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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:42:17 PM EDT
[#1]
Because the Army wanted to conserve ammunition.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:42:34 PM EDT
[#2]
Spencer Carbine?
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:44:55 PM EDT
[#3]
I remember reading an article about US small arms development in the Rifleman magazine. If memory serves me correctly, Lincoln did try out and the Union army did field a few lever action rifles during the civil war.
However, many of the officers involved in arming US troops were stodgy adherents to the old school train of thought, and rejected the newfangled technology. In fact, many great rifle designs have been passed over because the Army ordnance department were behind the times. The FAL was almost adopted in the 50's and instead we got the M14. Another big reason was ammo. The army supply chain doesn't like troops popping off allot of rounds and wasting ammo, and since the winchester was rapid fire that may have doomed it. All that being said, General Custer's men would probably have been better off with a lever gun. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:45:04 PM EDT
[#4]
racking the lever while laying on the ground and politics I guess
love the 1895 winchester in 7.62 x 54r |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:46:35 PM EDT
[#5]
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:47:55 PM EDT
[#6]
It was difficult to rack in the prone position.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:50:11 PM EDT
[#7]
Both the Spencer and Henry lever action rifles were adopted in limited numbers during the Civil War. Post war the Spencer served until about 1870. The 7th Cav carried them until one year before Little Big Horn.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:50:18 PM EDT
[#8]
1. cannot load spire point ammunition in LeverGun tubular mags.
2. cannot operate levergun with lever broken or jammed or right hand disabled. 3. difficult to disassemble and clean action 4. difficult to maneuver bottleneck ammo in the loading mechanism 5. early action designs were weak for the new high pressure smokeless powder. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:50:53 PM EDT
[#9]
$$$ 
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:52:09 PM EDT
[#10]
I agree, General Custer's men would have much better served by a lever action.
I know some units in the Army got lever actions, but it was never issued generally. Ammo conservation? Good answer, too bad it was a bad policy for the troops. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:58:32 PM EDT
[#11]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Because the Army wanted to conserve ammunition. This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 8:59:13 PM EDT
[#12]
They were waiting for the M16
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:04:19 PM EDT
[#13]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Because the Army wanted to conserve ammunition. This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. What a game changer general issue of the Spencer carbine would have been! |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:24:33 PM EDT
[#14]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I agree, General Custer's men would have much better served by a lever action. Maybe. Maybe not. The one thing the cav did have going for them was range with their rifles out to as far as 600 yards (300 or so for point targets) while the indians were just pushing 100-200 with their lever guns. There were a lot of other failures that led up to the 7th's end. -- Keep in mind that Enfields as late as the 19-teens were coming with magazine cutoffs so you could only load one round at a time and so the magazine would be spared for volley fire. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:28:32 PM EDT
[#15]
Savage submitted a lever action to the Government, but they wanted something that could take down a horse.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:31:28 PM EDT
[#16]
IIRC, the Federal Army issued something like 94k Spencers during the War of Northern Aggression. It is a fine rifle, but slow to reload compared to the Winchester due to having to remove the tube from the butstock. The Trapdoor was a much more powerful cartridge compared to the Spencer or Winchester round. Ammunition expenditure was also an issue. I suppose the Army was big on one shot one kill even back then. Even the 1903 had a magazine cutoff. IIRC the trapdoor evolved out of an attempt by the Army to reuse many of the Springfield muskets from the Civil War era. Many were adapted to use cartridges from the breech, much like the Snider breech loading conversion the British used on the 1853 Enfield.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:35:29 PM EDT
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
1. cannot load spire point ammunition in LeverGun tubular mags. 2. cannot operate levergun with lever broken or jammed or right hand disabled. 3. difficult to disassemble and clean action 4. difficult to maneuver bottleneck ammo in the loading mechanism 5. early action designs were weak for the new high pressure smokeless powder. Yep, much easier with a muzzle loader! |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:35:43 PM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryThose noobs have no trigger discipline 
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:37:12 PM EDT
[#19]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Spencer Carbine? +1 |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:39:39 PM EDT
[#20]
Ammo conservation.
Hence the reason why they had magazine cut-offs on the 1903, the selector lock on M14s, and burst in M16s now. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:41:51 PM EDT
[#21]
Field strip a lever action.
 no thanks
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:43:24 PM EDT
[#22]
And the .45-70 was a bigger cartridge.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:47:12 PM EDT
[#23]
It would be interesting to see the actual "Firearms Trials and Tests" from back then.
