I stand corrected. I was thinking the weapon would be fired using a string by a person well behind it and in a hole in the ground. Manufactuing my idea could be high risk.

At that point in time the manufacturing processes for gun-cotton had not been perfected and the product was subject to spontaneous detonation.  It also forms picrates when in contact with even trace amounts of metal , all of which are extremely sensitive to friction, impact, and heat, that would render the charge more dangerous than nitroglycerin.

 

Manufacturing, storage, and transport would all be more risky than actual use.

Once Dynamite came into widespred us then the "Claymore" idea would be workable

That could actually create a very lethal early hand grenade type: a full- or half-stick of dynamite, with known-delay fuzes (a fixed number of seconds' burn time), fully encased in a metal cylinder/can/sleeve and grooved not unlke the WW2 "pineapple" grenades,

could generate a very forceful, lethal, close-range blast-and-shrapnel weapon (it would be hand-thrown obviously, so couldn't be excessivle heavy, but could almost be a precursor to those later-generation stick grenades).

 

Pack in a layer of small shot between the stick and the container walls, and it gets even deadlier (also heavier though, meaning thrown less distance).

 

It was well-understood at the time that certain chemicals detonated dynamite: a mine/early IED could very easily be configured with a crushable glass ampoule containing an acid, or even nitroglycerine, could trigger the main charge.

A perfect concept for sabotaging/boobytrapping wooden bridges of the day, rail lines, even behind doors.

Put those under buckets of old iron nails, horseshoes and tacks, old barrel scraps,

and even parts of animal carcasses, human cadavers, and even human waste,

and you've got a shrapnel bomb of horrific potential,

made worse in the days when there was no such thing as hygiene on the battlefield, and infection from wounds and amputations, and various disease outbreaks, killed as many as actual combat).

Nasty.

But W T Sherman did say, "...War is Hell, and you cannot refine it..."

 

Despite America's guerilla warfare heritage from the Revolutionary War days, the mentality of MacGuyver and the A-Team was still another century yet beyond the minds of Civil War frontline soldiers.

 

Were this a hindsight kinda thing,

it brings to wonder whether modern engineering knowhow with the tech of the day could've made fortifications harder to lay seige to, if someone had developed the days' equivalent of Hesco barriers and reinforced revetments using criss-crossed heavy timbers or lumber buried in earth, layer upon layer, even with heavy canvas (unsalvageable for other uses) in between,

enabling the walls and redoubts of numerous forts of the day to withstand heavy bombardments for much longer periods.

 

Shucks, we could even have changed the outcome at the Alamo years later...(not like that blitzkreig cavalry charge after it fell didn't ruthlessly avenge the men who died there...)

You do not need high explosives to make a grenade, black powder will do nicely. ; The earliest documented examples were ceramic grenades used by the Song Dynasty (960?1279AD). The earliest known cast iron grenade appeared in Europe in 1467. The early grenades were somewhat heavy and difficult to throw, so special units were created from the biggest men in the army to deploy them, commonly called grenadiers for some reason.

 

Designs improved to the point that by the middle of the 19th century grenades were in common deployment were no longer limited to the specialist grenadier units. Grenades were used extensively when attacking and defending fortifications and ships, but were of much less use fighting in the open because the metallurgy of the day tending to create only a few, large, fragments that could carry long distances endangering the user.

Nice discussion, I did not know so many IEDs were available in centuries prior!

 

Back to the recoilless concept - how feasible is a sand-ballasted black powder rec'less smoothbore?  Follow me here - it could be the first field gun with a gunshield to protect the crew:

 

1.  Short-barrell, this bad boy is for point defense, 400 yards inward.

2.  Wheeled, with a gun shield!

3.  Breech loaded! Swabbed and loaded from the breech BUT

4.  A plug rod is inserted into the barrel from behind the shield - think of a J attached alongside the barrel, pivot it up and pull back to give resistance when loading the gun, push forward and pivot down when ready to fire.

