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Title:GUN, GATLING -  GATLING RAPID-FIRE GUN MODEL 1876 .45 SN# 77
Maker/Manufacturer:GATLING, RICHARD J.
Date of Manufacture:
Eminent Figure:
Catalog Number:SPAR 5614
Measurements:OL: BL:

Object Description:

GATLING RAPID-FIRE GUN MODEL 1876 .45 SN# 77
Manufactured by Colt, Hartford, Ct.

Listed on records as M1872.

Listed on loan to GE in 1961. Used in training film on the Vulcan.
Serial number corresponds to M1874.

1909 Catalog #11002 - "Gatling Gun. Cal. 45. Mod. 1872. Ten barrels. Metallic cartridges. Mounted on wooden tripod."

Notes: "One of the great failures of the Union Army in the Civil War was not using the arms technology which was available at the time. For rifles, Colt's was sidetracked with the Model 1855 Revolving Rifle, which had shortcomings as an infatuate weapon and was not pursued after the war. However, there were breechloading and even repeating rifle systems which could have been produced in quantity as against single-shot muzzleloaders. There were problems such as providing a better self-contained cartridge, but there seems to be no reason why these could not have been overcome if the government had established a research and development branch to work in cooperation with private industry. This is the procedure which produced such amazingly successful results in the recent Gulf War with Iraq.
This point is even stronger in that there were practical, if not fully developed machine guns available at the beginning of the Civil War. There may be justice to the claim by Professor Robert V. Bruce in 'Lincoln And The Tools of War," that the adoption of these guns, as urged by Abraham Lincoln, could have shortened the war and the United States would have had a President McClellan or Burnside instead of a President Grant....
The third design was ultimately successful, and Colt's was brought in after the Civil War for its manufacture, which it continued up to 1911. This was the Colt Gatling Gun, invented by Richard Jordan Gatling, a successful inventor of farm machinery. Known as Dr. Gatling because he had studied medicine for two years after a bout with smallpox, he explained in a letter how he came to invent his gun, as follows: 'It may be interesting to you to know how I came to invent the gun which bears my name; I will tell you. In 1861, during the opening events of the war (residing at the time in Indianapolis, Ind.) I witnessed almost daily the departure of troops to the front and the return of the wounded, sick and dead. The most of the latter lost their lives, not in battle, but by sickness and exposure incident to the service. It occurred to me if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished. I thought over the subject and finally this idea took practical form in the invention of the Gatling Gun."
Like other inventors, Gatling had little success during the Civil War in overcoming General Ripley's opposition to new products. However, he succeeded in having the Cincinnati Type Foundry Works build 13 of his guns in 1863 and sold 10 of these to General Butler, who used his own money for the purchase. Unfortunately, Butler was not a good battlefield tactician and the men in his command, as Grant approached Richmond, were bottled up on a peninsula along the James River. However, he was able to use the guns with some effect later at the siege of Petersburg. In the meantime, the remaining three Gatling guns were put to good use in New York City, in the Draft Riot of 1863. As nearly 50,000 protesters rampaged through the city, the guns were posted along the entrances to 'The New York Times' building, and this kept the rioters from attacking without firing a shot.
The gun worked by a group of up to 10 barrels being turned around a central draft by means of a hand crank. There were corresponding chambers at the back of the gun, each containing its own firing pin mechanism. There were helical grooves in the breechblock such that, as it turned, each chamber would successively receive a cartridge form a drum or vertical stacking tube above the gun, the firing pin would Gatling contracted with Colt's - At first the cartridges used were not self-contained but had separate percussion caps. In 1863, however, as .50 caliber centerfire rifle cartridges were developed, the gun was adapted to use these more efficient loads. The Army finally took an interest and a series of trials placed an order with Gatling for 100 guns, divided between .50 caliber and a larger 1-inch caliber for canister shot. Needing a large, established gun manufacturer, Gatling contracted with Colt's to produce the guns.
A number of Gatlings were used in the Indian Wars. There is some opinion that if Custer had brought along Gatlings, which were available to his command, his massacre might have been avoided. However, the opposite opinion is that the guns and their equipment would have been too cumbersome for the mission he was ordered to make, and the number of Native Americans he encountered was so large that it would not have been possible to deploy Gatlings effectively.
Gatling gins came into their own spectacularly at San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. A group of Gatlings was deployed in effect as artillery providing essential close support for Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders and the other American units making the successful attack on Kettle and San Juan Hill.
A series of improvements was made up until the turn of the century. A particularly interesting model is the Bulldog, produced in only a small quantity in which the barrels are entirely encased in a brass housing, apparently intended for police work.
The Navy, which purchased a number of Gatling guns for installation on its warships, encouraged Colt's patenting in 1893 of an electric drive for the Gatling gun, with a capacity of 3,000 rounds per minute. However, the Gatling gun was declared obsolete by the Army in 1911, and nothing more was done with the concept until 1945. In that year, the Army Ordnance Research and Development Service, Small Arms Branch, let a contract to Melvin M. Johnson, the inventor of the Johnson rifle which preceded the Garand, to study the possibility of using a Gatling-type gun as a weapon for aircraft. R.L. Wilson reports that Johnson's firm fired a motor-driven, slightly modified Model 1883 Gatling at a cyclic rate of 5,800 rounds per minute! Between 1946 and 1956, the modern M61 20mm Vulcan Aircraft Gun was developed, and it, and various modifications, are still used in jet aircraft, helicopters, and antiaircraft and antimissile defense on U.S. Navy ships." - Boorman