Maybe its just the romance of the lever action, but I think the US Army during the Indian Wars would have better served with it. You can get a lever action in 45-70 now, I don't know if they chambered them for that back in the day. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 9:50:36 PM EDT
[#24]
Army Ordinance was run by some cheap ass mother fuckers.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 10:11:36 PM EDT
[#25]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I agree, General Custer's men would have much better served by a lever action. I know some units in the Army got lever actions, but it was never issued generally. Ammo conservation? Good answer, too bad it was a bad policy for the troops. At the time, they thought they were doing the right thing. Stodgy bastards, but they also had little information to make a judgement. They grew up with front loaders and limited cartridge supplies. If you wasted them, all you had was a club. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 10:13:24 PM EDT
[#26]
Quoted:
1. cannot load spire point ammunition in LeverGun tubular mags. Not a problem until 1898 when the Spitzer bullet was designed French Army Captain Desaleux 2. cannot operate levergun with lever broken or jammed or right hand disabled. Every rifle can break or be damaged same for Spencers, Henry, lever, bolt, or black powder single shot. Use left hand if the right is injured. 3. difficult to disassemble and clean action Bullshit. 4. difficult to maneuver bottleneck ammo in the loading mechanism The bottleneck rifle cartridge came into being in 1867 with the A .577 Snider cartridge. Remind me which US Military unit was the first to field a .577 Snider cartridge? 5. early action designs were weak for the new high pressure smokeless powder. While nitrocellulose powders did exist during the Civil War no one was making a grade of nitrocellulose aka smokeless powder that was acceptable for military service until 1884. Thank Paul Vieille who invented a smokeless powder, but that wasn't used by any Army until the French used it for the Lebel Rifle of 1898. There was no good reason for the US Army Ordinance to not adopt a lever action at the time of the Civil War for mounted infantry, cavalry, or for artillery troops. They might have made an argument about infantry and the the need to hit targets at a greater distance than the Henry was capable in it's initial chambering. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 10:15:50 PM EDT
[#27]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Field strip a lever action. no thanksHow many Union troops field stripped a Enfield 1853 rifled musket, or a Springfield rifle? |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 10:33:41 PM EDT
[#28]
The Marines were resistant to the Garand at first for the same reason: thought ammo use would go up and marksmanship would go down.
Curiously contrary to that however was that a WWII USMC company would have roughly twice as many BARs and 1919s as an Army one and towards the end of the war,carbines in lieu of rifles was widespread. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 10:50:29 PM EDT
[#29]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Because the Army wanted to conserve ammunition. This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. +1. Even the 1903 had a magazine cutoff so you had to load one round at a time. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 11:11:03 PM EDT
[#30]
Just the common reason of stick to what you know.
Almost all of the officers at the time knew how to fight with muzzleloaders. so nstead of learning new tactics , they stick with what they knew. The jump from the muzzle loader to the trap door wasn't as big as it was from ML to a lever action, as far as tactics and training along with range. |
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Posted: 8/9/2013 11:43:03 PM EDT
[#31]
Probably the same reason we have had a million different competitions, evaluations and tests for a replacement for the M4/M16, stupidity.
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Posted: 8/9/2013 11:56:42 PM EDT
[#32]
I would probably take a trapdoor and a revolver over just a levergun alone... im pretty damn fast at reloading my 1870 trapdoor and .50-70 packs a punch
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Posted: 8/10/2013 12:41:17 AM EDT
[#33]
There was a limited issue of Henry and Spencer rifles during the civil war and during the Indian Wars that followed.
