Written at the end of April 1861.  
From the English.  
[“The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire,” No. 35, May 4, 1861]

The recent competition between Lieutenant Wallinger and the sergeants of the Royal Engineers, reported in our issues of April 6 and 13, has again directed public attention to the merits of the Lancaster rifle, particularly as an army weapon. In the Chatham contest, the sergeants fired with the regular .577 oval-bored Lancaster rifle of the Royal Engineers, costing about £4. To compare such a weapon with the highly-developed Whitworth rifle, which costs about £25, is obviously inappropriate. A comparison between the Lancaster and the ordinary Enfield rifle would be more apt, since the difference in cost of these two weapons is not very great and the price of the Lancaster rifle could probably be equalised with that of the Enfield rifle if it were manufactured in equally large quantities in the government factories. The question remains whether it is a better rifle. A correspondent of the “London Review” answers this in the affirmative, supporting it from general principles and also judging from existing experience. We wish to draw attention to the following passages from his article on this subject:

“The law that governs accurate rifle shooting, the practice of shooting, is very simple. It is only necessary to establish an equation between the length and the diameter of the bullet and to impart to this bullet a corresponding rotary motion about its longitudinal axis, in order to arrive at a result of infallible accuracy, irrespective of the precise system by which the rotation or revolving motion is produced. That is to say, however many grooves may be cut in the interior of the

barrel in any form, or no grooves may be present — the accuracy will be the same in every case, so long as the equation is maintained and the bullet receives its own rotary motion. In considering which weapon is most suitable for the soldier, however, the first condition to be taken into account is that it must not exceed a certain weight and a certain measurement, and that it can be easily loaded and easily cleaned. It follows from this that, for easy loading, the friction surface during loading should be as small as possible, and that in choosing the form to be given to the grooves, all edges should be avoided as far as possible. We know of no other form that fulfils this condition better than the oval spiral, since in this form there are only two friction surfaces during loading and no other form permits such easy cleaning with the necessarily scanty means available to the soldier during active service. This view appears to have been confirmed by the experience of the Indian campaign and by the trials at Malta, Gibraltar and other foreign stations. In India, the Enfield rifle is said to have failed completely in some critical phases of the campaign. Newspapers, private letters and official reports abounded with complaints; yet with the same ammunition, under the same circumstances, the rifles with oval bore, with which the Royal Engineers were armed, always performed their service to the satisfaction of officers and men.

If the Enfield rifle were made with a smaller calibre and a longer bullet used, its effect, compared with that of the Whitworth rifle, is equally good; but the Enfield army rifle, as it now is, must be regarded as an attempt to fulfil impossible conditions. The officers entrusted with the construction of this weapon were not permitted to reduce the calibre of the weapon below a given limit. Since then, the calibre of .577 inch has been fixed as the standard. As a consequence of this excessive calibre, an inherent defect appeared — it is difficult to secure a perfect, infallible, hermetic fit of bullet and interior of the barrel when the ball is driven out of the barrel by the ignition of the powder. Let us examine the actual result which the Enfield rifle achieves with its imperfect conditions. The weight of the bullet is fixed at 530 grains, the powder charge at 70 grains, the calibre, as before stated, at .577 inch. Now the effect of 70 grains of powder acting on the large cross-section of the bullet cannot, and does not, develop sufficient pressure to force the bullet into the grooves by adequate expansion in every case. Careful experiments show that not 10 per cent. of the bullets are uniformly and completely expanded. Sometimes one groove is particularly indented, sometimes two, and only one-tenth of all the bullets fired are completely expanded; from this results the inaccurate shooting with the army rifle of .577-inch calibre.

The best conditions for accurate shooting with rifles that are rifled in any form can now be described as follows: calibre .5 inch, length of bullet 1.12 inches, one turn, or twist, in 18 inches, powder

charge 90 to 100 grains (No. 6), the same bullet weight, namely 530 grains. The force applied under these conditions to the cross-section of the bullet is sufficient for a certain, infallible fitting of the bullet into the bore, and this occurs in the following manner: The reduced diameter of the bore results in a longer bullet, and no wooden plug, as in the army bullets, is necessary to expand the metal. The bullet is therefore a homogeneous body with a length of about three diameters. Upon ignition, the expansive force of the powder acts first on the end or the rear part of the bullet (a), and the transmission of the propelling force, although occurring almost instantaneously, is nevertheless subject to the vis inertiae (force of inertia) of the metallic mass of the bullet, which acts throughout the whole length (from a to b) and back through the opposite air resistance in the barrel.

It is clear at first glance that the resistance manifests itself in the middle part of the bullet as the part of greatest resistance (c), and consequently the bullet would there be easily shortened by a quite simple expansion, say by about one-tenth of an inch, whereby the central part would be sufficiently enlarged in diameter to adapt itself hermetically to the form of the interior of the barrel, whatever that form may be.

When these more perfect conditions are fulfilled, there is not one faulty expansion in 500 cases, the bullet always takes the form of the grooves, and from this result most excellent shooting results.

These remarks apply to rifled weapons of every construction. What is achieved by these favourable conditions in the rifled weapon, and why do they contribute to more precise shooting? We have shown how the interior of the barrel is completely filled by the bullet and shall now endeavour to demonstrate the results arising from this. One of the main tasks in the construction of a rifled weapon is to obtain a flat trajectory, that is, the curve which the bullet describes in flight must approach as close as possible to a straight line. As a necessary prerequisite for this, a high velocity is absolutely required, so that the influence of gravitation on the flight of the bullet is reduced to a minimum. The reduction of the calibre now yields the first result, and by using a larger powder charge for the small cross-section of the bullet, the highest velocity and the most precise results are achieved.

