1.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
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It was bounded by Navy Street and Flushing and Kent Avenues, and at the height of its production of warships for the United States Navy, it covered over 200 acres. The tremendous efforts of its 70,000 workers during World War II earned the yard the nickname The Can-Do Shipyard, following the American Revolution, the waterfront site was used to build merchant vessels. Federal authorities purchased the old docks and 40 acres of land for $40,000 in 1801, many officers were housed in Admirals Row. Military chain of command was strictly observed, the nations first ironclad ship, Monitor, was fitted with its revolutionary iron cladding at the Continental Iron Works in nearby Greenpoint. By the American Civil War, the yard had expanded to employ about 6000 men, in 1890, the ill-fated Maine was launched from the yards ways. In 1937, the battleship North Carolina was laid down, in 1938, the yard employed about 10,000 men, of whom one-third were Works Progress Administration workers. The battleship Iowa was completed in 1942 followed by the Missouri, on 12 January 1953, test operations began on Antietam, which emerged in December 1952 from the yard as Americas first angled-deck aircraft carrier. At its peak, during World War II, the yard employed 70,000 people,24 hours a day, the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, constructed 1830–38 and rebuilt 1841–43, was decommissioned in the mid-1970s. It was one of the oldest naval hospitals in the United States, the 60, 000-square-foot complex was designed by Martin E. Thompson. The hospital had its beginning in 1825 when the Secretary of the Navy purchased 25 acres adjacent to the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The hospital was active from the Civil War through World War II with the Navy Surgeon General reporting in 1864 an average of 229 patients, the hospital also counted on its staff some of first female nurses and medical students in the United States Navy. On November 19,1964, based on the study, the closure of the yard was announced, along with the Armys Fort Jay on Governors Island and its Brooklyn Army Terminal. At the time, the yard employed 10,600 civilian employees and 100 military personnel with a payroll of about US$90 million. The closure was anticipated to save about 18.1 million dollars annually, the plan was never put in place. The Wagner Administration looked to the industry to build a car plant inside the yard. No U. S. car manufacturer was interested, and foreign car manufacturers claimed that with the conversion of the dollar, the Navy decommissioned the yard in 1966, after the completion of the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Duluth. The Johnson administration refused to sell the yard to the City of New York for 18 months, when the new Nixon administration came into power, they signed the papers to sell the yard to the city. Leases were signed inside the yard even before the sale to the city was signed, cLICKs lease with the newly formed Seatrain Shipbuilding was not very business friendly
2.
Naval artillery
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Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare, later also for naval gunfire support against targets on land, and for anti-aircraft use. The idea of artillery dates back to the classical era. Julius Caesar indicates the use of ship-borne catapults against Britons ashore in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, the dromons of the Byzantine Empire carried catapults and fire-throwers. From the late Middle Ages onwards, warships began to carry cannon of various calibres, the Battle of Arnemuiden, fought between England and France in 1338 at the start of the Hundred Years War, was the first recorded European naval battle using artillery. The English ship Christopher was armed with three cannons and one hand gun, by the 15th century most Mediterranean powers were utilising heavy cannon mounted on the bow or stern of a vessel and designed to bombard fortresses on shore. By mid-century some vessels also carried smaller broadside cannons for bombarding other vessels immediately prior to an attempted boarding and these small guns were anti-personnel weapons and were fired at point blank range to accompany engagement with muskets or bows. From the 1470s both the Portuguese and Venetian navies were experimenting with cannons as anti-ship weapons, in 1489 John of Portugal further contributed to the development of naval artillery by establishing the first standardized teams of trained naval gunners. The 16th century was an era of transition in naval warfare, since ancient times, war at sea had been fought much like that on land, with melee weapons and bows and arrows, but on floating wooden platforms rather than battlefields. Though the introduction of guns was a significant change, it slowly changed the dynamics of ship-to-ship combat. As guns became heavier and able to more powerful gunpowder charges, they needed to be placed lower in the ship. Although some 16th-century galleys mounted broadside cannon, they did so at the expense of rowing positions which sacrificed speed, most early cannon were still placed in the forecastle and aftercastle of a ship where they might be conveniently pointed in any direction. Early naval artillery was a weapon to deter boarders, because cannon powerful enough to damage ships were heavy enough to destabilize any ship mounting them in an elevated castle. Being a crown industry, cost considerations did not curb the pursuit of the best quality, best innovations, the crown paid wage premiums and bonuses to lure the best European artisans and gunners to advance the industry in Portugal. This made broadsides, coordinated volleys from all the guns on one side of a ship, possible for the first time in history, at least in theory. Ships, such as Mary Rose, carried a mixture of cannon of different types and sizes, many designed for land use, and using incompatible ammunition at different ranges and rates of fire. The Mary Rose, like other ships of the time, was built during a period of development of heavy artillery. The heavy armament was a mix of older-type wrought iron and cast bronze guns, the bronze guns were cast in one piece and rested on four-wheel carriages which were essentially the same as those used until the 19th century. The breech-loaders were cheaper to produce and both easier and faster to reload, but could take less powerful charges than cast bronze guns, the majority of the guns were small iron guns with short range that could be aimed and fired by a single person
3.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
4.