5.  wooden 'blast fences' set up parallel/behind the weapon could limit the lateral blast.

 

6.  Lead a charge with it too (terrain allowing):  Rush it forward, stop, drop and roll, FIRE, instant breech.

 

Or does this just hasten the invention of a workable screw breech, even if low powered as the intent is to be a shotgun not a rifle...

 

I think you just created a grenade.

H.

....... .....

Maybe so, but not as SOP (Standard Operating Procedure.

Imagine if this was the norm: planting IEDs and hasty minefields/ambush zones along checkpoint.

Shucks, we even could've seen an early form of napalm (knowledge of naptha itself hadbeen around for ages) in the form of parafins and kerosenes and whatever other readily-available flammables, casks of which could've easily been mistaken for stashes of abandoned provisions.

 

Bridges especially, where horse units (cav, artillery pullers, logistics, etc) could've been slaughtered by shrapnel, or set  ablaze by baths of hot flaming wax.

 

Take these early claymore/shrapnel/napalm mine ideas and fit them into scenarios like Pickett's charge, where the defenders could've fortified their positions much to the dismay of the approaching routers.

A number of forts lain seige to, the same thing.

 

Forgive me for addressing Hollywood's take on things, like we saw in Glory and some others,

and any number of Civil War era documentaries seen everywhere from the History Channel to PBS: had ambushing with mines and boobytraps been much more prevalent (again, SOP and order of the day), a battle here or there could've had considerably different outcome than what history teaches us.

".....ambush zones along checkpoint..."

 

I meant to say chokepoints,

not checkpoints....

The checkpoint you don't want to get checked at. 

Back to the recoilless concept - how feasible is a sand-ballasted black powder rec'less smoothbore Follow me here it could be the first field gun with a gunshield to protect the crew:

1. Short-barrel, this bad boy is for point defense, 400 yards inward.
2. Wheeled, with a gun shield!
3. Breech loaded! Swabbed and loaded from the breech BUT
4. A plug rod is inserted into the barrel from behind the shield - think of a J attached alongside the barrel, pivot it up and pull back to give resistance when loading the gun, push forward and pivot down when ready to fire.
5. wooden 'blast fences' set up parallel/behind the weapon could limit the lateral blast.

1. Short barrel, but you need to double the length to accelerate the counter mass. Call it 2m, about the same as a 3" cannon. Lower pressure may allow thinner walls (we are talking cast iron, and limited understanding of the combustion pressure curve), so let?s cut the weight by about 25%, say 1300 lb for the tube.
2. And then add that weight back -- 1800 lb

4. Doable, but it would probably have to be iron to limit tendency to flex and misalign.

5. Probably not necessary.

6. Lead a charge with it too (terrain allowing): Rush it forward, stop, drop and roll, FIRE, instant breech

Lead a charge with a horse drawn gun battery, stop inside rifled musket range, unlimber, load, and fire (if there are any surviving crew any this point). Doubt it is a good idea. It is also unlikely to create a breech of any significance.

By this point in time rifled small arms were becoming sufficiently common that the short barreled, and shorter range, cannon (including howitzers, but not mortars) had been phased out of regular army service as obsolete. A fair number were used, but these were retired pieces that remained in the arsenals, and no new guns of those types were manufactured during the war. The navy still used them on small boats (because of weight limitations), and had carriages for them so they could be sued by landing parties.

Or does this just hasten the invention of a workable screw breech, even if low powered as the intent is to be a shotgun not a rifle...

Screw breech cannon of several designs were in limited use by both sides, along with a variety of other breach loading designs, but they were still experimental.  Acceptance was limited by safety issues (which were resolved over time) and (as usual) the opinions of senior officers (who had not been shot at enough) that felt that a higher rate of fire would just lead to the waste of ammunition.

The Gatling gun is a better, and lighter, alternative against infantry than the recoilless cannon. A 'AA' gauge shotgun. or naval breach loading swivel gun could also be carrage mounted, but have limited range.