"Between 1874 and 1878 Gatling guns were fired at hostile Indians on six occasions. Employed under conditions ranging from the parched plains of the Anadarko Agency in Indian Territory to the deck of a steamer on the Columbia River, Gatlings generally performed satisfactorily when they could be brought to bear upon the elusive hostiles. During the Red River War, Liet. Col. Thomas H. Neill, Sixth Cavalry, used Gatling fire to prevent hostile Cheyenne Indians from entrenching themselves within rifle range of his position near Darlington Agency. In 1877 the pursuit of Chief Joseph Nez Perce band was punctuated by a fierce fight in which forces under Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard used the fire of two Gatlings to repulse repeated Nez Perce attacks that were pressed home with a determination and vigor unusual in Indian warfare. But burdened by its Gatlings and mountain howitzer, Howard's force was unable to keep up with the Nez Perce as they continued their long trek toward Canada. Slower than their adversaries, army regulars could ill afford the additional loss of mobility imposed by the Gatling guns.
The most famous instance of nonuse of Gatling guns in Indian warfare occurred during the Sioux Campaign of 1876. Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry, commander of a column operating against the Indians, formed an ad hoc detachment of four Gatlings manned by a thirty-two man detail from the Twentieth Infantry; the unit had enough firepower to break the back of any Indian attack that had been ene hostiles. Anything that slowed the cavalry columns or restricted their ability to negotiate difficult terrain was counterproductive no matter how much firepower it represented." - David A. Armstrong

"Up to a certain point, more is better and TRW Systems, a southern California-based company, has developed a weapons system called HIVAP. This weapon is the ultimate in Gatling-based rotary-barrel guns and is capable of a sustained rate of 30,000 rounds per minute! The engineers that developed the system estimate that even this rate of fire could be doubled by using a suitably beefed-up drive system and electrical ignition. The weapon, which fires sabot-encased flechettes of approximately .31 caliber from eight smooth-bore barrels at a nominal 4,500 feed per second muzzle velocity, is still under development, though the single example has been demonstrated to various military authorities from around the world. The prototype models uses a conventional primer-type ignition system." - Jim Bianchi, Man At Arms, September/October 1979

- "…Before Custer left, Terry offered him three Gatling guns. Custer declined. The Gatling guns, he said, would slow his march. Actually, the Gatlings were a model designed to be broken down and carried on pack saddles. Even Connell, in Son of the Morning Star, says 'They frequently malfunctioned, and the bullets they sprayed from six to ten barrels - depending on the model - would have been effective only against a mass attack, such as might be expected in Europe. British redcoats might march into the fire of Gatlings with heads up and arms swinging, but American Indians were less disciplined.'
The Gatling, mounted on a light artillery carriage, was certainly a clumsier weapon than a modern machinegun. The firing mechanism was operated by a man who turned a crank. As the circle of barrels turned, a cartridge dropped from a gravity-powered magazine, was loaded, fired and the empty shell ejected. But a light Gatling with a strong gunner could fire at a rate of 1,000 rounds a minute, a high rate even for a modern automatic machinegun. Connell's objection is specious: three years after Custer left the three Gatlings behind, the British took two Gatlings to Zululand. The Zulus were perhaps the most militarily sophisticated of all 'uncivilized' peoples. They had already wiped out a British army many times the size of Custer's force. Although the Zulus were masters of taking cover and although the Gatlings jammed several times, they moved the Zulu warriors down in clumps and ended the Zulu War. Against a mass attack - the kind Custer eventually faced on the Little Bighorn - machine guns were even more horrendous. A few years after the Zulu War, the British took a new type of machinegun, the Maxim, to the Sudan. The Maxim was the first automatic gun - it dispensed with the crank - but its effect on the enemy was the same as the Gatlings. A witness at the Battle of Omdurman who saw machine guns used on the Sudanese Dervishes called the action 'Not a battle but an execution….the bodies were spread evenly over acres and acres." - Weir

"The sand of the desert is sodden red -
Red with a wreck of a square that broke -
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke." - Sir Henry Newbolt

LOAN HISTORY:
Army # 1362 - Weapon loaned to Robert Lasher, General Electric Co., Burlington, Vt. from 20 April 1958 to 15 June 1958.
Army # 1362 - Weapon loaned to ThomaArmy # 1362 - Weapon loaned to Charles Ramsdell, General Electric Company, Burlington, Vt. from June 30 to July 10, 1959.

References:
Weir, William. WRITTEN WITH LEAD: AMERICA'S MOST FAMOUS AND NOTORIOUS GUNFIGHTS FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO TODAY. Barnes & Noble, Inc. N.Y., N.Y. 2003

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