Washington Navy Yard
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The Washington Navy Yard is the former shipyard and ordnance plant of the United States Navy in Southeast Washington, D. C. It is the oldest shore establishment of the U. S. Navy, the Yard currently serves as a ceremonial and administrative center for the U. S. S. Navy Judge Advocate Generals Corps, Marine Corps Institute, the United States Navy Band, in 1998, the yard was listed as a Superfund site due to environmental contamination. The history of the yard can be divided into its history and cultural. The land was purchased under an Act of Congress on July 23,1799, the Washington Navy Yard was established on October 2,1799, the date the property was transferred to the Navy. It is the oldest shore establishment of the U. S. Navy, the original boundaries that were established in 1800, along 9th and M Street SE, are still marked by a white brick wall that surrounds the Yard on the north and east sides. The next year, two lots were purchased. The north wall of the Yard was built in 1809 along with a guardhouse, after the Burning of Washington in 1814, Tingey recommended that the height of the eastern wall be increased to ten feet because of the fire and subsequent looting. The southern boundary of the Yard was formed by the Anacostia River, the west side was undeveloped marsh. The land located along the Anacostia was added to by landfill over the years as it became necessary to increase the size of the Yard, the USS Constitution came to the Yard in 1812 to refit and prepare for combat action. For the first thirty years of the century, the Navy Yard was the Districts principal employer of enslaved African Americans. Their numbers rose rapidly and by 1808, the muster lists, the number of enslaved workers gradually declined during the next thirty years. While the total number of enslaved workers declined, free African Americans remained a presence on the shipyard. Sailors of Navy Yard were part of the hastily assembled American army, the Navy Yard sailors, and Marines of nearby Marine Barracks, Washington, D. C. were in the third and last line of defense at Bladensburg. Together, they fought hand to hand with cutlasses and pikes against the British regulars before being overwhelmed, as the British marched into Washington, holding the Yard became impossible. Tingey, seeing the smoke from the burning Capitol, ordered the Yard burned to prevent its capture by the enemy, both structures are now individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Following the War of 1812, the Washington Navy Yard never regained its prominence as a shipbuilding facility, the waters of the Anacostia River were too shallow to accommodate larger vessels, and the Yard was deemed too inaccessible to the open sea. Thus came a shift to what was to be the character of the Yard for more than a century, ordnance, the Yard possessed one of the earliest steam engines in the United States
5.
Gun barrel
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A gun barrel is a part of firearms and artillery pieces. The hollow interior of the barrel is called the bore, a gun barrel must be able to hold in the expanding gas produced by the propellants to ensure that optimum muzzle velocity is attained by the projectile as it is being pushed out by the expanding gas. Modern small arms barrels are made of known and tested to withstand the pressures involved. Artillery pieces are made by various techniques providing reliably sufficient strength, early firearms were muzzle-loading, with powder, and then shot loaded from the muzzle, capable of only a low rate of fire. During the 19th century effective mechanical locks were invented that sealed a breech-loading weapon against the escape of propellant gases, the early Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, used bamboo, a naturally tubular stalk, as the first barrels in gunpowder projectile weapons. Early European guns were made of iron, usually with several strengthening bands of the metal wrapped around circular wrought iron rings. The Chinese were the first to master cast-iron cannon barrels, early cannon barrels were very thick for their caliber. Bore evacuator Bore snake Cannon Muzzle Polygonal rifling Rifling Slug barrel Smoothbore
6.
