I find it highly unusual that cost was the only driving force as to why the Musket remained as the default active firearm given to people who served in a military. I understand even all the way back to the Revolutionary War there were "prototypes" impractical or otherwise that existed as proof of concept guns but we figured this shit out as early as the 1840's and you mean to tell me as late as 1866 this piece of shit was still being used by fucking everyone in the military? Why? After the Revolutionary War you'd think the governments of the world would immediately put countless R and D into making guns that didnt fire like complete shit.

>>63941637 (OP)
You might be able to make a single repeating rifle but scaling production to equip armies is an entirely different matter.

>>63941637 (OP)
combination of a bunch of things. you see rifles, repeaters and breach loaders all before the revolution, but they were too delicate, expensive and hard and slow to produce to arm a whole army with. Rifles you could have made sooner, but it took longer to load each ball so rate of fire was considered more important. By the civil war we had minie balls (and I think some other similar ammo that soldiers hates even though it worked better Williams cleaner bullet I think) which allowed armies to shoot as fast as muskets but shoot father due to rifles.
you then had issues of needing a self contained cartridge, needing a primer, rimfire was shit and weak and blackpowder was corrosive and fucked up guns.
During the Civil war you had the spencer which was a piece of shit and the henry which was fragile, too weak to deal with charging horses like the rifled muskets could and the henry plant made fewer than 300 rifles per month.
Also you didn't really have a great way of making the ammo en mass, Armies literally did not want soldiers to have repeating arms up until the start of WWI, see the fact a ton of rifles still had magazine cutoffs for single loading and the lebel which the french fucking entered the war with and the krag both had fucking terrible feeding systems that were not compatible with loading multiple rounds at once like a stripper clip or enblock clip

concept is fine, but after concept comes the need for doctrine change, manufacture retooling, chemical/metallurgical advancement and pretty much everything that comes with scale. And pre-industrial revolution, that just wasn't possible. It moved real quick once it did though

Think of it another way. We know we can make fuck you space lasers zap zap right now. We know the concept and the way to do it. But other related engineering and sciences aren't there yet.

>>63941637 (OP)
>1800's
19th century*

The manufacturering base wasn't there and metallic cartridges weren't a mature technology.
Europe was made up of a lot of smaller states that didn't have the money or need for the newest small arms, and American was still developing and had been a country for less than 100 years.
You could ask why so many countries were using bolt action rifles in the Korean war when self loading rifles had been developed in WW1 40 years previous and get a similar answer

>>63941637 (OP)
Don't google Nessler ball....
(Minie ball derived ball for smoothbores, it's stabilizes aerodynamically like shuttlecock and triples accuracy of smoothbores muskets without changes to them).
Imagine how stupid and reluctant to improvement military and past people in general were. Shooting round ball for centuries when you can triple accuracy of the musket for free...

Also they shoot patched round ball from rifles for like 2 centuries refusing to invent Minie ball. BTW do you know how Minie invented his ball? He just made hundreds test shapes and shoot them fro rifle seeking form that flies most true, no need for complex science and shit, just dirty trials
Imagine how stupid ancient people were, "muh tradtion" instead of lifting their lazy asses and trying new things...

>>63942688
They did the same with with Scurvy, they figures out the cure then forgot about it

>>63942688
I'm sure YOU anon would have thought of those advancements instantly like the genius you are.

>>63941637 (OP)
Because they were a tried and true implement with all the manufacturing basis behind them to support them. And it' not like they weren't changed. Especially the implementation of the percussion cap and standard issue rifled gunbarrels improved things a lot.
And by the 1850s/60s many conversions came around that turned your rifled muskets into breechloaders.

>>63942688
A round ball is far cheaper and easier to produce than more complex shapes which require more complex manufacturing and more advanced industrialization.
Go read the comments on whatever's trending on youtube or twitter, and ask yourself if those people would really be intelligent enough to even just survive in the neolithic.

>>63941637 (OP)
Smokeless powder hadn't been invented yet and it was still very expensive to cut rifling.

Yeah fancier weapons existed but they were expensive as hell and the barrels quickly fouled rendering the rifling pointless.

>>63942688
>and trying new things...
The 1800's was a wonderland of bizzare random gun and bullet designs being attempted.

>>63941637 (OP)
Because they still worked and guns are expensive. If someone is gonna be real rear echelon dude, maybe it's fine if their issued gun is a musket, they're probably not gonna shoot it.

>>63941637 (OP)
3.6 million men needed to be armed . Do the math on producing that many rifles

>>63942688
anon they spent the prior 200 years just making the musket a reliable weapon, and patched round ball in a smoothbore was still accurate enough to hit a man at battlefield distances. Needs drive innovation, and what they NEEDED for much of the muzzleloader's history was
>how can we make this thing faster
>how can we make this thing more reliable
>how can we make this thing more efficiently

>>63942688
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't cast bullets.

