The Gatling Gun Essay Sample

The Gatling gun was a one-of-a-kind weapon invented in 1862 by Richard Jordan Gatling. But who exactly was Gatling exactly? What purpose did his gun serve? Why did he seek to create something like the Gatling gun, something unheard of in his time? Gatling was born September 12, 1818, in Maney’s Neck, North Carolina. Gatling’s career as an inventor began when he helped his father with the construction of machines to sow cotton seeds. In 1839, he invented a screw propeller for steamboats only to find out someone had already taken his patent. He returned to the cotton manufacturing business and later invented other miscellaneous things. However, when the civil war broke out, he chose to work in firearms. In creating a new type of gun, Gatling hoped to solve several flaws he’d observed in current weapons like muskets. For example, the slow reloading time, inability to fire multiple rounds per minute, and the inability to fire consistently. Richard Gatling first tested his gun with only one barrel and fired paper cartridges out of it. But it soon grew into a revolutionary weapon of its time that had a firing capability of 200 rounds a minute while only one man operated it simply by turning a side crank.  How the gun itself worked was truly a marvel of 19th-century science. The firing process first started with a man turning the hand crank on the gun’s side to revolve the six barrels in the gun.

This event caused firing rounds to load into the chambers from the hopper. Each round was equipped with a spring-loaded firing hammer that traveled along an inclined plane to build potential energy. Upon making a complete rotation the hammer would release and fire the bullet inside, and the empty round would be expelled from the gun to make room for more. This process would repeat as long as the hopper still had ammunition and the crank was being turned, giving the Gatling gun its ability of fast and consistent fire. For transportation, the gun was mounted on a wheeled cart, and while there were many feeding mechanisms, hoppers were typically used for loading the gun. In today’s world, the Gatling gun was directly responsible for the invention of many modern multi-firing weapons such as the sub-machine gun or minigun.

Despite its major advancements in the weapons field of the 19th century, the Gatling gun saw few battles due to it only being formally adopted by the time the Civil War was nearing its end. In light of that, the Gatling gun proved to be a valuable asset in the battles it was in, one of them being the Siege of Petersburg where it was used personally by Union commanders, and placed in trenches. The reason behind its strong impact was that it overcame the shortcomings of its predecessors, being capable of firing multiple shots consistently reloading faster than other weapons that required a tedious loading process like muskets and carbines. To reload the Gatling gun was simpler and much faster, you would refill the hopper or feed in another magazine and you could mow down multiple enemy troops before reloading again. The only downside of the Gatling gun in 1862 was that it was clunky, for transport it had to be mounted on wheels, which was still heavy and hard to move around with, shortening the number of tactics that could be used for it. However, its pros outweigh its cons, especially the element of reloading and the efficiency of firing. That is what multiple modern counterparts of the Gatling gun aimed to replicate and improve, each however different. Due to it being a new, untested technology,  the Gatling gun was very expensive and hard to produce at the time of invention, only being produced by the Union due to their amount of supplies and factories. This was an additional advantage for the Union because being able to use and produce the Gatling gun gave them a massive manufacturing edge against the Confederacy.

In summary, the Gatling gun was created to increase efficiency and sustainability in battle, and although it greatly accomplished that, it saw limited use in the Civil War due to it being untested, expensive to manufacture, and being adopted later in the Civil War. The gun worked by moving spring-loaded chambers up an inclined place to fire the bullets inside them, and this was how it could fire consistently. It was the direct inspiration for multiple modern multi-firing weapons, played an important role in the few battles it saw, could reload faster and more conveniently than conventional weapons of the 19th century; and put more time in between each reloading. The gun was only used by the Union during the Civil War due to the Confederacy being incapable of producing the weapon due to their lack of industrialism.

The Union used the weapon most notably in the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia in the spring of 1865. The Union won the battle gaining a major victory, for Petersburg was a major transportation hub for the Confederacy. Although the weapon was used very little, victories such as Petersburg wouldn’t have been possible for the Union without the Gatling gun’s major force on the Battlefield.

The Gatling gun had such a major impact because of its ability to fire multiple rounds consistently while being operated by just one man turning a crank. Also being very effective in mowing down enemy troops and pushing them back from a distance, changing the battlefield and strategically-wise, making it much more difficult for the Confederacy. The Gatling gun truly was a game-changing revolutionary weapon and many modern guns wouldn’t have been created without its innovation.