars or artillery. Today the US Army doesn't bother at all to fire machine guns in the indirect mode in training. This is largely because we've pushed mortars down to the Company level (the USMC pushed them down to the Platoon level). Interestingly enough, I've worked with some Australians who do train for machine guns in the indirect fire mode, and it's kind of cool to see their tactics. Much longer bursts of fire, much more frequent barrel changes, 4 barrels per gun instead of 2.

But, to get back to the original topic, change doesn't get implemented quickly even when there is a technological revolution, or if it does get implemented it looks like a minor tweak. The introduction of nuclear arms should have shocked the Army into much looser formations, much more decentralized command and control. Instead it took essentially the same force structure as used in the Civil War and added two more Brigades to the Divisions. Of course in the Civil War each Brigade had 4 Regiments (BN equivalent) and so a Civil War Division had 12 Regiments (BNs) of around 1,000 men and a "Pentomic" Division had a total of 13,748 men authorized. So the difference between a Civil War Division and "Pentomic" Division was essentially the "Pentomic" Division had the equivalent of an extra Battalion and a half worth of men.

In terms of actual fighting men, the Pentomic Division would have less, because as technology permeated the US Army, more people became mechanics, radio operators/maintainers, fuel handlers, and other jobs that simply weren't a part of the Civil War era Army. In terms of real firepower, the Pentomic Division had no Civil War equivalent with its large numbers of machine guns, mortars, armored vehicles, missiles, and artillery.

Jimro

 

[Mike Irwin]

"But there seems to have been a problem in communications and understanding at lower levels. One report on the development of what became the M1903 indicated that Mauser patented features were used under the impression that they were US property by right of capture. What they overlooked was that the patents were not Spanish, but German and American, and those were not subject to capture rights."

Actually, I suspect it was more a case of "we're the Army, we don't give a damn if someone has a patent on it or not."

The Mauser features weren't by any stretch of the imagination the only patents blatantly violated -- the widow of Hiram Berdan sued the government for patent infringement, and won a substantial sum. During the trial it was proven that those in the development process of the trapdoor mechanism both knew about, copied features of, and ignored, Berdan's patents.