>plane invented in 1903
Bro why couldnt they just fly 800mph using jet turbines and shoot at eachother with missiles by 1907. They had the concept already, why didnt they just go right to that?

>>63943095
Why aren't I able to buy microLED displays and CPUs with two-dimensional semiconductors for my next PC build?

>>63942688
>The Minié ball could be quickly removed from the paper cartridge, with the gunpowder poured down the barrel and the unexpanded bullet pushed down after it passed the muzzle rifling and any carbon build up from prior shots. It was then rammed with the ramrod, which packed the charge and filled the hollow base with powder. When the rifle was fired, the exploding gas in the base of the bullet expanded the skirt to engage the rifling, providing spin for accuracy and a better seal for consistent velocity and longer range.
Minie balls engaged the rifling and allowed for smoothbore speed reloading with rifled accuracy

>>63942930
You can drop Nessler ball into 16th century arquebuse and it will work fine and make it more accurate.

>>63943022
Exactly bullets are cast, casting makes complex shapes easy.

>>63943809
>casting makes complex shapes easy.
NTA, but casting a minie ball or a hollow point is a much bigger deal than casting a simple round ball or bullet without a hollow base because that requires a mold with a core peg.

>>63943834
A 16th century musket is also a whole lot different than a 19th century one in construction and might not properly accommodate those bullets very well, especially when they weren't made in standardized calibers.

>>63943809
>casting makes complex shapes easy
Just as I thought, you've never cast a bullet before. No, complex shapes are not easy, and certain shapes (some of them not even that complex) are a fucking pain in the dick. It's not too much of a problem for the hobbyist making a few dozen bullets for one gun in one known bore size with a lead alloy that's a known quantity and accurate temperature control, but that's not what's being discussed here.

Go back to whatever source you got your opinion from and read the rest of it. You missed a few important bits. Or better yet, buy a gun, cast some bullets for it, and stop pretending to know what you're talking about around people that do unless you have a fetish for being found out and ridiculed. Not everyone here is a nogunz thirdie or a European theorycrafter.

>>63941637 (OP)
Why aren't you using a musket today OP?

>>63947711

I own a musket for home defense for I believe this is what the founding fathers intended.

>>63941637 (OP)
Your picrel is a rifle.

>>63941717
meanwhile in small german states

>>63948442
>prussa
>small
they also weren't made in significant numbers until after the American civil war and by then you had guns like the sharps or the spencer carbine. If you go with wikipedia, prussia only had 270k dreyse muskets by 1866.
The US had the Hall and Harpers ferry muskets before then, but again, they weren't adopted en mass because at the time it was quicker and cheaper to produce muzzle loaders

>>63941637 (OP)
>Why?
there wasn't a need. with the invention of interchangeable parts you could mass produce muskets with low skill labor and repairs could be done by soldiers themselves. the usa was the first to implement this and that alone exponentially increased the effectiveness of your army. being able to arm three men with muskets for the previous cost of one is great innovation

>>63948690
>only had 270k dreyse
>only
for comparison:
"The Lorenz rifle was the third most widely used rifle during the American Civil War. The Union purchased approximately 226,000 rifles,[12] while the Confederates bought as many as 100,000.[13]"

>they weren't adopted en mass because at the time it was quicker and cheaper to produce muzzle loaders
is that so? what changed a few years later that the following is possible?
"The approximate number of Chassepot rifles available to the French Army in July 1870 was 1,037,555 units.[3] Additionally, state manufacturies could deliver 30,000 new rifles monthly. "

>>63949210
there were multiple styles of rifled muskets used during the civil war and the industrial revolution was literally happening at the time, retardo

>>63949229
rifling barrels already needs the industrial revolution for machine tooling and cannot be made by hand.
what makes breech loading so much harder?

>>63949094
that's sounds like revolutionary wars, not civil war which was a hundred years later. muskets would get owned by rifled muskets. more accurate, deadlier wounds.

>>63949267
Not even that anon, but he was referring to shit like the Spencer and Henry which are distinctly different from the Euro trash you're posting about

>>63949267
creating a seal in the breach before good brass cased rounds were practical. Plus black powder was corrosive as fuck and would shit up breach loading guns.
There's a reason why there was no real advancement in small arms for centuries and then all of a sudden there was a ton all at once from like 1840-1960 and then none again

>>63949335
rifled muskets only became practical due to the invention of the minie ball and the industrial advances at the time. the confederates were still using smoothbores.
rifles date back to like the 1600s but it was impractical to give the whole army rifles because they were more expensive to make, slower to load and the fouling would render the rifling useless after a few shots anyway. by the civil war they finally had a projectile that could be loaded in a rifle as fast as a ball in a smoothebore and the industrial base to produce the barrels fast and economically

>>63949337
breach-loading obsoleted muzzle-loading. you can fire as fast as you can reload now.

