Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

80 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
10-inch disappearing gun
manually by a crank and mounted on a wheeled horse-drawn carriage. In 1866, the
Army adopted the Gatling gun, which was designed to defend buildings, causeways,
and bridges. 19 Like the 3-inch Ordnance gun and Napoleon, the Gatling gun was
more valuable in the defense than the offense. Another weapon accepted by the
Ordnance Department was the Hotchkiss gun, named for its inventor Benjamin
B. Hotchkiss. The gun was a built-up, rifled, rapid-firing weapon of oil-tempered
steel. It had five firing barrels, and a mechanically turned crank ejected its shells.
Although the War Department expressed much interest in the Hotchkiss gun, it
remained an auxiliary weapon. 20
Because of a lack of funding to develop new field artillery weapons and because
of the large number of 3-inch Ordnance rifles left from the Civil War, the
Ordnance Department decided to convert a number of them into breechloaders. The
first of these converted guns, which had to be rebored to 3.18 inches to fit modern
ammunition, appeared, along with a new steel carriage, in 1879. At this time, the
Ordnance Board recommended that these guns be issued to a battery for competitive
field trials against a battery of muzzleloaders. The results were so favorable to the
19 Ernest F. Fisher, “Weapons and Equipment Evolution and Its Influence Upon the Organization
and Tactics in the American Army From 1775–1963,” p. 41, copy in CMH files; George M. Chinn, The
Machine Gun, 5 vols. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951–87), 1:48, 54.
20 Birkhimer, Historical Sketch, pp. 294–95; Chinn, Machine Gun, 1:71–78.