Constitutional Law

Building a Williams Gun

The story is here. The Williams Gun was a Confederate creation. It was a rapid firing, carriage mounted, rifled gun of 1.5" bore. Its projectiles were gigantic Minie type ones, cast in lead, and explosive ones were made with a cavity for black powder and a nipple for percussion cap on the nose. (Safety was not a big concern in Civil War artillery). Its main purpose was long-range sniping at artillery limbers and caissons -- the explosive rounds would have done a good job of detonating those.

I found a record of one scoring a hit, in the surgical volume of the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. A sketch depicted a projectile that hit an officer's horse at the Seven Day's Battle -- it was a Minie type, 1.5" diameter, with a big cavity in the nose. The authors speculated that it might have come from a gigantic sniping rifle of unknown type. My guess is that the gun was being used for sniping at people, and so the crew omitted the explosive charge.

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on July 30, 2010 (boomark / email).