>>63949373
Cool I guess. What does this have to do with literally anything you spaz?

>>63949382
Prussia easily beat Austria due to rapid-fire tactics with breach-loaders.
Austria used Lorenz rifles same as Americans in the American Civil War.

>>63949407
Okay and that's related to the Sharps and Henry how?

>>63941637 (OP)
You are greatly underestimating the cost and difficulty of making breechloaders and cased ammunition. Such weapons existed long before common adoption by militaries because they unreliable, grossly expensive or had other problems.


The military wants 100,000 men equipped with the same unremarkable, reliable weapon. They don't want 60k muskets, 10k breachloading smoothbores, 10k muzzle loading rifles and 5k breechloading rifles which all use different ammunition and require specific training. Just look at the US 90mm ammunition at the end of WW2. M36 units were getting the wrong shells meant for T26E1s because "durrr, they both say 90mm on the side!"

>>63949428
the natural evolution would be muzzle-loading -> breach-loading -> repeating rifle.
somehow the Americans skipped a step, breach-loading, and tried to do repeating rifles before the tech was there. so most of the Union and Confederate armies were stuck with muzzle-loading.

>>63941658
This, but also heating some lead in a cast iron skillet and drop forging musket balls for your pappy's old gun was way cheaper than buying a new rifle and bullets.

>>63941637 (OP)
they don't foul like rifled muzzleloaders and are far faster to load and can fire loads like buckshot and ball (buck and ball). They are not piece sof shit, they will kill you just as dead and just as effectively as a single barrel shotgun with a slug or buck and also act as a pike which can take cavalry. In a volley absolutely lethal against rioters or uniformed enemies tearing through several men. The problem is you are stupid and know nothing about history, tyhe deveopement of firearms, the evolution of tactics or history. You are and this is written in every single linne of yoru post an educational failure. You are simply too stupid to into history. The people who used the very best weapons and tactics of teh time swre not stupid, you are for failing to unnderstand why they did and while having all the knowledge available to you making just a brain dead post. Here's your applause for spamming your reatrded b8 again.

>>63949588
why does this sound like they were obsolete?
>the less-well equipped Confederate Army used them for longer, and the Army of Northern Virginia's ordnance chief claimed that Gettysburg was the first battle in which the army was completely free of smoothbore muskets.[3]
>In the Western Theater, the situation was worse for both sides and smoothbores remained in use in the Union armies into 1863. Some Confederate regiments were still carrying .69 caliber muskets at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864.[3]

>>63949094
>the usa was the first to implement this
Only if by USA you mean European countries whose peoples started the USA

explain why you couldn't make a falling block or rolling block flintlock that used paper cartridges with technology from the 1700s

>>63950892
It would unironically have been expensive for the time period anyway. Also, paper cartridges don't obturate good, so the shooter would get a squirt of hot blackpowder gasses in their eyes with each shot.

>>63950941
what if the rolling block had a brass cone on it that crammed into the breech hole when it fired?

>>63950947
Be fouled up after a few shots

>>63941637 (OP)
>ballistics
>melee
>lingering pikeman fear of cavalry hedge

>>63942688
Smoothbussies to 200y had negligible accuracy against rifled muskets of the period, and the training to make them relevant beyond that was lacking in the Civil War. Could've saved on tooling and material if everyone just settled for smooth bore (especially with that round).

>>63950947
They tried that kind of shit with all kinds of cavalry breech loaders, and it never worked well.

>>63950956
>Smoothbussies to 200y had negligible accuracy against rifled muskets of the period
That's quite a gross exaggeration, rifled bores still easily doubled the average soldier's effective range without any special training.

>>63950956
>(especially with that round)
Try casting that fucker yourself.

>>63941637 (OP)

>>63949482
we had breach loaders, see the harpers ferry and hall rifles and sharps rifles during the civil war. we just didn't have the money to supply every troop with a rifle like that and the minnie ball largely ameliorated that issue

>>63950892
you could, the issue was making more than one of the gun and making sure it sealed right and didn't rust to shit

>>63942688
Cannonballs were manufactured by dripping molten metal down a tall tower down into a water bath, manufacturing techniques were not that advanced before the industrial era.

>>63951353
>That's quite a gross exaggeration, rifled bores still easily doubled the average soldier's effective range without any special training.
Wasn't there a battle during the CW where a company opened fire at something like 600 paces (which was considered to have "harsh words"-tier effectiveness with smoothbores) and everybody on both sides was shocked by the casualty rate?

