.50-70 Government | ||||||||||||||||
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Type | Rifle | |||||||||||||||
Place of origin | United States | |||||||||||||||
Service history | ||||||||||||||||
In service | 1866–1873 | |||||||||||||||
Used by | United States | |||||||||||||||
Production history | ||||||||||||||||
Designed | 1866 | |||||||||||||||
Produced | 1866–present | |||||||||||||||
Specifications | ||||||||||||||||
Case type | Rimmed, straight | |||||||||||||||
Bullet diameter | .515 in (13.1 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Neck diameter | .535 in (13.6 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Base diameter | .565 in (14.4 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Rim diameter | .660 in (16.8 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Rim thickness | .065 in (1.7 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Case length | 1.75 in (44 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Overall length | 2.25 in (57 mm) | |||||||||||||||
Primer type | Benét Internal | |||||||||||||||
Maximum pressure | 22,500 psi (155 MPa) | |||||||||||||||
Ballistic performance | ||||||||||||||||
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Test barrel length: 28" Source(s): Accurate Powder [1] |
The .50-70 Government / 12.7 x 45 mm R, also known as the .50-70 Musket, .50-70 Springfield, and .50-1+3⁄4" Sharps [2] [3] ) is a black powder cartridge adopted in 1866 for the Springfield Model 1866 trapdoor rifle.
Derived from the .50-60-400 Joslyn, the cartridge was developed after the unsatisfactory results of the .58 rimfire cartridge for the Springfield Model 1865 rifle. The .50-70 Government cartridge used the Benét internal center-fire primer design and became the official cartridge of the U.S. military in 1866 until being replaced by the .45-70 Government in 1873. The .50-70 cartridge has a pressure limit of 22,500 psi (155 MPa) [1]
The official designation of this cartridge at the time of introduction was "US center-fire metallic cartridge", and the commercial designation .50-70-450, standing for:
The U.S. Navy purchased Remington Rolling Block rifles chambered for the .50-70 cartridge. The U.S. Navy also contracted with Remington to produce several thousand rolling-block carbines chambered for a reduced load version which was officially produced for use only in carbines, using a shortened .50-70 with a 430-grain (28 g) bullet and 45 grains (2.9 g) of black powder.
The U.S. Army ordered both rolling-block rifles and carbines in .50-70 and made some rolling blocks at their Springfield Armory facility in this caliber. [5] The U.S. Army also had a large supply of percussion-fired Sharps carbines at the close of the Civil War and had the Sharps Rifle Company convert about 31,000 of the rolling-block rifles and carbines in .50-70 for cavalry use. Meanwhile, the Army, which had exited the Civil War with an inventory of almost a million percussion-fired muzzleloaders, converted Springfield Model 1863 and Model 1864 muskets to metallic cartridge ammunition using the Allin conversion (trapdoor) method, as well as cadet rifles. The first of the .50-70 conversions was the Springfield Model 1866. In 1867, these rifles played a pivotal role in holding off an attacking force of 300-1,000 Lakota Sioux Indians during the Wagon Box Fight. [6]
Around 1871, the Sioux captured a number of Springfield 1866 rifles that use these cartridges. Deemed single-use and not reloadable, soldiers would simply discard them which the Sioux collected and reloaded. [7] Despite a strict ban of fixed ammunition sales to Native Americans, they were not restricted from acquiring lead (for bullets), black powder and percussion caps for their "obsolete" muskets. Here's how they reloaded these cartridges:
This was dramatized on Death Valley Days , season 7, episode 15 titled "A Bullet for the Captain" [8]
Newer improved versions were made and used by the Army until 1873. After 1873, with the advent of the .45-70 cartridge, the Army declared the .50-70 to be surplus, and while some rifles and carbines in .50-70 were issued to Indian Scouts, the bulk were simply sold off as surplus. In the U.S. Navy, however, the .50-70 cartridge and the guns associated with it remained in use until the late 1880s.
During the second half of the 1860s, general Hermann Kanzler expanded and reformed the army of the Papal States, and part of that ca. 1867-1868 Remington Rolling Block rifles in .50-70 were procured, although not directly from Remington but from its European license holders Westley Richards and Fabrique d'armes Émile et Léon Nagant. After the Capture of Rome they saw service with Italian Bersaglieri troops and in the 1880s were sold off to civilians and to Ethiopia. They were used against their former owners not just in the First Italo-Ethiopian but even in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. [9]
This cartridge variant was alter known in Europe as 12.7x45 mm Remington-Pontificio. [9]
Buffalo Bill used a Springfield Model 1866 in .50-70, while buffalo hunting to feed the track workers of the Kansas Pacific Railway. General George Custer was known to have had and used a sporterized rolling block in .50-70 and was believed to have had it with him at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
As Army General Philip Sheridan had embarked on a plan to eliminate the bison during the course of the American Indian Wars, the .50-70 rifles were also issued or purchased by buffalo hunters for use in eliminating the vast bison herds. Sharps began manufacturing sporterized rifles in .50-70 (including .50-90 Sharps, .50-110 Sharps, etc.), with improved sights for longer range shots for use by the buffalo hunters.
Modern-made functional replicas of caliber .50-70 historical rifles have been imported into the US by such firms as Davide Pedersoli and A. Uberti, Srl. (a Beretta subsidiary). The .50-70 cartridge, still enjoys some use and popularity with sportsmen and cowboy action shooters. Reloaders have experimented with a variety of bullet weights from 425 grains (27.5 g) to 600 grains (39 g).
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.
Winchester rifle is a comprehensive term describing a series of lever action repeating rifles manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Developed from the 1860 Henry rifle, Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeaters. The Model 1873 was particularly successful, being marketed by the manufacturer as "The Gun That Won the West".
