Oh, how many wonderful discoveries we have
Prepare the spirit of enlightenment, And experience, son of difficult mistakes, And a genius, a friend of paradoxes, And chance, god is an inventor.
A. S. Pushkin
Weapons from museums. In front of the mayor's office of the city of Athens, Georgia, USA, stands an unusual cannon from the American Civil War. It is a double-barreled cannon, but unlike other multi-barreled cannons of the past, the double-barreled gun from Athens was designed to fire two cannonballs connected to each other by a long iron chain. The two barrels spread slightly apart from each other, so that when they fired at the same time, the cannonballs had to spread out to the sides for the entire length of the chain and mow down the enemy soldiers like a scythe of wheat. In any case, it should have been in the opinion of a man named John Gilland, who was a dentist by profession, but was in the local militia.
Gilland believed that weapons of such lethal power could serve the interests of protecting his community and help the Confederate army. He managed to interest several wealthy citizens of Athens with his idea, who gave money to make a weapon made by the Athens Steam Company. The barrel was cast in one piece and had two bore bores next to each other. The caliber of each was just over three inches, with the barrels slightly diverging to the sides. Each barrel had its own ignition hole, but both barrels were also connected by a common ignition hole, so which of the barrels was set on fire did not matter. All the same, both barrels fired at the same time.
Gilland decided to test the finished cannon near Athens, in a field near Newton Bridge. However, during the trials, things did not go as planned. However, this happens often with inventors. Life very rudely invades their intricate plans and destroys their most beautiful dreams.
So, when Gilland fired from his cannon for the first time, for some reason the two barrels fired not simultaneously, but with a delay, because of which the cannonballs, chained by one long chain, began to circle randomly across the field, plowed about an acre of land, destroyed the corn field and mowed many seedlings at the edge of the field before the chain broke and both balls flew in two different directions.
During the second shot, the cannonballs flew towards the pine forest and left a gaping hole in it, as if, according to one of the eyewitnesses, "a narrow cyclone or a giant mower had passed."
The third shot was the most unsuccessful. This time, the chain broke immediately. As a result, one cannonball flew off to the side and fell into a neighboring house, from which a pipe was knocked down, but the second … hit a cow, killing it instantly.
Incredibly, Gilland considered his trials to be successful. After all, everything happened as he expected. It was not his fault that the chain was fragile! He tried to sell the gun to the Confederate army's arsenal, but the arsenal commander found it unusable and sent it back to Athens. Gilland persistently tried to offer his invention to other military leaders, but was refused everywhere.
In the end, it was decided to use the gun as a signal and leave it in Athens to warn the townspeople of the advancing Yankees. After the end of the war, the city sold its double-barreled cannon, but bought it back in the 1890s and installed it in front of the mayor's office as a local landmark. After all, there is no such thing anywhere else, not in the USA, not in the whole world! And she still looks north - as a symbolic defiance of the southerners' foes!
But the gun of Captain David Williams, who also developed it for the army of the Confederate Southern States, was more fortunate. It was a one-pound rapid-fire cannon, which was put into service in the same 1861 year.
The Williams cannon had a steel barrel 4 feet (1.2 m) long and a 1.57 inch (about 4 cm) caliber. The maximum range to which it could send its projectile was 2000 meters, the aiming range was half as much - 1000 meters. The bolt was opened and closed by turning the lever on the right side of the breech of the gun. In this case, the charge with the projectile was simultaneously sent to the barrel. At the same time, the drummer's spring was cocked, which, of course, was very convenient. Well, the shot itself was fired with the same handle as it moved forward and downward.
However, the loading of the gun was not mechanized. It was still manual and, moreover, separate: that is, after the bolt was opened, the loader put a projectile on its tray, then a powder cap made of waxed paper, and then put the capsule on the ignition tube. All these operations slowed down the firing process in order, however, as tests showed, a well-trained calculation, consisting of a shooter, a loader and a carrier of ammunition, when firing with a constant sight, could develop an unprecedented rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute. And this despite the fact that the rate of fire of muzzle-loading guns of the same caliber did not exceed then two rounds per minute.
It is clear that it was impossible to sustain such a high rate of fire for a long time with manual loading. The crew, of course, got tired, the ignition tube was clogged with carbon deposits, it had to be cleaned, and the gun itself became very hot from frequent firing. Therefore, it also had to be cooled, for which purpose it was poured with water from a bucket. But when repelling enemy attacks, it was Williams' guns that were very convenient.