>>63952702
>the minnie ball largely ameliorated that issue
can you actually reload a muzzle loader while not standing up like a breech loader? having to stand up on a battlefield sounds like a major issue.

>>63952872
grok
>No single battle perfectly matches your description, but the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) includes episodes that might align with this idea. On July 1, during the fighting on Seminary Ridge, Confederate forces under William Dorsey Pender advanced toward Union troops positioned about 500 yards away. Some Union regiments, likely armed with rifled muskets, opened fire at ranges far beyond smoothbore capabilities, inflicting significant casualties. While smoothbores were still in use early in the war, by 1863, rifled muskets dominated, and their ability to hit targets at longer ranges could have surprised commanders expecting shorter engagement distances typical of smoothbore warfare. For example, Earl J. Hess notes that Civil War engagements often occurred at 100-200 yards, but rifled muskets allowed effective fire at 500 yards, which could catch troops off guard if they misjudged the range.
>Another candidate might be the Battle of Fredericksburg (December 1862), where Union troops faced devastating fire from Confederate riflemen positioned behind a stone wall. While the primary engagement range was closer, Confederate sharpshooters with rifled muskets engaged at longer distances, contributing to the horrific Union casualty rate (12,600+). The shock came not from a single company’s volley at 600 paces but from the cumulative effect of rifled muskets mowing down advancing troops over open ground, a scenario commanders underestimated due to outdated tactics.

>>63953054
Theoretically yes, but it's a pretty convoluted affair.

>>63953086
>On July 1, during the fighting on Seminary Ridge, Confederate forces under William Dorsey Pender advanced toward Union troops positioned about 500 yards away. Some Union regiments, likely armed with rifled muskets, opened fire at ranges far beyond smoothbore capabilities, inflicting significant casualties.
Yea, I think that's the one I recall reading about. 600 paces is around 500 yards, IIRC.

>>63953107

>>63953054
they weren't exactly going prone since they still needed to organize and bayonet charge and they did build fortifications for shooting standing

>>63953342

>>63953342
>and bayonet charge
prussians stopped doing this and just did rapid firing instead when they got breech loaders

>>63954507

>>63954507

>>63953086
kys aifaggot

>>63941637 (OP)
kid, if you're going to underaged post you have to at least have a few brain cells

do you even hear what you sound like

>>63955250

>>63953086
I hope you get raped by a wild pack of proompters.

>>63953054
Sorta, so you had to maybe find some cover, and/or try to do it with a low lean kind of position, neither which was ideal.

This is also why muskets weren't preferred by cavalrymen, because reloading a musket on galloping horseback during battle would be just about impossible, rather they preferred pistols and revolvers (particularly given that you could shoot them with one hand so you had the other free for your reigns).
Further why cavalrymen had top priority for breechloading musket development, because it meant a long gun which someone riding on horseback could actually reload.

>>63953054
>can you actually reload a muzzle loader while not standing up like a breech loader?
Yes and it was a tactic for light infantrymen (later on everyone as the firearms improved). Of course it was slower but it lend itself to the looser skirmishes.
Here two videos that show it (the latter is also relevant to this discussion as it compares the Dreyse with the Lorenz and more importantly the different tactical approaches by the prussian and austrian armies at the Battle of Königgrätz):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrhRT9yx4YE
After 24:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5xH1YELizY
After 15:37

>>63952731
That was done for shot and roundball (because it tended to create very consistently round projectiles of consistent sizes), but was this also done for cannon balls?

>>63952872
600 paces is something like 500yd, or ~450 meters, for non-Burgers, and I could see that working out with either experienced marksmen with rifled muskets, and/or well coordinated massed fire.

Comparatively, smoothbore guns shooting roundballs would really max out in practical accuracy at under 100yds, an average professional soldier should be expected to most often hit a static man-sized target at 75yds with such a weapon.
Meanwhile, a rifled musket with Minié Balls should allow you get much better consistency, with a stabilized bullet which is more aerodynamic staying true to its path much longer, so an average professional soldier should be able to reliably hit a static man-sized target at 150yds pretty easily, and they really can be taken further with some practice.

You'll inevitably end up with that typical practical limit of straight infantry shooting engagements rarely approaching (let alone exceeding) a distance of like 300yds, but with massed volley fire you could get a whole bunch of soldiers having at least decent effect at 500yds.
This probably worked better than with later smaller bore smokeless rifles trying to do massed volley fire at fucking 2000 meters, because the distance is shorter and musketballs are a lot bigger and heavier.

>>63956403
No, he's ballshitting.

>>63956599

>>63954507
doubt that

>>63956599
I want you to know that I appreciated that.

