Requa’s and Billinghurst’s Machine Gun

The first gun made was not full sized, but a tiny working model about 10 inches broad in the wheel track. Five octagon pistol barrels some six inches long were mounted with a very slight dispersion onto the frame plate. Behind their open breeches was mounted a sliding breechblock or bar in which was mounted a single percussion nipple. The sliding bar was shoved foward by toggle joint handles, which blocked the chambers at the back after loading. This model stood in the window of Billinghurst’s store in Rochester, New York, for many years.

The full sized gun showed greater ingenuity. The secret of its rapid fire was the “piano hinge” cartridge clip. A hinged strip of metal was perforated 25 times on each limb. The side next to the chambers had holes of the same diameter as the body of the special flanged metallic cartridge. The reverse side had smaller holes, enough to allow the cap flash to penetrate the tiny center flash hole of each cartridge, a la Maynard cartridge. Twentyfive round barrels of carbine length were mounted between the normal light carriage wheels. A single percussion nipple was mounted in the sliding breech bar, and the hammer was a simple lanyardflipped type without sear, springs, or complexity.
To Requa and Billinghurst this must have seemed the answer to a munitions maker’s prayer, for every covered bridge would need one of these, safely and secretly tucked inside, to repel Rebel horse. Unfor- tunately, most of the covered bridges were in the North; their market was therefore relatively limited. Suppose one of these guns ever got into battle in a covered bridge, in the way it was supposed to be used! The carnage, as screaming mounts piled up, jammed by the troopers rushing on from behind in mistaken eagerness to succor their fallen comrades, would have increased until the whole squadron of cavalry writhed inside the bridge. Unseen by any observer, the dyingmass of men and animals, riddled by the Billinghurst-Requa bullets, would have injected into the history of the War a most shocking episode.

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The Gatling Gun

Ager, Williams, Vandenberg, these have faded into history. The repeating gun most remembered from the war, and yet one which had a very confusing record of use therein, is that of Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. I had the pleasure of witnessing how effectively Dr. Gatling had builded when I attended a meeting of the American Ordnance Association at Aberdeen the fall of 1957 . Mounted on a testing stand was a small bundle of barrels, dwarfed in seeming firepower by the huge cannon flanking it. But when the gunner pushed the button and that mighty mite whirred into action with a high-pitched snarling roar so rapidly that no individual explosions could even be sensed, I knew I had witnessed not only the world’s fastest-firing machine gun, and the world’s heaviest gun in weight of metal fired (a ton and a half in one minute), but a gun that was directly inspired by the Civil War special artillery General Butler bought from Dr. Gatling. First of Gatling’s guns was bulky wheeled carriage “c...

CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

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CHAPTER 7 Injustice to Justice

In justice to Justice, it must be said that a recent examination of one of the muskets, for the supplying of which to the Union he was so villified, proves to be a reasonably well-assembled hodgepodge of surplus parts and at least as strong and reliable as the American parts from which it was built. But when Philip S. Justice, gunmaker-importer of Philadelphia, tried to get aboard the Federal musket contract gravy train, he both got more than he bar gained for—and Holt and Owen conversely gave him less.

Civil War Guns

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