The term Springfield rifle may refer to any one of several types of small arms produced by the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the United States armed forces.
The Remington M1867 is a rolling-block rifle that was produced in the second-half of the 19th century. It was the first rifle using metallic cartridges to be adopted by the Norwegian and Swedish armies. Nominally, it had a caliber of 4 decimal lines, but the actual caliber was 3.88 Norwegian decimal lines or 4.1 Swedish decimal lines (12.17 mm), and it fired a rimfire round with a 12.615 mm lead bullet. The 12.17 mm caliber was chosen because the Swedish army had approximately 30,000 new muzzle-loading M1860 and breech-loading M1864 rifles in 12.17 mm caliber in stock, rifles that were suitable for conversion to M1867 rolling-block rifles. With the exception of the first 10,000 rifles and 20,000 actions, which were made by Remington in the US, all Remington M1867 rifles and carbines were made under license in Norway and Sweden, by Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik in Norway, and by Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebolag and Carl Gustafs stads Gevärsfaktori in Sweden with the two Swedish manufacturers producing about 80% of the weapons.
A rolling-block action is a single-shot firearm action where the sealing of the breech is done with a specially shaped breechblock able to rotate on a pin. The breechblock is shaped like a section of a circle. The breechblock is locked into place by the hammer, therefore preventing the cartridge from moving backward at the moment of firing. By cocking the hammer, the breechblock can be rotated freely to reload the breech of the weapon.
The Kammerlader, or "chamber loader", was the first Norwegian breech-loading rifle, and among the first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world. A single-shot black-powder rifle, the kammerlader was operated with a crank mounted on the side of the receiver. This made it much quicker and easier to load than the weapons previously used. Kammerladers quickly gained a reputation for being fast and accurate rifles, and would have been a deadly weapon against massed ranks of infantry.
The .45-70 (11.6x53mmR), also known as the .45-70 Government, .45-70 Springfield, and .45-21⁄10" Sharps, is a .45 caliber rifle cartridge originally holding 70 grains of black powder that was developed at the U.S. Army's Springfield Armory for use in the Springfield Model 1873. It was a replacement for the stop-gap .50-70 Government cartridge, which had been adopted in 1866, one year after the end of the American Civil War, and is known by collectors as the "Trapdoor Springfield".
Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874, the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western-genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.
The .30-03 Springfield (7.62×65mm) was a short-lived cartridge developed by the United States in 1903, to replace the .30-40 Krag in the new Springfield 1903 rifle. The .30-03 was also called the .30-45, since it used a 45 grain powder charge; the name was changed to .30-03 to indicate the year of adoption. It used a 220 grain roundnose bullet. It was replaced after only three years of service by the .30-06, firing a spitzer bullet that had better ballistic performance.
The Springfield Model 1873 was the first standard-issue breech-loading rifle adopted by the United States Army. The rifle, in both full-length and carbine versions, was widely used in subsequent battles against Native Americans.
Remington Rolling Block is a family of breech-loading rifles that was produced from the mid-1860s into the early 20th century by E. Remington and Sons.
The Springfield Model 1865 was an early breech-loading rifle manufactured by U.S. Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was a modification of the Springfield Model 1861. It was later replaced with the Springfield Model 1866.
The Springfield Model 1866 was the second iteration of the Allin-designed trapdoor breech-loading mechanism. Originally developed as a means of converting rifle muskets to breechloaders, the Allin modification ultimately became the basis for the definitive Springfield Model 1873, the first breech-loading rifle adopted by the United States War Department for manufacture and widespread issue to U.S. troops.
The Springfield Model 1870 was one of the rifles which used the trapdoor breechblock design developed by Erskine S. Allin. The Model 1870 was a minor improvement to the Springfield Model 1868, and retained most of the Model 1868 rifle features.
The Springfield Model 1868 was one of the rifles which used the trapdoor breechblock design developed by Erskine S. Allin.
The Springfield Model 1892–99 Krag–Jørgensen rifle is a Norwegian-designed bolt-action rifle that was adopted in 1892 as the standard United States Army military longarm, chambered for U.S. caliber .30-40 Krag cartridges. All versions and variants were manufactured under license by the Springfield Armory between 1892 and 1903 and famously served as the longarm during the Spanish–American War.
During the American Civil War, an assortment of small arms found their way onto the battlefield. Though the muzzleloader percussion cap rifled musket was the most numerous weapon, being standard issue for the Union and Confederate armies, many other firearms, ranging from the single-shot breech-loading Sharps and Burnside rifles to the Spencer and the Henry rifles - two of the world's first repeating rifles - were issued by the hundreds of thousands, mostly by the Union. The Civil War brought many advances in firearms technology, most notably the widespread use of rifled barrels.
The .44 Henry, also known as the .44 Henry Flat, the .44 Rimfire, the .44 Long Rimfire, and the 11x23mmRF in Europe, is a rimfire rifle and handgun cartridge featuring a .875 in (22.2 mm)-long brass or copper case. The round has a total overall length of 1.345 in (34.2 mm), with a 200 or 216 gr .446 in (11.3 mm)-diameter cast solid-lead heeled bullet. The original propellant load is 26 to 28 gr of black powder. The round has a muzzle velocity of approximately 1,125 ft/s (343 m/s), giving a muzzle energy of 568 foot-pounds.
In firearms, a trapdoor is a form of breech-loading mechanism for rifles in which a hinged breechblock rotates up and forward, resembling the movement of a trapdoor. The Springfield models 1865 and 1873 were best known for first employing this type of action.