>>63956753

>>63957809
Stop trying to slide, you fucking faggot.

>>63941637 (OP)
Some partisans even used muskets into the 20th century, if that was all that they were able to have.

>>63957892
who would have manufactured those? or, raid some museums?

>>63957947
Old military stockpiles early on, commercial surplus in some places, and old hidden arms caches at times.

>>63942517
*faggot

>>63941637 (OP)
Shit?
It has soul

>>63953086
>AI
Kill yourself

>>63956403
>That was done for shot
yes

>and roundball
No. That would take an impossibly large tower. It takes over 250 feet to make #2 shot, that's under 1/4 inch. Musket balls were cast in molds, you can see the parting line seam on old ones.

>>63958204

>>63949631
>why does this sound like they were obsolete?
I think "obsolescent" would be more appropriate; a typical infantryman of the time would of course have an edge with a rifled musket, repeater, or breechloader, but in standard infantry formations and engagements a smoothbore would still be reasonably effective, not useless or obsolete.

It's easy to forget that improvements to the individual weapons doesn't necessarily translate to victory on the battlefield - in the context of the civil war, far more important were factors like supply and logistics, reconnaissance and reliable information of enemy movements, troop training, quality and health, and the competency of officers and generals. You could give every Confederate soldier a breechloading rifled repeater and it wouldn't be worth a damn if they can't use them effectively for lack of training and want of ammunition.

>>63941637 (OP)
Partially expense, partially fouling..

The expensive issue comes down mostly to military planners being lazy and kings thinking that all they need are enough numbers to steamroll over their enemies. The musket was not only cheaper to make but it was cheaper to feed. Nobody cared if a paper cartridge was a full millimeter out of spec but God Help You if a brass cartridge was a tenth of a millimeter out of spec.

The Other elephant in the room is that black powder leaves a layer of greasy soot on everything. Barrels, chambers, feeding mechanisms, even the shooter's clothes to a lesser extent. It fucks with moving parts and fills in the barrel. Maybe not enough to make the gun explode but it'll make the rifling useless until you clean it out. It wasn't until Smokeless came out that we see Repeaters become standard.

THAT BEING SAID, there actually was a lot of modernizations in the 1800s. Germany adopted the Dreyse needle rifle (Sadly, doesn't shoot needles) while the French adopted the Chasspot. Even the Brits adopted the Martini-Henry falling block although that was in the 1870s since the Brits tend to forget they've got a land army now and then.

>>63960667
The martini only went into service like 2 years before the American trapdoor springfield, granted the bongs had a trap door breechloader before the martini

>>63941637 (OP)
Poverty.

The Americans and other countries spent as little money as possible on their militaries, leaving them with outdated equipment, untrained troops, and amateur leadership. Countries that actually had money absolutely transitioned to more effective firearms. The Dreyse predates the 1861 in your picture by twenty years. By the time of the civil war, both the British and French were also quickly abandoning muzzle loading rifles in favor of breech loaders.

The manufacturering base wasn't there and metallic cartridges weren't a mature technology. Centralised military spending and having large standing armies was still fairly new and equipment was a second thought for a lot of states, inertia didn't help.
Europe was made up of a lot of smaller states that didn't have the money or need for the newest small arms, and America was still developing and had been a country for less than 100 years.

You could ask why so many countries were using bolt action rifles in the Korean war when self loading rifles had been developed in WW1 40 years previous and get a similar answer.

Also, black powder is dirty as fuck and even stuff like the Dreysie had major problems with fouling and needing to replace parts in the field.

>>63961375

>>63942688
They call me shuttlecock cause I'm always fuckin them disabled bitches

>>63962209

>>63961178
>The Dreyse predates the 1861 in your picture by twenty years.
the prussians only had a quarter million dreyse's by the time of your pic related. Breach loaders weren't new. The sharps and hall rifles predate the civil war. the hall rifle is from like 1819, the first sharps is from 1848 and was used in the bleeding of kansas, and bongs had the fergison rifle that they used at brandywine and possibly the seige of charlstown

>>63963245

>>63950892
>>63950947
You could have made these things in brass in ancient egypt, however there's a lot of effort in perfecting these unknown and untrusted mechanisms versus a simpler barrel with touchhole.

>>63964168
if you made a gun out of brass you wouldn't be able to effectively kill horses with it. one of the issues armies had with the 1860 henry was that it wasn't strong enough to kill charging horses

>>63941637 (OP)
Lord i could not imagine making such a retarded post
https://youtu.be/R_qiXCykrHY?si=Oy_pQPGhQe9NVd1g

>hurrr why didnt cavemen just make guns are they fucking stupid??????