Shell (projectile)
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A shell is a payload-carrying projectile that, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used, originally, it was called a bombshell, but shell has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Words cognate with grenade are still used for an artillery or mortar projectile in some European languages, shells are usually large-calibre projectiles fired by artillery, combat vehicles, and warships. Shells usually have the shape of a cylinder topped by a nose for good aerodynamic performance, possibly with a tapering base. Solid cannonballs did not need a fuse, but hollow munitions filled with something such as gunpowder to fragment the ball, needed a fuse, percussion fuses with a spherical projectile presented a challenge because there was no way of ensuring that the impact mechanism hit the target. Therefore, shells needed a fuse that was ignited before or during firing. The earliest record of shells being used in combat was by the Republic of Venice at Jadra in 1376, shells with fuses were used at the 1421 siege of St Boniface in Corsica. These were two hollowed hemispheres of stone or bronze held together by an iron hoop, as described in their book, these hollow, gunpowder-packed shells were made of cast iron. At least since the 16th Century grenades made of ceramics or glass were in use in Central Europe, a hoard of several hundred ceramic greandes were discovered during building works in front of a bastion of the Bavarian City of Ingolstadt, Germany dated to the 17th Century. Lots of the grenades obtained their orignal blackpowder loads and igniters, most probably the grenades were intentionally dumped the moat of the bastion before the year 1723. Early powder burning fuses had to be loaded fuse down to be ignited by firing or a portfire put down the barrel to light the fuse, other shells were wrapped in bitumen cloth, which would ignite during the firing and in turn ignite a powder fuse. Nevertheless, shells came into use in the 16th Century. By the 18th Century, it was known that the fuse towards the muzzle could be lit by the flash through the windage between the shell and the barrel, the use of exploding shells from field artillery became relatively commonplace from early in the 19th century. Until the mid 19th century, shells remained as simple exploding spheres that used gunpowder and they were usually made of cast iron, but bronze, lead, brass and even glass shell casings were experimented with. The word bomb encompassed them at the time, as heard in the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, typically, the thickness of the metal body was about a sixth of their diameter and they were about two thirds the weight of solid shot of the same calibre. To ensure that shells were loaded with their fuses towards the muzzle, in 1819, a committee of British artillery officers recognised that they were essential stores and in 1830 Britain standardised sabot thickness as a half inch. The sabot was also intended to reduce jamming during loading, despite the use of exploding shell, the use of smoothbore cannons, firing spherical projectiles of shot, remained the dominant artillery method until the 1850s. By the late 18th century, artillery could use canister shot to defend itself from infantry or cavalry attack and this involved loading a tin or canvas container filled with small iron or lead balls instead of the usual cannonball
7.
Gun laying
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Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece, such as a gun, howitzer or mortar on land, or at sea, against surface or air targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, the term includes automated aiming using, for example, radar-derived target data and computer-controlled guns. Gun laying means moving the axis of the bore of the barrel in two planes, horizontal and vertical. A gun is traversed – rotated in a horizontal plane – to align it with the target, Gun laying is a set of actions to align the axis of a gun barrel so that it points in the required direction. This alignment is in the horizontal and vertical planes, Gun laying may be for direct fire, where the layer sees the target, or indirect fire, where the target may not be visible from the gun. Gun laying has sometimes called training the gun. Laying in the vertical plane uses data derived from trials or empirical experience, for any given gun and projectile types, it reflects the distance to the target and the size of the propellant charge. It also incorporates any differences in height between gun and target, with indirect fire, it may allow for other variables as well. With indirect fire the horizontal angle is relative to something, typically the guns aiming point, depending on the gun mount, there is usually a choice of two trajectories. The dividing angle between the trajectories is about 45 degrees, it varies due to gun dependent factors. Below 45 degrees the trajectory is called low angle, above is high angle, the differences are that low angle fire has a shorter time of flight, a lower vertex and flatter angle of descent. All guns have carriages or mountings that support the barrel assembly, early guns could only be traversed by moving their entire carriage or mounting, and this lasted with heavy artillery into World War II. Mountings could be fitted into traversing turrets on ships, coast defences or tanks, from circa 1900 field artillery carriages provided traverse without moving the wheels and trail. The carriage, or mounting, also enabled the barrel to be set at the elevation angle. With some gun mounts it is possible to depress the gun, some guns require a near-horizontal elevation for loading. An essential capability for any elevation mechanism is to prevent the weight of the barrel forcing its heavier end downward and this is greatly helped by having trunnions at the centre of gravity, although a counterbalance mechanism can be used. It also means the elevation gear has to be enough to resist considerable downward pressure. However, mortars, where the forces were transferred directly into the ground
8.
