| Confederate Revolving Cannon | |
|---|---|
 Confederate revolving cannon | |
| Place of origin | Confederate States of America |
| Service history | |
| In service | 1861-1865 |
| Used by | Confederate States of America |
| Wars | American Civil War |
| Production history | |
| Designer | Henry Clay Pate |
| Designed | 1861 |
The Confederate revolving cannon was a weapon developed and used during the U.S. Civil War. The weapon had a design similar to that of a revolver pistol, scaled up to the size of a cannon.
Henry Clay Pate was a former attorney who, during the U.S. Civil War, organized a mounted company that was called Pate's Rangers or the Petersburg Rangers. The innovative Pate designed the revolving cannon, which he had cast at the Petersburg foundry in Petersburg, Va. This cannon was then made available to Pate's unit. [1]
The cannon saw use in the siege of Petersburg. It was captured by Union troops at Danville, Va, on April 27, 1865. While innovative, the weapon did not play a significant role on the battlefield. After its capture, the cannon was sent to the Ordnance Laboratory, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York.
The revolving cannon was designed with the goal of increasing the fire rate of a cannon. The design was similar to that of a revolving pistol of the time, consisting of a cylinder which contained the rounds to be fired, with the rotation of the cylinder being used to bring a round into position at the breech of a single barrel. The barrel had a two-inch bore, and the cylinder held five rounds.
The cylinders of the revolving cannon were fired using percussion caps. The cap was struck by a large spring-actuated striker.
The cannon employed a screw mechanism which pushed the cylinder forward when it was in position. This reduced the gap between the cylinder and the barrel, which significantly reduced gas leakage during firing.
A lever attached to a ratcheting mechanism was used to rotate the cylinder. A spring-loaded cog would slip into recesses in the cylinder, holding it in the correct position for firing. [2]
A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries.
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower and are not considered true machine guns. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges and thus are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.
A revolver is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six cartridges before needing to be reloaded, revolvers are also commonly called six shooters.
The pepper-box revolver or simply pepperbox is a multiple-barrel firearm, mostly in the form of a handgun, that has three or more gun barrels in a coaxially revolving mechanism. Each barrel holds a single shot, and the shooter can manually rotate the whole barrel assembly to sequentially index each barrel into alignment with the lock or hammer, similar to rotation of a revolver's cylinder.
A repeating rifle is a single-barreled rifle capable of repeated discharges between each ammunition reload. This is typically achieved by having multiple cartridges stored in a magazine and then fed individually into the chamber by a reciprocating bolt, via either a manual or automatic action mechanism, while the act of chambering the round typically also recocks the hammer/striker for the following shot. In common usage, the term "repeating rifle" most often refers specifically to manual repeating rifles, as opposed to self-loading rifles, which use the recoil and/or blowback of the previous shot to cycle the action and load the next round, even though all self-loading firearms are technically a subcategory of repeating firearms.
A revolver cannon is a type of autocannon, commonly used as an aircraft gun. It uses a cylinder with multiple chambers, like those of a revolver handgun, to speed up the loading-firing-ejection cycle. Some examples are also power-driven, to further speed the loading process. Unlike a rotary cannon, a revolver cannon only has a single barrel, so its spun weight is lower. Automatic revolver cannons have been produced by many different manufacturers.
The Lemat revolver was a .42 or .36 caliber cap & ball black powder revolver invented by Jean Alexandre LeMat of France, which featured an unusual secondary 20 gauge smooth-bore barrel capable of firing buckshot. It saw service with the armed forces of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War of 1861–1865 and the Army of the Government of National Defense during the Franco-Prussian War.
Kerr's Patent Revolver was an unusual 5-shot single-action revolver manufactured from 1859 to 1866 by the London Armoury Company. It was used by Confederate cavalrymen during the U.S. Civil War. Seven of these revolvers were held by the New Zealand Colonial Defence Force in 1863 and were issued to the famous Forest Rangers at the start of the campaign to push Māori rebels out of the Auckland province. It is easily recognized by its side-mounted hammer.
The Puckle gun was a primitive crew-served, manually-operated flintlock revolver patented in 1718 by James Puckle (1667–1724), a British inventor, lawyer and writer. It was one of the earliest weapons to be referred to as a "machine gun", being called such in a 1722 shipping manifest, though its operation does not match the modern use of the term. It was never used during any combat operation or war. Production was highly limited and may have been as few as two guns.
A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun which needs to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder. The two most common types of handguns are revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, although other types such as derringers and machine pistols also see infrequent usage.
A pistol is a type of handgun. The word "pistol" first appeared in English c. 1570, when early handguns were produced in Europe, and is derived from the Middle French pistolet, meaning a small gun or knife. In colloquial usage, the word "pistol" is often used to describe any type of handgun, inclusive of revolvers and the pocket-sized derringers.
The Colt New Model Revolving rifles were early repeating rifles produced by the Colt's Manufacturing Company from 1855 until 1864. The design was essentially similar to revolver type pistols, with a rotating cylinder that held five or six rounds in a variety of calibers from .36 to .64 inches. They were mainly based upon the Colt Model 1855 Sidehammer Pocket Revolver developed by Elisha K. Root. Colt revolving pistols and rifles were attractive mainly because of their high rate of fire. They were used to a limited extent on the Pony Express, and made a brief appearance in the American Civil War. However, the rifles were generally disliked by soldiers, and were ultimately discontinued due to serious design flaws.
The Colt Paterson revolver was the first commercial repeating firearm employing a revolving cylinder with multiple chambers aligned with a single, stationary barrel. Its design was patented by Samuel Colt on February 25, 1836, in the United States, England and France, and it derived its name from being produced in Paterson, New Jersey. Initially this 5 shot revolver was produced in .28 caliber, with a .36 caliber model following a year later. As originally designed and produced, no loading lever was included with the revolver; a user had to partially disassemble the revolver to re-load it. Starting in 1839, however, a reloading lever and a capping window were incorporated into the design, allowing reloading without disassembly. This loading lever and capping window design change was also incorporated after the fact into most Colt Paterson revolvers that had been produced from 1836 until 1839. Unlike later revolvers, a folding trigger was incorporated into the Colt Paterson. The trigger became visible only upon cocking the hammer.
The Tranter revolver was a double-action cap & ball revolver invented around 1856 by English firearms designer William Tranter (1816–1890). Originally operated with a special dual-trigger mechanism later models employed a single-trigger mechanism much the same as that found in the contemporary Beaumont–Adams revolver.
The Rikhter R-23 is an aircraft autocannon developed for the Soviet Air Force starting in the late 1950s. It was designed to be as short as possible to avoid problems found on high-speed aircraft when the guns were pointed into the airstream. The R-23 was a gas operated revolver cannon that used gas bled from holes in the barrel to provide the motive force. Firing up to 2,600 rpm, the R-23 was the fastest firing single-barrel cannon ever introduced into service.
A multiple-barrel firearm is any type of firearm with more than one gun barrel, usually to increase the rate of fire or hit probability and to reduce barrel erosion/overheating.
The Agar gun was an early rapid fire machine gun developed during the US Civil War. The weapon was nicknamed the Coffee Mill Gun, and was also called the Union Repeating Gun.
The Colt Model 1855 Sidehammer, also known as the Colt Root Revolver after engineer Elisha K. Root (1808–1865), was a cap & ball single-action pocketrevolver used during the American Civil War and made by the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company
A repeating firearm or repeater is any firearm that is capable of being fired repeatedly before having to manually reload new ammunition into the weapon.