However, they also had another very serious drawback that prevented their wide distribution during the war: they were difficult to manufacture and, as a result, their price was very high. Its cost was $ 325, while a conventional infantry capsule rifle cost only about three dollars then! Therefore, for the money, for which it was possible to buy just one such quick-fire, it would be possible to purchase weapons for more than a hundred soldiers.
It is clear that the command of the Confederate army, under all circumstances, simply could not help but like it, and, delighted with its firepower, already in September 1861 made an order for a six-gun battery. A year later, on May 3, 1862, a battery of guns, commanded by Captain Williams himself, was already involved in the Battle of Seven Pines. The debut of the gun was very successful, so new orders followed from the army. The data in different sources differ, but it is believed that the southerners managed to make from 40 to 50 Williams-designed guns. They distinguished themselves in many battles, inflicted serious losses on the enemy, but due to the fact that there were very few of them, they did not have a noticeable effect on the course of the war.
So the civil war in the United States, like, indeed, all other wars, most significantly moved forward military affairs and contributed to the development of industry as a whole. Moreover, much of what was previously proposed in peacetime has not been embodied in metal, but more technologically advanced and easily feasible solutions have appeared in the war years. For example, the patent of R. T. Loper from 1844 for a tool made of a variety of steel rings. To some extent, this was a reanimation of the design of 15th century guns, but at a higher level. The idea was not embodied in metal, since a very high precision of the manufacture of these rings and the shirt itself, into which they would be inserted, were required. Speaking in Russian, it wasn’t worth the candle!
In 1849, a similar design, only this time a breech-loading gun, was proposed by B. Chamber. Also a barrel of separate rings, assembled together and with a screw bolt in the breech.
The weapon never saw the light, but it was on the battlefields of the Civil War that the piston breech of Whitworth's design was tested, which stood on his guns with a hexagonal bore.
Here, however, all the designers of new guns were surpassed by R. P. Parrott, who received a patent for his gun on October 1, 1861. Without further ado, he simply pulled a metal pipe (casing) onto the breech of the then gun (it does not matter, smooth-bore or rifled!), Which immediately sharply reduced the likelihood of a barrel rupture in this part of it. Here in the muzzle, let it break there, God bless her. And it got to the point that the crews of the guns simply sawed off the torn part of the barrel and … fired on!
However, the design of Thomas Jackson Rodman's Columbiades was even simpler, although it had a technological zest. The barrels were cast from ordinary cast iron, but at the same time they were cooled from the inside and heated from the outside, which made it possible to obtain a very strong crystal structure in the finished product. Moreover, in the course of time, they thought of inserting liners into the channel of smooth-bore guns and turning the guns into rifled ones!
It is interesting that immediately after the end of the war, a book was published in the United States, which summarized almost all the experience of creating and using artillery pieces during this war. Descriptions, statements of experts and even discussions on certain issues - everything got on its pages, including very interesting graphic schemes of guns that appeared or were offered at that particular time, that is, from 1861 to 1865, with the main attention being paid to heavy guns. shooting at armored ships.
And, finally, this fantastic project: the "accelerating" multi-chamber cannon of the American Azel Storr Lyman, who received federal patent No. 14568 for it on February 3, 1857. This gun had several powder chambers, the charges in which were ignited sequentially.
From 1857 to 1894, Lyman, along with Colonel Jace Haskell, even managed to build several of these multi-chamber guns, although they used ordinary black powder. True, these guns did not show a special increase in the initial velocity of the projectile. So, for a 6-inch (152-mm) gun in 1870, the projectile speed was about 330 m / s, and during the tests in 1884 - 611 m / s, that is, only 20% higher than in "normal" guns of the same caliber, with a disproportionately greater mass and undoubted technical complexity of a multi-chamber gun. So the project was not needed and soon everyone forgot about it.
But the idea is not dead! She again embodied in metal, only in Nazi Germany, where on the banks of the Pas-de-Calais the Germans even began to build a super-powerful multi-chamber cannon "Centipede" (or "High pressure pump") for shelling London, and even not one, but in the amount of 50 pieces. The allies, of course, bombed the stationary positions of this battery with super-powerful Tallboy bombs, but its lightweight version even managed to shoot at Luxembourg, which was occupied by American troops. Here is such a curious zigzag of technical creativity!