As regards the methods of rifling barrels, it follows from what has already been said that, as long as the bullet receives the necessary twist on leaving the barrel, it does not matter how the rotation is produced, whether by a hexagonal bore, as in the Whitworth rifle, an oval one, as in the Lancaster rifle, or by three grooves, as in the Enfield rifle. Nor is a specific number of grooves necessary, for if one groove grips the bullet sufficiently to turn it, the necessary prerequisite is given. However, the methods of cutting the grooves are subject to defects which can easily be shown. When the grooves are cut with sharp edges, a loss of power occurs during expansion, both through the filling of the edges and through the propelling gases probably escaping there. — Moreover, every edge in the barrel signifies a disadvantage; thus, with any number of grooves, the same defects appear in proportion to their depth. Therefore, the oval spiral of the Lancaster rifle is, theoretically, at present the best form, to which the bullet adapts itself easily with very little expansion.

That the Lancaster rifle must have great merits is evident from the fact that, before the adoption of the Enfield model, the Lancaster rifle, which then competed with it, was preferred by four different committees, independently of one another. It was submitted to the Commander-in-Chief for approval and sent by him to Hythe for final decision. The first report of the officers of the infantry school of musketry there was very favourable; the second report decided in favour of the Enfield rifle. As the reason for this decision, it was then stated that the bullets “scattered”. Later, however, the following facts are said to have leaked out: The first 10,000 bullets of the Pritchett ammunition with which the first trials were conducted had the correct standard diameter. With these cartridges, brilliant shooting was performed. In the second experiment, not the same ammunition was used. The former had been manufactured in 1853, the latter in 1854; the experimenting officers at Hythe had no idea of the difference in the ammunition, as they had not been informed that the bullets manufactured in 1854 had a diameter .007 inch smaller than the ammunition of 1853.

This fact was not discovered until a year and a half after the final decision in favour of the Enfield rifle, when Colonel (then Captain) Fitzroy Somerset tested the model of the carbine with oval bore of the Royal Engineers. It is easy to see that, with the reduced diameter of the Pritchett bullet, which was smaller than the actual standard specification, it would in many cases, especially when the lead was excessively hard, leave the barrel without having been set in rotary motion, that is, it would not expand enough to fill the interior of a Lancaster or any other rifle.

Few, we believe, doubt that the Whitworth rifle is too costly for use in the army and requires more careful treatment than can be guaranteed in active service. The trials should therefore be carried out in each case with the Lancaster or Enfield rifle, or with other models that correspond to the rough treatment of war.

This, however, cannot be accomplished by shooting competitions, but by shooting from a fixed rest, with equal powder charge and with bullets of equal weight and casting, so that all conditions are equal and the testing applies only to the respective merits of the weapons themselves.

The preceding remarks refer to two different questions: 1. What is the best proportion between the diameter and the length of the bullet when fired from any rifle? 2. What are the advantages of the Lancaster rifle, of the oval-bored rifling?

As regards the first question, we are far from agreeing with the author that the proportions of his best bullet are to be preferred to all others. The rifles that have hitherto achieved the best results – the Swiss and the Whitworth – both have a smaller calibre than 0.5 inch and a relatively greater bullet length. We cannot, however, enter here into a discussion of a topic of so general a nature.

As regards the second question, we cannot see any convincing proof adduced by the author even for a superiority of the Lancaster rifle over the Enfield rifle. That the carbines of the engineer troops have failed less often than the Enfield rifles of the infantry is easily explained by the fact that in every army the infantry is a hundred times more numerous than the engineer soldiers; that the latter have not even used their carbines once when the line troops have used their rifles a hundred times, because engineer troops have other tasks than acting as infantry.

That a long and heavy expanding bullet, hollowed out at the rear end, can be made so that it takes almost any form of rifling with a full charge is proved by the example of the Whitworth rifle; here the required expansion is exceptionally great, and yet the bullet takes the hexagonal form at the rear part. Undoubtedly, therefore, such a bullet can be made which expands sufficiently to fill oval rifling, if the difference of the two diameters is not too great. But why in this respect the carbine of the engineer troops should be better than the Enfield rifle is more than we can understand. The ideal bullet of our author has absolutely nothing to do with this carbine – it would not fit it. If our author himself considers a stronger charge of 90-100 grains of powder necessary when reducing the calibre, so that his bullet completely takes the oval rifling, we are of the opinion that this amounts to a tacit admission that the present charge of 70 grains does not always guarantee a full expansion of the bullet in the oval rifling of the engineer troops’ carbine. Our author does not say what should happen with the increased recoil at the stronger charge; we know, however, that the 80 to 90 grains in the Whitworth rifle produce a not very pleasant strength of recoil, which, in rapid firing, very soon impairs the certainty of aim.

The unusually good results obtained with the carbine of the engineer soldiers at the competition in Chatham, as well as some extremely good shooting results by private individuals with Lancaster rifles, which are occasionally mentioned in the press, make it seem desirable to re-examine the performance of the expanding rifle with oval rifling and its suitability as a military weapon. For our part, we believe that defects will be found in it too, and that the principle of rifling in army rifles is in fact a very secondary matter. Instead of debating such trivial things about the Enfield rifle, why not come straight to the main point and say that its greatest and most important defect is its too large calibre? Change this and one will find that all other improvements are incidental.

F. E.