What advances in weapons made the civil war more deadly?

Answer 1

During the Civil War, the Minie ball was the military advance that contributed the most to the war's death toll. The Mino ball was a spin-stabilized rifle bullet that had a greater muzzle velocity and weight than a smoothbore bullet. Minie balls cut straight through the human body and shattered bones. Their spin meant that they were more accurate over larger distances. The Minie ball increased the deadliness of infantry soldiers, a fact that Civil War generals were slow to realize. They continued to use massed troop formations in combat even though the rifle and the Minie ball made them unnecessary, leading to heavy casualties in their battles.

Answer 2

rifling, that is all

Pennsylvania and Kentucky flintlocks used by rangers and irregulars in the Revolution had rifling. It was the combination of the rifling with the percussion cap, which allowed for more certain firing in damp conditions; and the hollow based, rounded conical, miniè ball, which accounted for both greater distance and greater accuracy.

Answer 3

It was actually a combination of technologies (the rifled barrel, the percussion cap firing system, and the rounded, conical, hollowed bottomed Miniè Ball) leading to the deadliness of the standard infantry rifle.

Answer 4

Primarily newer, deadlier versions of rifles.

The concept of "rifling" had been around for hundreds of years before the US Civil War- elite American and British light infantry even used rifles during the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812. But rifles were generally expensive, somewhat difficult to make, and not significantly better than regular muskets (or at least not enough to be worth equipping entire armies with them).

A few years prior to the Civil War, a French soldier named Claude-Étienne Minié invented a newer version with a new kind of bullet that was far more powerful and more accurate. Not only was it more accurate, it was even accurate from farther away. It suddenly became feasible to equip an entire army with them.

When the Civil War started, armies still used the old Napoleonic War tactics where men got in a big line, marched up to an enemy unit, and shot them. Most guns at that time (the early 1800's) were not very accurate, so soldiers were basically just trying to fire at the enemy enough that some bullets would hit, and eventually would scare the enemy unit so that it ran away. In most battles, most of the enemy soldiers would survive and fight again later.

With Minié's new system, when American soldiers used the Napoleonic tactics, they were actually hitting their targets. So the carnage increased dramatically. Cannons were also very accurate and became good at doing major damage to enemy units that were out in the open.

Towards the very end of the war, especially during the Petersburg campaign in spring 1865, armies started more frequently using trenches (long holes dug in the ground that soldiers could stand in) to protect themselves from enemy guns. This "trench warfare" would eventually become the way wars were fought, especially in World War I.

Answer 5

the bomb, automobiles, moving tanks, automatic guns, airplanes.

Answer 6

The technological advances like machine guns, rapid - fire artillery and poison gas were invented at the ww1 and they made the war more deadly