We stand on the shoulders of giants

>>63941637 (OP)
The Union army numbered only 15,000 men prior to the civil war and 2.2 million soldiers would enlist and need to be armed . Think about it

>>63963245
They weren’t used at Charlestown the Ferguson rifle died when major Ferguson was killed at kings mountain .

>>63944456
>casting complex lead shapes is le diffi ...ACK!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mXmZ9HNcFjk

>>63965281
>>hurrr why didnt cavemen just make guns are they fucking stupid??????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-aEWZrTibE

>>63968031

>>63941637 (OP)
BROWN BESS ON MARS
er, Egypt

Nothing else was as reliable, proven, or effective. The only real upgrade needed was the percussion cap mod.

>>63942688
Like the Pritchett slug, a lot of things which seem great to the casual modern enthusiast are radically less useful when built and used with the technology of the original time for the original situation.

>>63960667
Partially also theory. The rifle was the true beginning of ranged-centric combat. The musket was the last of the melee era - musket engagements were traditionally dominated by shock of the bayonet over the bullet.

>>63968982
>musket engagements were traditionally dominated by shock of the bayonet over the bulle ... ACK!
"At Malplaquet, for example, the best evidence indicates that 2/3 of the wounds received by French troops came from the enemy's fusils, with only about 2 % were inflicted by bayonets.

Of the men wounded by gunfire, 60 % had been struck in the left side, the side facing the enemy as a soldier stood in line to fire himself.

Looking at a larger sample of veterans admitted to the Invalides in 1715, Corvisier arrived at the following breakdown of wounds:

71.4 % from firearms

15.8 % from swords

10.0 % from artillery

2.8 % from the bayonet

According to another sample taken (in 1762) in Invalides;

69 % of the wounded were wounded by musket balls

14 % by sabers

13 % by artillery

2 % by bayonets

In 1807 during the war between France and Russia and Prussia, chirurgeon Dominique Jean Larrey studied wounded on one battlefield and found most were caused by artillery and muskets. Only 2 % of all wounds were caused by bayonets.

The damage inflicted during "bayonet assault" was most often executed by bullets. Larrey studied one particularly vicious close combat between the Russians and the French and found:

119 wounds from musketballs

5 wounds from bayonets

>>63968982
>>63969635
from what we know there generally wasn't much bayonet fighting, one side would usually rout when the bayonet charge came

>>63969750
Exactly. The bayonet charge was the decisive moment, not the shooting - until rifles were mass deployed. The Crimean War is the textbook turning point.

>>63969750
Despite "lol videogames meme" i HIGHLY recommend playing War of Rights. You WOULD understand everything about dynamics of musket combat.
One thing is talking about and another thing is feeling it with your own guts.
Just play this fucking game. No really.
>why do soldiers stand 20 yards apart reloading muskets instead of charging with bayonet
PLAY THE FUCKING GAME!

>>63957947
Im assuming he meant primarily balkans and east europe. Some were still using swords and spears as primary arms in ww1

>>63969810
>>63969793
>>63969635
>>63968982
thing I want to add, the reason swords are so high compared to bayonets is because those are cavalry either cutting down the artillery crews or after one side routs the cavalry charge in and stab the shit out of the side that's fleeing

>>63969810
lmao no

>>63954507
Königgratz was won by cavalry charge. You think infantry wasnt at all times still warry of cavalry pre WW1? Hell even in the opening stages of WW1 there were a bunch of cavalry charges, and they continued in secondary theaters.

>>63969635
>chirurgeon
Ahh yes, +5% to casualties recovered. Underated ancillary

>>63969635
Clearly the bayonet left no survivors and the low percentages are survivorship bias in the most literal sense. Most people who got bayoneted died. Because look at swords being 10% of wounds. Makes no sense unless you consider swords were used to slice from horseback at this time, causing injuries but killing less often.

>>63969970
nah, it's because bayonet charges would almost never actually hit. either the charging side would take too many musket balls and call of the attack or the side being charged would say fuck that and rout. The sword thing is because cavalry carried swords and they could run down routing infantry.
There is some quote by napoleon about how you need cavalry to decisively in a battle because troops would rout at a bayonet charge and then either reform their lines somewhere else or retreat and reform for a different battle

>>63969970
Cope.
If side wins charge musket wound leaves no wounded either for losing side . They would be finished by bullet and bayonet the same. Like Russian war notes casually mentioned they don't take wounded as prisoners they just stabbed them with bayonets. 100% death rate if you was wounded by Russian musket ball and lost to their attack.


> Makes no sense unless you consider swords were used to slice from horseback at this time,
Swords were primarily cavalry weapons.

>>63970005

>>63941658
Even a breech loaded gun is a huge improvement over the musket.

