The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-23 00:00:00

UNITED STATE,S. ORDNANCE.

The following is the testimony of Norman Wiard
before the Joint Committee on Ordnance in answer
to a question by Senator Cameron. It bears out
the Joint .Committee of Coo 0-res in' their recent
• • t,
Report on
(-)rdnanee, which We kuttunarizA. It
must be accepted, we presume, as the testimony of
a rival inventor; but its value is shown by the
Report of the Committee above alluded to, which
will be found in our iksue of March 27.
". 1 am familiar with the calibres of our guns; and when
I relate some of the facts within my knowledge, I think
you will agree with me that our ordnance departments
have got our small arms, artillery, and guns into most
reprehensible confusion, for want of uniformity in calibre
and ammunition. The ordnance departments of France
and England have no greater diff..rences embodied in the
systems they have adopted than there is between the two
branches of our service. The calibres, models, chambers,
and ammunition of the navy are utterly unlike those
adopted for the army. The nave rifled 12-pounder boat
howitzer has a calibre of 3 4-10 inches, while the army
12-peunder rifled guns are of the calibres of 3 inches,
3 2-10 inches, 3 67-100 inches, and 3 81-10 U inches. The
navy 12-pounder has a parabolic form of chamber, while the
army gun has either no chamber er it is eyeisidal. The
navy 12-pounder sinooth-bore.. although of the same
calibre as the army gun, hes a different form of
chamber. Apparently each of these chambers has
been devsed to prevent the us of 'navy ammu-
nition in the army sun or army aininnnition in the
navy gun. The inoTlels of the two guns are entirely dif-
ferent. and neither will go on the other's carriage, the
army gun being fionisheo with trunnions and the navy
gun having the loop and loop-holt of the ()A earronade.
The sights aro of an entirely different kind in the two
guns, and so graduated as to make it impossib!e for a
navy gunner to use an army gun, or an artillerist of the
for an emergency—one bring
army to use a navy gun
graduated to seconds of time, and the other to degrees of
elevation. The 20-pounders and 30-pounders Of the:navy
are different' from the army guns of the same kind, the
a shark's mouth for the breeehing,
navy guns having
wlCelt is not on the army guns. The navy Dahlgren
20 pounder, 60-p-moder, tied 511-pounder are of a different
model, calibre, form of ellatnbsr, and kind of ritlina
from any other gun in the navy or army, alt purposely
different, 5t,,,i43-, to insure the use of it• certain kind
of projectile which Captain Dahlgren claimed to have
invented, being essent-aily the saute as the so-ealled Dyer
projectile, but which was found lasted), to have been
used and patented by others long before. The Dahlgren,
like the Dyer, was ebandoned after large numbers of
them had been produced. The Dahlgren 50-pounder has •
a calibre of 5 1-10th inches, as if the invsntor, from pau-
city of ideas, could only.produce a new diameter of calibre
hieh no other person had thought of. 'rho army 3-inch
gun, it has been said, was rifled in a peculiar way to adapt
it to the Dyer projectile, which, being condemned, it was
happily found could be us -el with the Hotchkiss projectile.
The navy _haves than, a GO-pounder Parrott, adopted, as
shown by the lucid explanation of Captain \Vise, Chief of
Ordnance, so as to have sonisthing between the Z:0-pounder
and the 100-pounder; and no other reason is given for its
adoption ! The navy has VIII inch, IXsinch, XI-inch,
and XIII-inch smooth-bores, as if the navy chose odd
numbers of inches for luck. The army smooth-bores
are 6-inch (32-pounders), 8-inch (64-pounders,
h and 10-
inch (130-pounders). The navy chose the old Roman
numerals to describe the calibre of their guns, probably
bemuse the army had some fanciful pre-emption right to
the more common figures. In the guns adopted and
actually issued to service, in the two 'branchee of the ser-
vice, there is not a single example of uniformity, in either
rifle or smooth-bore, in 20-calibre adopted of those below
the calibre of the 30-pounder. 'append a tabulated state-
ment of calibre models, weights, chambers and charges.
