Skip to main content
Like
Create new Glog
previous
next
Email share
13 views | 0 likes | 0 reposts
The advancments in weaponry was the most affective advancment to the average soldier. During the war’s first year, most soldiers on both sides carried the old smoothbore muskets, which were slow and difficult to reload and only had an effective firing range of eighty yards or less. The next year, the Union began supplying its troops with rifles, which were quicker and easier to reload and put a spin on a bullet, increasing its accuracy and firing range. By 1863, most men on both sides had the new rifles. Another improvement was a new bullet, called the minie ball, which was much easier to load into a rifle than the older type of bullets. The new guns improved a soldier’s fighting effectiveness. Minie balls caused more widespread wounds and tissue damage than the older bullets and Civil War surgeons had a harder time dealing with these more extensive injuries.
Weapons (Guns)
Technology (The First Modern War)
By: Cameron Granger
Torpedo (Weapons)
The South made extensive use of torpedoes, which were not the self-propelled missiles of today, but more like mines. Some torpedoes could be detonated electronically when an enemy vessel neared.
Submarines
The Confederates used small steam-powered submarines, after the biblical youth who battled the giant Goliath and the forty-foot Hunley, which was operated by a hand cranked propeller, turned by eight men. In February 1864, the Hunley sank the USS Housatonic. Shortly thereafter the Hunley sank. The Union army also attempted to use submarines, commissioning the forty-seven foot Alligator. The Alligator was initially propelled by oars, but these proved unwieldy and were replaced with a screw propeller. The Union submarine did not prove to be an effective weapon and it sank off Cape Hatteras in 1863.
