Machine Guns  "A Rain Of Death"

The Civil War brought many innovations to warfare, not the least of which were rapid-fire weapons that developed into what are today known as machine guns. Several different types of rapid-firing "ultimate weapons" were designed and produced throughout the war, although few saw much actual service.

As many as 50 of the .52-caliber breech-loading Billinghurst-Requa batteries, as they were called, were produced for the Union, and some were used in battles, though with limited effect. This gun used a light carriage to mount 25 rifled barrels side by side. When loaded, primed, and aimed, the gun was set off by a lanyard, and the barrels fired in sequence with a ripping sound.

The "Union" gun, or "coffee-mill gun" as it was also called, was operated by a crank. A hopper that held .58-caliber reusable steel bullets that fed into a rotating drum from which the bullets were mechanically loaded and fired and the cases ejected. Because the barrel became overheated from the rapid rate of fire, each gun was supplied with an extra barrel to be used while the other cooled. President Lincoln was so impressed with a demonstration of the coffee-mill gun in 1861 that he ordered 10 on the spot, at $1,300 each. These carriage-mounted weapons saw little service and were of little practical value.

The best machine gun produced during the war was the Gatling gun, which was carriage-mounted and crank-operated like the Union gun but featured six rotating barrels and could fire .58-caliber rounds 150 times a minute. The Union army bought no Gatling guns during the war, but privately purchased ones may have been used.

The single-barreled Williams gun was an innovative rapid-fire weapon developed in the South. This gun was actually a hand-cranked light artillery piece that fired 1.46-caliber rounds. It was the only one of the rapid-fire arms to utilize the gases from the fired round to help operate the mechanism.

Fascinating Fact:  Origen Vandenburg, a former general in the New York state militia, designed a volley-fire gun with anywhere from 85 to 451 barrels. When the Union showed no interest in his weapons, he sold them to the Confederacy.


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