CW Muskets converted from flintlock to percussion

[ms3635v]

It is always interesting to read about the problems that plagued CW soldiers went it came to the firearms they were issued. While doing some reading, I came across this correspondence from Colonel Peter Lyle to General George Cadwalader concerning the muskets issued to the 19th PA Volunteers (in the 3 months service, 90th PA in the three years service):

May 4, 1861
General George Cadwalader,

An examination of the muskets furnished to my command by gunsmiths and machinists has demonstrated that a great proportion of them are defective and wholly unfit for use. In tapping the nipples in they have not been inserted straight, and the iron forced them split. They will not bear a pressure of air, which escapes around the nipple. Numbers of the locks are insecurely fastened, and many of the barrels have flaws and holes 1/16 of an inch deep. They are also filled around the nipple with some soft metal. The number the thus defective and useless are two hundred and forty-six. The balance are reported to be only in tolerable condition, and if taken apart and critically examined would no doubt be unsafe and unusable.

Peter Lyle Colonel (Official Records, Series I, Volume II, page 622)

[jonk]

Reminds me of my grandpa. Being 4-F, he wasn't in the military in WW2 until the very end, when they drafted him and put him in as a shop keeper. Up to that point, he worked in a factory making Pratt and Whitney R-2800 aircraft engines, or as he put it, "Corsair engines."

Sometimes the engine block would have a defect in the milling in a cylinder and have a hole in it. PROUDLY he said how, in that case, so it would pass inspection, they'd hammer a plug of nickle into the hole, and sand it over.

When he told me this story when I was about 17, I was horrified. I said, "But grandpa, those were AIRCRAFT engines! What happened when, maybe idling, the plug held, but some poor pilot took it to full power as he was launching off a carrier, it blew, and the engine blew on him at the most critical point? Doesn't it worry you that you and your coworkers could have cost U.S. pilots their LIVES?"

At that he got quite upset. For 50 years he had NEVER considered that possibility. He had always been proud that they had met their quota, one way or the other!

Just as I'm sure whatever schmuck filled in defects in the muskets never considered he was making a bomb; like grandpa, he just wanted to meet his quota in the rush of wartime production.

[Ron/The Old Reb]

Things haven't change. Look at the air bag recall. Profit comes first.

[R. McAuley 3014V]

In the Congressional testimony given by Adam Rhulman, one of the inspectors of finished muskets employed at Harpers Ferry Armory 1830 to 1861, concerning the military superintendence at Harpers Ferry, Rhulman related anent the exchange of model arms between the two national armories:

Testimony of April 10, 1854:

Question: Did your employment as an inspector at the Harper’s Ferry Armory give you any knowledge of the quality of the arms manufactured at the Springfield armory? If yeah, state it.

Answer: All the arms made at the Springfield manufactory, that I have seen for a number of years, are the samples required to be exchanged by the armories quarterly. For some four or five years prior to 1852, no samples had been received by Harper’s Ferry armory from Springfield. In the year 1852, we received from there ten muskets— two of the manufacture of each of the years, respectively, from 1848 to 1852, inclusive.

In examination of these muskets, I found one of them very defective; the four lock-screws on it should never have been found anywhere but in a scrap-box; the tumbler was spoiled, because it had but three threads on the screw; the barrel was so badly breeched, that I considered it dangerous to use, the thread in the barrel on the breech-screw being very defective; besides the barrel was flawy to such an extent if never should have been received. In the examination of this musket, Mr. Benjamin Wilson, one of the inspectors of block work, was present. I pronounced it a mass of scrap iron. The balance were tolerably good, but deviated from the standards of gauges and sizes, and were not as good as those made at Harper’s Ferry.