Amphitrite-class monitor
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The Amphitrite class monitors were a class of four U. S. Navy monitors ordered in the aftermath of the Virginius affair with Spain in 1873. A fifth ship originally of the design, Puritan, was later fitted with extra armor. Most of the vessels were commissioned in the mid-1890s—more than twenty years after the commencement of construction. They were eventually to see service in the Spanish–American War. On 1 October 1873, the American-flagged merchant ship Virginius was intercepted by the Spanish Navy on suspicion of supplying provisions, a few days later,53 crew and passengers of Virginius were summarily executed by the Spanish, including several Americans and Britons, creating a serious diplomatic crisis. The Amphitrite class monitors were designed with a displacement of 3,990 long tons and they had an overall length of 262 ft and a length at the waterline of 259 ft. They measured 55 ft 6 in at the beam with a 14 ft 6 in draft and they were manned by a total crew of 19 officers and 164 enlisted men. The Amphitrites were powered by steam engines, except Monadnock, which used triple expansion engines. The ships were armed with main battery of four 10 in /30 caliber guns, with 10-inch/31 caliber, later modified to 10-inch/35 caliber, the secondary battery consisted of four 6-pounder 57 mm guns. The main belt armor was 7 in in the middle tapering to 5 in at the ends, the gun turrets were 11.5 in. The Amphitrites also had a 1.75 in deck, in the years following the American Civil War, the US Congress had allowed the Navy to fall into disrepair as the nation focussed its energies on reconstruction and westward expansion. These vessels were in poor condition however, that Robeson took it upon himself to use the money to build five entirely new monitors instead. In furtherance of this scheme, he gave the new monitors identical names to the old, a fifth contract, for Monadnock, was accepted by a New York entrepreneur, Phineas Burgess. Continental Iron Works was the firm to decline Robesons offer. However, Continental Iron Works would still participate in construction of the monitors through its supply of prefabricated ship parts to Burgess. The terms for each contractor were identical—a set of three contracts which covered respectively the building of the frames, installation of hull plates, and installation of the engines, the third contract was left unsigned in each case until the first two had been fulfilled. Robeson resorted to cannibalizing many of the old Civil War era ironclads to sell as scrap to the shipbuilders in lieu of cash payments, the Cramp shipyard received four old monitors for scrapping, including Otsego. The scrap value of Puritan was estimated at $43,000, Roach also received several other vessels for scrap including the screw frigate Neshaminy and the screw sloop Severn—fourteen ships in total, including the monitors
9.
Monitor (warship)
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A monitor was a relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s, during the First World War, during the Vietnam War they were used by the United States Navy. The Brazilian Navys Parnaíba is the last monitor in service, the original monitor was designed by John Ericsson in 1861 who named it USS Monitor. They were designed for waters and served as coastal ships. The term monitor also encompassed more flexible breastwork monitors, and was used as a generic term for any turreted ship. The term monitor also encompasses the strongest of riverine warcraft, known as river monitors, the Lord Clive vessels were scrapped in the 1920s. In Latin, a monitor is someone who admonishes—that is, reminds others of their duties—which is how USS Monitor was given its name. She was designed by John Ericsson for emergency service in the Federal navy during the American Civil War to blockade the Confederate States from supply at sea. Ericsson designed her to operate in water and to present as small a target as possible. Nathaniel Hawthorne described Monitor thus, At no great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking craft I ever saw, going on board, we were surprised at the extent and convenience of her interior accommodations. Forward, or aft, the crew are relatively quite as well provided for as the officers and it was like finding a palace, with all its conveniences, under the sea. A storm of cannon-shot damages them no more than a handful of dried peas, nothing, however, can exceed the confidence of the officers in this new craft. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible improvement in the science of war, the Battle of Hampton Roads, between Monitor and CSS Virginia, was the first engagement between ironclad vessels. Several such battles took place during the course of the American Civil War, however, fortification bombardment was another critical role that the early monitors played, though one that these early designs were much less capable in performing. She was followed by 14 more monitors, one of them, Kanonbåten Sölve, served until 1922 and is today preserved at the Maritiman marine museum in Gothenburg. Ericsson and others experimented greatly during the years of the American Civil War, vessels constructed included a triple-turreted monitor, a class of paddlewheel-propelled monitors, a class of semi-submersible monitors, and a class of monitors armed with spar torpedoes. In the 1860s and 1870s several nations built monitors that were used for coastal defense and those that were directly modelled on Monitor were low-freeboard, mastless, steam-powered vessels with one or two rotating, armoured turrets. The low freeboard meant that ships were unsuitable for ocean-going duties and were always at risk of swamping, flooding
10.
