Treadhead wrote:
> French, Barry & Hunt; The 1864 Field Artillery Tactics. Page 8
> “The ammunition for rifled guns is not “fixed,” and the projectile do not have a sabot.”
The French/Barry/Hunt document's title says "1864 Field Artillery Tactics" which, in logic, means tactics specified to be in effect for the year 1864. Previous specifications tend to get changed due to combat-experience. I think the FBH document's statements would be more relevant to this discussion if its title was "1861 Field Artillery Tactics." The crossed tinned-iron straps on 3" Dyer sabots were in use during 1861-62, not in 1864 (except for a very few lonely leftovers). For the sake of discussion, I'll accept that the use of Fixed iron-body Rifled-cannon shells had been phased out by 1864, the time of the FBH 1864 Tactics document.
Also, the quoted statement from FBH's 1864 Tactics pretty clearly is referring to rifled-cannon's iron shells, not Canister, because rifled-cannons' iron shells DO have a sabot ...just not a wooden sabot, which Canister does have. Field recoveries of unfired Canister at 1864/65 sites show that "tie ring" wood-saboted rifled-cannon Canister continued to be used through the end of the war.
Has anybody here ever seen a Field-caliber Rifled-cannon Canister with a wooden sabot which did not have a tie-ring groove?
Why do the labor of cutting the tie-ring into Canister sabot if no powderbag was going to be fixed to the sabot?
Please note, even the postwar Krupp canister (with a copper band-sabot) has a tie-ring groove on its wooden sabot.
The 3" Dyer sabot had two distinctly different problems:
1- "shattering" into pieces, due to brittleness.
2- detaching from the shell's iron base upon firing.
I believe the 3" Dyer sabot's "shattering" problem was caused by the use of a high-zinc-content alloy on his 1st-model 3" shells. Metallurgists classify Zinc as being a hard and "brittle" metal. The 2nd-model 3" Dyer sabot's alloy contained less zinc, and was therefore softer ...thus being more able to expand into the rifling without shattering.
Relevant to that statement, consider the 4.5" Dyer, which apparently did not come into existence until 1862. I think it is noteworthy that the 4.5" Dyer's sabot was made of pure lead, not a zinc-&-lead alloy ...and it did not have the "shattering" problem.
That being said... after Dyer diminished the amount of zinc in his 3" sabot, it was shown to still have the problem of failing to adhere to the shell's smoothly-rounded iron base upon firing. So, for the 2nd-model, he changed the shape of the shell's smoothly-rounded base. It would now have two raised iron ridges in the shape of an X across its center, and the base's sides would now have a 3/8th-inch-wide groove. Both of those new features were intended to help the sabot resist being spun off the shell by the violent twisting effect of the cannon's rifling upon firing.
I do not see how soldering some 1/32nd-inch-thick straps onto the sabot's bottom strengthens it. A much less laborious way to strengthen the 3" Dyer sabot's theoretical weak point would be the cast it with a low-convex dome at its center. That is what Sir Bashley Britten wound up doing on his 1861-Patent projectile's sabot, to correct problems with his 1860-Patent sabot.
Let me point out some major evidence that the crossed-straps' purpose was NOT to "strengthen the sabot." They are never seen on the sabot of 3rd-model Dyer 3" shells (the version with the pointed nose). The earliest reported combat use of the 3rd model is August 1862 ...at the battle of Cedar Mountain VA, according to Harry Ridgeway's relic-archive data.
If the straps were important for strengthening the sabot, why were the straps never put on the 3rd-model's sabot?
I believe the answer to their absence is that the yankees had discontinued the manufacture of "Fixed" shells for rifled cannons by June/July 1862, when the 3rd-model first began to be manufactured.
Unlike other 3" Dyer sabot which show "longer" straps (see photos at the end of this post), I own a specimen whose straps are quite short, because they were very neatly cut off, flush with the sabot's surface. I think those straps were cut off due to an mid-1862 order to discontinue the use of Fixed rifled-cannon shells. That would reconcile the apparent contradiction between the very clear use of "Fixed" rifled-cannon shells (Archer, Mullane, Dyer) in 1861/62 and the 1864 Artillery Tactics document's statement by French, Barry, and Hunt.
I agree with Treadhead/Doug that Archer tie-ring based shells may have been just an early-war (1861) experiment. But no Field-caliber Mullanes were produced until 1862 ...and they were still being mass-produced at the end of 1862, and they definitely had a tie-ring on their wood "shock-absorber." In addition to the "pristine-condition" Mullane specimens having it, which I mentioned previously, please note that that tie-ring is shown in the diagram on page 140 of the McKee-&-Mason book. It says "wooden spacer, powderbag tied on." Does anybody here think McKee-&-Mason just "made up" that description ...or is it more likely that they'd seen the tie-ring groove in the wood on an unfired Mullane in real-life?
Here are some photos showing the 1st-model 3" Dyer's plain iron base, and the 2nd-model's sabot-retention X ridges and 3/8th-inch-wide groove. I'll also post a photo showing a 3" Dyer sabot with "longer" straps, which reach well-outward from the center of the sabot's base, even touching the sabot's rim. If they are only applied to strengthen the sabot's "weak" center, there's no need for them to extend outward well beyond the center, where the soldering is located. But they do.
Let me say again, I am only posting the evidence to help the group conclusively resolve the mystery. I hope I've done so in a gentlemanly manner. As my sig-line in a previous version of this forum said, "Other people's interpretation of the evidence may vary from mine." We are trying (as a group) to re-discover the missing Historical Facts. For me, there's nothing more to it than that.
Regards,
Pete