>>63968031
Shows me gun made in the 1700s, current Technology already exists
>got ya
Fucking moron.

>>63970782
harder to economically make breach loaders back before the industrial revolution especially with how corrosive black powder is

>>63971410

>>63971410

>>63941637 (OP)
Easy & cheap to make, ammo can be made with an iron pot and diy molds, powder requires basic mining experience to find and mine and is easy to make.

Even injuns could use them indefinitely in the field.

It's the 1700s equivalent of the AK47.

>>63972936

>>63972936

>>63972936

Less than a hundred years to go from that to repeating rifles, that's pretty good.

>>63976834
The 1800s was a fucking WILD time of technological development in general, guns were no exception.

>>63976834

>>63977657

>>63977657

>>63941658
/thread
Muskets were easy to make because there were really no tolerance considerations, the pieces were barely aligned and could be shockingly poor quality and the musket would still fire. even if the barrel fell off, you were forced to fire it with a slow match and it shot three foot to the left, absolute worst case. put a hundred guys next to each other and that volley has the exact same amount of lead.

And each part could be made separately because of this, the king would make the barrels but local factories would make all the other parts. And if their tolerances were lax, so be it.

With the falling block rifle, the breach was much harder to forge, far more material had to be removed and back then removing metal was a truly arduous task because they didn't have the kind of cutting compounds, lathes, alloys we have today. and parts that interfaced needed proper tolerances or the gun would blow up, and few factories could produce parts to these tolerances which slowed the whole thing down to a crawl because error in all those tolerances compound. If the breach is 0.5mm too narrow on two faces, and the breach is 0.5mm too large, the parts don't fit, or they leave a gap and blow up.

So all things considered, you're better off with more men, cheaper muskets. and that's why the King of England just pulled a world-dominating army out of his arse.

>>63942688
The minnie ball deforms very easily and can tumble, shot is round, can't really deform, can't really tumble.

So while theoretically you could use a minnie ball, you were probably better off with wadding and round shot unless you were a sniper. it was only with breach loaders that you could load a bullet without deforming it, didn't need wadding,

>>63972936
The quality of powder isn't often considered. The musket is known for fouling, but that is because the powder was very poor. The British powder was shit and even they knew it, they got mauled by Turkish gunpowder infantry.

But that also means, inversely, that muskets could handle very poor powder, that was a feature of the musket. the whole barrel was enclosed so the fouling had no way of getting out and fouling the action, you could jam a wet rag down the barrel without damaging anything internally, they were proofed to a high tolerance because of the poor powder so the barrels were very heavy and you wouldn't low them up by accident.

Today a glock 19 can blow up if the powder is too hot, it's made to a lower proof than a musket because our ammo is standard. before proper powder standards, the musket was the gun which didn't kill the user

>>63983250
>shot is round, can't really deform
Round musketballs can and will deform and fragment.

>>63983299
not in relative terms, not compared to a minnie ball.

>>63983323

>>63955166
kys artistroon

>seething AIjeet

>>63985128

>>63985128

>>63969810
That game has the most insufferable player base to the point that Darkest Hour and Squad discords place bets on recently banned players if they are a regular on War of Rights or not cause they just can't shut the fuck up.

Having a officer who's in character is amazing though but again ruined by the usual rank and file talking over them or playing Sponge Bob music during charges.

Cheap, buck and ball was effective at engagement ranges most troops would be at, rifles needed more training to hit things past 100 meters.

>>63985128

>>63983264
Almost couldn't kill the user. If someone improperly loaded, there was still the chance of it blowing up. In that case it would completely be user error, though.

>>63989559

>>63941637 (OP)
that is a rifle musket not a musket

>>63983264
>glock 19 can blow up if the powder is too hot, it's made to a lower proof than a musket
nonsense babble

>>63983264
>Today a glock 19 can blow up if the powder is too hot, it's made to a lower proof than a musket because our ammo is standard. before proper powder standards, the musket was the gun which didn't kill the user
This is completely ridiculous and your understanding of guns and powder are those of a toddler.

Muskets have comparatively dogshit metallurgy and construction even to a Hi-Point C9, the musket can deal with retard amounts of powder because blackpowder is generally just going to be blackpowder.
You can make it cheap and rough, or take longer time and use nicer refined ingredients and put it together really well, but this is mostly only going to make a difference in the consistency of deflagration (thus accuracy), how cleanly it ends up burning (relatively speaking), and depending on if it's a handgun or a long gun, the difference between losing or gaining anywhere from 50fps to 200fps in speed at the very most.
The pressure curve is going to be just about the same with all blackpowders.