How long it has taken to complete organizations of
ordnance officers, educated at the public expense, ex-
perimenting, with the Treasury of the United States
to pay the bills ; what .the cost of the effort has been
in money ; bow much trcesure has been wasted in fur-
nishing the arms to the ext nt to which they have been
supplied after they were adopted; how much-life of citi-
zen soldiers and honour of the nation have been misdi-
rected and wasted, it is not within my power to even esti-
mate. 1 am, however, confident that no example of such
imbecility of invention and paucity of practical results ever
before attended an effort conducted with so much flourish,
on so grand and expensive a scale, with objects so im-
portant, and where the class of persons charged with so
important a branch of the public service for so many
critical years have brought their departments into such
confusion. They are entitled to the execrations of every
citizen, and would receive them, foe, were the facts known.
The calibres of small-arms and the ammunition for them
—although it would seem impossible, so minute must be
the differences where the greatest is ..70 of an inch—are as
diverse as in the field, siege; and heavy guns, and similar
want of uniformity exists. lii order to find divisions for
sufficient diversity, the dimensions of calibre aro given
in hundredths or thousandths of an inch, and outsinuskets
and carbines alone range from .40 to .69. We have an
Enfield rifle of .57 and a Springfield of .58, but Ms instru-
ments common in the hands of inspectors or soldiers for
determining the difference: Hence, during the war, the
army has frequently
•ound• itself on the field of battle
facing the enemy with ammunition oneehundredth of an
inch too large to be inserted in the gem. About 20 dif-
ferent calibres of ammunition were furnished the Burnside
expedition, from .44 to .69 ; and, lest one transport carry-
ing all of one calibre should be lost, each vessel had to be
supplied with an assorted cat go made up of certain pro-
portions of the whole. It was the same.. with the Banks
expedition, making it necessary to stow away-the cargo
with consider;►blo skill,
so that any of the various kinds
could be got at upon the recurrence of an emergency —a
preliminary caution likely to be overlooked in the hurry
of the embarkation of an army ; the consequences of neg-
lecting which—end ne cautionary order by the Ordnance
Department is given on such an occasion—are easy to con-
ceive. A great many hundred thousands of Springfield
musket are now to be sacrificed to uniformity of calibre.
The Ordnance Department in this, as in the question
whether it was better to have breech or muzzle-loaders,
were undecided during the war, only concluding their
cogitations when the emergency had passed. In 1861, when
every tyro knew that a breech-loader was best—in fact,
nobcdy but a-n idiot of an calor of our Ordnance Depart-
ment would: _ever decide otherwise—ethe thief of old-
fleece Of the Unitsd States held and advocated that " a
ll"pu's Ferry smooth-bore muzzle-loading gun, with
buck and bell;
w"s'ille best arm that could be placed in
the hands of a: soldier ;" and asserted would have no such
gun as a breech-loader in service, because' it would re-
quire a mule to carry the ammunition for each soldier—it
would be shot away so fast! Now it is proposed to alter
all the Springfield rifles on hand to breech-loaders ; and
in order to get .uniformity of calibre. i.e., to have the
musket conform to the calibre of the carbine, the barrel
is to be reamed out, another barrel instated, the new
lhmnn it to bored out, straightened, and rifled; the
breech of the barrel is to be bedeviled by the insertion of
a complication of parts, .and thus a new gun is to be
mad.: But, gentlemen, this will cost more than to make
a new gun ; and that is not ail, for although it is an ap-
proach to uniformity of calibre, it brings no nearer to
uniformity of ammunition than W 43 were before, because
the carbine charge is not •sufficient for the musket; and
when-this improvement is adopted wo shall have another
slight diversity, as in the case of the Enfield of .57 and
the Springfield of .58, for the chamber of the carbine is
not long enough for the musket cartridge, and the car-
bine charge is not Leavy enough for the breech-I.oading
musket.