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

To those who wonder why a cavalry commander, wanting to move fast through hilly country, would abandon Gatling guns, I can only ask one question:

Have you ever seen a .45-70 Gatling gun?

Jim
 
Tight budgets played a big role. I read a biography of Sherman, he moved his headquarters from D.C. to St. Louis when Congress reduced his salary. The Allin conversion was developed to convert all those muzzle loaders to breech loaders.
I am not that familiar with those breech loaders, but I suspect many were rather difficult to disassemble, clean-and reassemble. And they were mostly chambered for short range pistol power rounds.
 
The original intent of the Allin "trapdoor" system was to convert CW muskets to metallic cartridges, but problems arose in lining the barrels to a smaller caliber and eventually the conversion idea was scrapped and the Model 1873 was all new except for some small parts. The bayonets, though, were still CW bayonets, cold forged to the new barrel diameter.

The British went through much the same thing, first using the Snider system to convert muskets, then making them new, then finally going to a whole new rifle, the Martini.

Jim
 
To those who wonder why a cavalry commander, wanting to move fast through hilly country, would abandon Gatling guns, I can only ask one question:

Have you ever seen a .45-70 Gatling gun?
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There's a story out there about how the mules for Custer's Gatling guns were barely broken and difficult to handle. But as we were discussing before, it's not just the gun, and the gun carriage, it's all the ammo you have to haul along to feed the things.

The Cavalry doctrine was to conduct deep raids and attack broken formations, maintaining a tactical mobility advantage. Getting pinned down between the terrain and the enemy was a doctrinal "no no" for good reasons.

Even today there is the trade off between firepower and weight, mobility and protection. Of course with the proliferation of AT missile systems, armor has been on the losing end of the equation for decades now.

Jimro
 
Their were various experiments with rod bayonets, it in the 1880s when the supply of Civil War socket bayonets began to dry up that they adopted the M1888.
I suspected a lot of those muskets slated for conversion had been "used and abused" and "rode hard and put away wet."
 
The rod bayonet came about because the supply of CW bayonets finally ran out. There were several proposals made, including making new CW type bayonets, and making knife bayonets. The rod bayonet was chosen because it combined two tools (cleaning rod and bayonet) and didn't require a separate scabbard. The idea really was a good one, and with a large diameter (less than .45" rod) would have been a very usable bayonet. That it probably was not much used in fighting Native Americans is beside the point.

But when the idea was carried over to the M1903, with a much thinner rod, the concept literally showed its weaknness.

Jim
 
Ah, yes, the "military mind" as visualized by the anti-war movement, people whose own idea of "progress" was the establishment of a Stalinist dictatorship
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Yup, that's why I protested the war. Seeing kids come home in boxes was just an excuse to make Joe king.

More seriously, the Spanish American war made military leadership stand up and take notice. Our first first world foe showed lots of weakness' and led to modernization.
Then WWI gave us Black Jack Pershing. His time as Chief of Staff was very important in reorganizing the military and the promotion of the men that fought WWII.

In short thank the Spanish and our luck in having the right guys in charge at the right time.
 
Cool info in this discussion. It makes me want to learn more about the evolution of small arms in the us military. Any suggestions on some good books on the subject?
 
The perceived advantage of a lever action over a (for the time modern) cartridge single shot rifle is an illusion. Yes, the individual soldier can momentarily put out a lot more fire. But as a unit the fire rate is the same. Whether Trapdoor, Mauser, Martini or Gras, all of them could shoout 12 - 20 rounds in a minute, and with your typical reloading times a lever action doesn't perform any better over time. And out on the prairie with 80 rounds of ammo per man you really didn't want to run out of ammo 20 miles from the nearest outpost, so maybe there was something about that "don't waste your shot" idea that we tend to laugh about nowadays with helicopter resupply. True short-time fire power didn't become an issue until small-unit stosstrupp tactics where invented during WWI, but at that time lever actions were obsolete.
 
I guess the civil war was just an aberration then. Lincoln shoving those worthless Spencers and Henrys down the war department throat much like Kennedy/Macnamara with the equally worthless M16. Yet another Lincoln/Kennedy similarity.
 
I guess the civil war was just an aberration then. Lincoln shoving those worthless Spencers and Henrys down the war department throat much like Kennedy/Macnamara with the equally worthless M16. Yet another Lincoln/Kennedy similarity.
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The period following the civil war up until the Spanish American war was a lot of "Indian Wars" and constabulary actions. The Civil War was fought around railroad and river networks for supplies, something that was conspicuously absent from much of the west during this period.

If you were going to arm an Army to fight a major war you would arm them with the absolute best right? If you were going to arm an Army to be glorified security guards on the great plains, as cheaply as possible, that might be a different story, right?

Even the British stuck with the falling block Martini design for their wars of empire in Africa until they had to face the Boers. Then a bolt action Enfield becomes a necessity against a force armed with small ring Mausers.

But when you are in the business of slaughtering natives who have spears and axes, a single shot rifle will generally do just fine. Still is in fact, although now there aren't too many natives who need slaughtering who don't have access to AKs and Dishkas which changes the calculus a little.

Jimro
 
Someone may have mentioned this earlier but could the evolution of bullet design have anything to do with it? Would pointy bullets be dangerous in a tube magazine? Could lever action guns be made with box magazines?
 
The first "conoidal bullets" were mentioned in an 1848 patent according to my research. The first spitzer bullet agreed upon by historians is generally the 8mm Lebel, well after the introduction of the modern design considerations of bolt action rifles. The box magazine lever action rifle didn't gain commercial popularity until 1895, and later with 1899.

Interestingly enough, battlefield pickup from earlier than the 8mm Lebel have found spitzer bullets in 7mm, but since there is no proof that those bullets were fired in the battle (and not later) they aren't definitive.

Suffice to say, when it came to single shot versus lever, the single shot won because of limited ammo availability. When it came to bolt versus lever, bolt action rifles won on simplicity and cost.

When it comes to pointed versus round, most bolt action rifles were adopted with a round nose bullet in mind, even the Lebel.

Jimro
 
kcub, in the civil war the spencers etc were competing against muzzle loaders with paper cartridges. Sure they had the advantage, especially for mounted units who could charge in faster than the infantry could reload.
In the war of 1870, just 5 years later, cavalry was considered dead meet if they got within 300 yards of an infantry block. What are you going to hit with a Spencer rimfire at that distance?
 
In discussing magazine capacity of lever actions, let us not forget the Evans, a rifle that was highly touted at the time for its large capacity magazine and which is still sometimes mentioned today by collectors in the category of "why didn't the army use..."

It was not until I owned a couple that I understood the problem and why the Evans was a folly. There were two models, one of 34 and the other of 28 round capacity. Good, right?

But let's say someone armed with a fully loaded 34 round Evans were attacked by Native Americans, and fired, say, 15 rounds, driving off the enemy. Now he wants to have a full magazine ready in case there is another attack. He has to work the lever 34 times, loading a round each time, and throwing 19 rounds out on the ground in order to get the magazine fully loaded and one in the chamber. Yet, the army was criticized at the time for not immediately adopting the Evans!

Jim
 
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