American Rifle - Alexander Rose [45]
The other worry was largely philosophical, but it would continue to bedevil rapid-firing weapons for many decades to come. And that, in Wadsworth’s words, was “whether the facility of [rapid] firing will not occasion an extravagant use and waste of ammunition and whether the means of transporting all the ammunition which will be required can be obtained in actual service—These are consequences to be taken into view before we can safely decide upon such an important alteration in our military system.” As it was, just test-firing the four Halls at the armory according to regulations would require no fewer than 25,000 rounds—“a piece of extravagance,” opined the thrifty Wadsworth.40
Hall’s very success in finally overcoming the rifle’s traditional inferiority in rate of fire might actually, in other words, turn out to be a fatal liability. As Wadsworth said, soldiers armed with rapid-firing rifles would be tempted to replace their weapon’s parsimonious single-shot accuracy with musket-style wastage, leading to a potential shortage of ammunition, which was by no means cheap or particularly easy to come by in the required quantities. If use of the rifles was restricted to specialized units of sharpshooters, ammunition costs could be regulated, but issuing such an advanced weapon to small numbers of troops made little sense while regular infantry was forced to make do with muskets.
From the army’s point of view, such a result would be unacceptable. While muskets were prodigious consumers of lead and powder, officers strictly controlled the precise rate of fire along their section of line and tamped down on excessive use. If, say, the usual rate of musket-fire was three shots a minute, and the addition of a Hall mechanism raised that figure to six, how long would the men’s fire discipline hold? And how great would be the concordant diminution of respect for their commanding officer, now reduced to an impotent figurehead? Would the regular army turn into nothing but an undisciplined rabble of militia, as Anthony Wayne and others had feared?
On a broader level, one had to query whether switching the army over from flintlock muzzle-loaders to Hall-enabled breech-loaders was worth it in the foreseeable future. Undoubtedly, nightmarish logistical, financial, and organizational problems loomed in Wadsworth’s imagination. As always with a radically new technology, decision-makers are confronted with a set of unpleasant trade-offs that often result in sticking with the old system simply because it is easier that way.
Hall, in this respect, was fortunate in having a staunch defender in George Bomford, who was certain to inherit the chieftainship of Ordnance once Wadsworth retired (as he would in 1821); what was more, every test the government armorers threw at the breech-loader confirmed its superiority over its competitors. In November 1818 a preliminary trial comparing a Hall rifle to a Model 1817 army rifle found that no difference in accuracy was discernable (as was only to be expected) but that when it came to celerity in loading, the difference was startling: the Hall rifle was twice as rapid. Durability-wise, it had been assumed that the breech receiver would not withstand severe punishment, but the armorers simulated “a fatigue at least equal to what those pieces would be exposed to in 14 or 15 campaigns, and probably more than they would ever be required to undergo” by firing the Hall thousands of times without incident. It had also been widely predicted that troops would find the Halls confusing and difficult to load, but that expectation was quickly dashed by the testers, who reported the opposite. The testers’ “only objection to these [Hall] arms proceeds