Smokeless gunpowder can be all sorts of different things, and generally old blackpowder guns do not tolerate them well. You CAN load something like a musket or cap and ball gun with smokeless, but you NEED to load it very light to account for the increased pressure, so it's always going to be much weaker than with blackpowder. Most people just suggest that you don't even bother with smokeless in blackpowder guns, because it's mostly gonna suck anyway.

The kind of powder you'd put in a 10mm Auto for a 180gr projectile doing +1350fps with a Glock 20 would fucking annihilate an old .44 caliber Army cap and ball gun.

>>63992376

>>63992376

>>63992376

>>63970782
it's not. they had breech loaders in the 1400s. richfags could always comission weird novelty breech loading guns and many of them did, through the centuries.

they just weren't usable in warfare. muzzle loaders permit much high chamber pressures and muzzle energies with the same technology. they're also far easier to produce and far less finnicky (for pre-metal cartridge muzzle loaders)

even the Dreyse needle gun, which is a bolt action rifle in every aspect except the cartridge design, could lose some engagements to muzzle loading minie rifles because it had much lower range and accuracy.

>>63942819
>>63943022
Minie ball molds aren’t that complicated.

>>63996441

>>63941658
50 thousand hall rifle’s were made

>>63970782
Prior to bullet casings breach loaders had a high failure rate due to gas escaping through leaks

>>63997912

>>63997912

>>63956452
A pace is two steps. For normal walking on open ground, that's 5 to 6 feet. 600 paces is closer to 1000-1200 yards.

>>64001473

>>64001473

>>64001473

>>63996441
That is infinitely more complex than a ball mould and have fun mass producing them in an era before machine tools

>>64006055

>>64006055

>>64006055

who keeps bumping this thread and then deleting their post and fucking why?

>>64010146

>>64001473
>A pace is two steps
Not in the last 2,000 years it hasn't

>>63941637 (OP)
Longbows were used into the 17th century. If it exists and works, it likely has some cost advantages compared to the newer thing.

>>64006055
>bongistani
opinion immediately discarded

>>64011803
Till 1590s. And English officers were begging for decades to dissolve archer corps.

>>63959912
Eh, a similar scenario happened in Korea during one of those 19th century Asia expeditions where US marines armed with bolt-actions engaged Korean forces armed with muskets and in spite of the fact every other advantage was stacked in the Koreans' favor (dug in, no logistics to worry about, numbers) the Koreans garrisons got shredded.

>>64012156

>>64012156

>>63941637 (OP)

There's a lot of well though out arguments in this thread... common sense and thinking has no place in the military. Think of the dumbest reason possible and you most likely have your answer.

Some rich and well connected guy's kid probably owned a company that manufactured muskets.

>>64015315

>>63965673
>point out that it's not a big deal at a hobbyist scale with electrical temperature control, but would have been problematic with the equipment of the day in the numbers needed for an army
>you show me a video with modern equipment and production at a hobbyist scale

Now show me a video of someone with a random alloy or pure(ish) lead casting those in a gang mold over a fire, as that's how it would have been done back then. Again, if you'd ever spent any time casting bullets, you'd know this already.

>>64016217

>>64016217

>>63942688
>no need for complex science and shit, just dirty trials
Welcome to ENJINIRREN.

>>64020266

>>64020266

>>64020266

It's all about (a) rate of fire and (b) fouling.

Due to the tolerances of the rifling, a muzzle-loading musket can be reloaded and shot around two to three times as fast as a muzzle-loading rifle. For infantry in the line of battle, this meant that the musket was actually a more effective weapon.

Secondly, the higher tolerances of the rifles meant that fouling with black powder was a much more significant problem. Every shot you take with a muzzle-loading black powder rifle makes it more and more difficult to reload due to fouling, until it becomes completely impossible to use until it's cleaned, which you can't really do in the middle of a battle. It would be normal to get to this point after only dozen shots, at which point the weapon is completely unusable until it's cleaned, which can't be odne in the middle of a battle. For a muzzle-loading musket though, a soldier can generally fire 60+ shots before fouling renders the weapon inoperable.

>>63996441
That's crazy complex for a non-industial nation to produce

>>64015315
Your ability to ignore everything and counter with "hurr retarded" isn't an indictment of anyone but you.

>>64026337

>>63941637 (OP)
Are you retarded? 200 years from now people will call our arms antiquated and obsolete and wonder why we didn't invented their level of tech sooner

>>63969635
Did you get that from a book by a jewish sounding guy? I'm not saying that as some /pol/ shit I remember an old napoleonic warfare book my grandfather had that I got from him and it covered that same kind of premise. That if you looked to the actual veterans of the Napoleonic Wars like that surgeon they found unless it was raining or storming a fortification bayonet charges never really happened. It was either:
>Those charged broke and ran rather than receive
or
>Those charging broke and fled because they got shot