USS Maine (ACR-1)
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USS Maine is an American naval ship that sank in Havana Harbor during the Cuban revolt against Spain, an event that became a major political issue in the United States. Commissioned in 1895, this was the first United States Navy ship to be named after the state of Maine, originally classified as an armored cruiser, she was built in response to the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo and the increase of naval forces in Latin America. She dispensed with full masts thanks to the reliability of steam engines by the time of her construction. Despite these advances, Maine was out of date by the time she entered service, due to her protracted construction period and changes in the role of ships of her type, naval tactics and technology. It took nine years to complete, and nearly three years for the armor plating alone, the general use of steel in warship construction precluded the use of ramming without danger to the attacking vessel. The potential for blast damage from firing end on or cross-deck discouraged en échelon gun placement, the changing role of the armored cruiser from a small, heavily armored substitute for the battleship to a fast, lightly armored commerce raider also hastened her obsolescence. Despite these disadvantages, Maine was seen as an advance in American warship design, Maine is best known for her loss in Havana Harbor on the evening of 15 February 1898. Sent to protect U. S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain, she exploded suddenly, without warning, the cause and responsibility for her sinking remained unclear after a board of inquiry investigated. Nevertheless, popular opinion in the U. S. fanned by inflammatory articles printed in the press by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Became a rallying cry for action, which came with the Spanish–American War later that year, while the sinking of Maine was not a direct cause for action, it served as a catalyst, accelerating the approach to a diplomatic impasse between the U. S. and Spain. The cause of Maines sinking remains a subject of speculation, in 1898, an investigation of the explosion was carried out by a naval board appointed under the McKinley Administration. The consensus of the board was that Maine was destroyed by an explosion from a mine. However, the validity of this investigation has been challenged, George W. Melville, a chief engineer in the Navy, proposed that a more likely cause for the sinking was from a magazine explosion within the vessel. The Navys leading ordnance expert, Philip R. Alger, took this further by suggesting that the magazines were ignited by a spontaneous fire in a coal bunker. The coal used in Maine was bituminous coal, which is known for releasing firedamp, there is stronger evidence that the explosion of Maine was caused by an internal coal fire which ignited the magazines. This was a cause of the explosion, rather than the initial hypothesis of a mine. The ship lay at the bottom of the harbor until 1911, a cofferdam was then built around the wreck. The hull was patched up until the ship was afloat, then towed to sea, the Maine now lies on the sea-bed 3,600 feet below the surface
11.
Breech-loading weapon
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A breech-loading gun is a firearm in which the cartridge or shell is inserted or loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a barrel. Modern mass production firearms are breech-loading, early firearms, on the other hand, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. In field artillery, breech loading allows the crew to reload the gun without exposing themselves to fire or repositioning the piece. The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech and this was eventually solved for smaller firearms by the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For firearms too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development of the interrupted screw, breech-loading swivel guns were invented in the 14th century. The breech-loading swivel gun had a rate of fire, and was especially effective in anti-personnel roles. Breech-loading firearms are known from the 16th century, Henry VIII possessed one, which he apparently used as a hunting gun to shoot birds. More breech-loading firearms were made in the early 18th century, one such gun known to have belonged to Philip V of Spain, and was manufactured circa 1715, probably in Madrid. It came with a ready-to load reusable cartridge, patrick Ferguson, a British Army officer, developed in 1772 the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock firearm. Later on into the century there were attempts in Europe at an effective breech-loader. There were concentrated attempts at improved cartridges and methods of ignition, the cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle. The needle-activated central-fire breech-loading gun would become a feature of firearms thereafter. The corresponding firearm was also developed by Pauly, Pauly made an improved version, which was protected by a patent on 29 September 1812. In 1846 another Paris Frenchman, Benjamin Houllier, patented the first fully metallic cartridge containing powder in a metallic shell, Houllier commercialised his weapons in association with the gunsmiths Blanchard or Charles Robert. In English-speaking countries the Flobert cartridge corresponds to the.22 BB, the first centrefire cartridge was introduced in 1855 by Pottet, with both Berdan and Boxer priming. The Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr or Dreyse needle gun, was a single-shot breech-loading rifle using a rotating bolt to seal the breech and it was so called because of its. 5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through a paper cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. It began development in the 1830s under von Dreyse and eventually a version of it was adopted by Prussia in the late 1840s. The paper cartridge and the gun had numerous deficiencies, specifically, however, the rifle was used to great success in the Prussian army in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866
United States Navy
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