American Rifle - Alexander Rose [99]
Plevna and 30,000 Russian casualties demonstrated the superiority of American armaments to an astonished world. Before the Civil War the great majority of American weapons shipped abroad had been Colt revolvers, but the carnage inflicted by the Winchester repeaters, Peabody-Martini single-shots, and UMC/Winchester cartridges (in addition to the hard-earned American reputation for delivering high-quality merchandise on time and on budget) helped boost foreign demand to unprecedented levels. Between 1867 and 1880 U.S. companies sold close to $100 million worth of weaponry and ammunition to eager foreign customers, close to $2 billion at today’s prices.99 The positive effect on the balance of trade of this influx of money and credit helped lay the foundations of American economic power over the coming century.
It could not have come at a better time for Winchester. Between 1868 and 1872 domestic sales had been buoyant, but in 1873 a national depression lasting until about 1879 was hurting manufacturers in every industry. To stimulate demand at home, Winchester had been forced to slash prices: the cost of a Winchester ’73 nearly halved from $50 in 1874 to $28 six years later, and for the Model 1876 Winchester the company was never able to charge more than $32.100 The foreign deals certainly helped Winchester, and other gun-makers, reduce their surpluses and stabilize prices while simultaneously serving as portable advertisements for U.S. manufacturing prowess.101 Three years after the battle Winchester died a happy man.
Military observers drew conflicting lessons from the Plevna fight. Advocates of the repeater pointed to the Winchesters’ lethality at close range while conceding that success was contingent on having hundreds of millions of cartridges available to feed their greedy maws. Alternatively, one could highlight the accuracy of the single-shots’ long-range fire, an advantage that broke the enemy’s spirit and disrupted his assaults before they came anywhere near bayonet range. The Winchesters, according to this interpretation, merely mopped up already demoralized troops. In many respects, this debate echoed the older one between supporters of rapid-firing muskets sweeping the enemy’s ranks at one hundred yards or so, and those who preferred to rely on riflemen’s ability to hit their targets dead-on many hundreds of yards away.
The pity of it all was that there seemed to be no right answer, no obviously correct lesson to learn. Or perhaps there was: combine the virtues of accuracy and firepower in a single infantry weapon rather than emphasizing one or the other. Easier said than done, as the United States Army was finding out.
The Springfield Model 1873
The Springfield Model 1873
Chapter 6
THE ARMY OF MARKSMEN
AND THE SOLDIER’S FAITH
Officially, at the close of the Civil War and for decades afterward, the U.S. Army was committed to the single-shot rifle. Though many officers in the field profoundly disagreed with the policy and purchased their own repeaters, it remained a fact nonetheless that every single infantry recruit was issued with a standard Springfield rifle. The Ordnance Department said they must be, and the Ordnance Department made the rules. The department’s creed was based on one unshakable conviction: that the American soldier was the finest marksman on earth. He did not require a repeater because he hit what he aimed at—with a single, lethal shot.
If anyone disagreed, the department would recite the figures favorably comparing American hit rates with European and British ones. As the experience of the Civil War testified, however, these figures were severely flawed. True, generally speaking and averaged out, American soldiers really were superior to their overseas equivalents,