Also, the coast guard used lever action rifles for a while, saw one displayed as such in a museum. However, there are two reasons the military didn't go with lever actions #1 they were convinced that fast firing actions would cause ammo to be wasted. #2 They still believed the ability to have a company 'volley fire' it's guns at a target a few miles in the distance was an important feature to have in a battlefield rifle. Cartridges like the 50-70 and the 45-70 had the power and weight to be volley-fired a great distance. This was one of the reasons the US military tested out firing the cartridges at 2 miles http://www.researchpress.co.uk/longrange/sandyhook.htm While it seems odd to us now, a big part of the napoleonic war and then the civil war was about figuring out how to use improving guns and artillery on the battlefield. When we think of seeing an enemy gathering a couple miles off we think 'shoot em with a cannon' but militaries were just beginning to learn about having relatively small and light cannons that could be pulled by a pair of horses and keep up with infantrymen. Seeing a regiment or two at 2 miles out and having your own regiment of riflemen volley-fire at them would kill a few if you were lucky and demoralize the heck out of the enemy...especially if their guns couldn't fire back. At the time, lever action rifles couldn't handle cartridges like the 45-70. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 12:43:42 AM EDT
[#34]
Quote HistoryQuoted: It was difficult to rack in the prone position. And reloading a muzzle loading rifle in the prone is easier? |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 12:46:30 AM EDT
[#35]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
And reloading a muzzle loading rifle in the prone is easier? Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
It was difficult to rack in the prone position. And reloading a muzzle loading rifle in the prone is easier? Nah. You just had to have very long arms.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 1:16:33 AM EDT
[#36]
They were/are always fighting the last war
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Posted: 8/10/2013 1:22:14 AM EDT
[#37]
Google "Winchester Spruce Gun" and you will discover that the Winchester '94 was used in WWII.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 1:38:04 AM EDT
[#38]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I would probably take a trapdoor and a revolver over just a levergun alone... im pretty damn fast at reloading my 1870 trapdoor and .50-70 packs a punch i think mainly the cavalry had a carbine, revolver and a saber. and the bulk of the infantry only the rifle some of the stuff I have read/watched on the civil war said that a fair amount of the Henry rifles were bought by the soldiers, not sure if that's true or not. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 2:01:08 AM EDT
[#39]
According to this @ 9:00 the Brits considered them underpowered.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 2:43:01 AM EDT
[#40]
Stopping a calvery charges was also a mager concern 45 70 will do that at range the lever guns of the perod could not. Thet were lookind at termanal effects on horses.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 3:02:57 AM EDT
[#41]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
And reloading a muzzle loading rifle in the prone is easier? Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
It was difficult to rack in the prone position. And reloading a muzzle loading rifle in the prone is easier? Lol yeah that's what I was thinking too... |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 3:18:07 AM EDT
[#42]
In order to conserve ammunition after the Civil War live fire exercises were essentially forbidden. Many of the soldiers in the battle of the Little Bighorn had little to no experience in actually firing their carbines. Dry fire exercises were all the rage. This policy changed after the battle.
The carbines they did have were notorious for having the cartridges jam in the chamber after firing. Knives were found on the battlefield with the tips that were broken off as the soldiers used them to try to extract the shells manually. This was a known issue with the weapon. The Marines were slow in getting the Garand because they were the tail end of the dog in weapons procurement. New weapons went to the Army first and even though the Garand was approved in 1936, by late 1939 only 100 a day were being produced. Plus, the Marines were testing the M41 Johnson. Many of the people involved in testing it actually preferred it to the Garand over which it has some advantages. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 3:20:42 AM EDT
[#43]
The Army never adopted it service wide because it was a better idea and they didn't think of it first.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 3:22:31 AM EDT
[#44]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Army Ordinance was run by some cheap ass mother fuckers. True. I mean, who the hell would put a magazine disconnect on a rifle? (But at least they could spell.  )
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Posted: 8/10/2013 3:39:19 AM EDT
[#45]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Because the Army wanted to conserve ammunition. This . . . PERIOD. The old guard did not believe in them and thought they only were a waste of ammo. The limited use of the Spencer and the Henry in the Civil War were in spite of the old guard. That's why the regular army went from cap & ball to the single shot trapdoor Springfield. I agree, kinda like how Army brass didn't like the M16 because it was a change from the norm and tried everything they could to sabotage the gun so it would fail the army's tests. Lucky for us the "old timers" didn't get their way. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 4:05:46 AM EDT
[#46]
There was a battle over sea by two foreign armies faced off one with trap door rifles and the other with lever actions and the lever actions gave that side the advantage IIRC
I think Ive even seen a paining depicting the battle but cant remember who it was . Off to google . |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 7:18:26 AM EDT
[#47]
I have a vintage Springfield Trapdoor and I have a Winchester Lever Action from the period, there is no comparison between the two in regards to weight and "handiness".
Would like to hear more about the battle mentioned in the post above me. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 7:28:08 AM EDT
[#48]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
And the .45-70 was a bigger cartridge. The actual reason. The ammo available at the time in lever guns had limited power. Horse cavalry was one of the key elements of combined arms at the time. The Army wanted to be able to disrupt cavalry charges effectively. Additionally, the effective range of the lever guns was too short. Conventional enemy infantry could fuck you up by shooting from stand-off range beyond the range of the lever guns available at the time. Look at the most famous use of lever guns in the post Civil War period: by the Ottoman Turks against the Imperial Russians. The Turks had to issue both full-power rifles and lever actions in order to exploit the advantages of the lever guns, and once bolt action repeaters became available, it was game over for the lever guns. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 7:36:09 AM EDT
[#49]
Simple answer? Cost.
Think about it, they had thousands, if not millions of muzzle loading rifles laying around after the civil war, why buy a whole new platform when you can just overhaul them into trapdoor Springfields? By the time they went with an actual repeating rifle, smokeless powder and the bolt-action was king. |
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Posted: 8/10/2013 7:37:53 AM EDT
[#50]
American guns, book my Chris Kyle gives some insight. It's not a bad read. Buy a book and support his family.
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