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A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun. The spin imparted by the gun's rifling gives projectiles directional stability and increased range. Loading from the rear of the gun ...
In the United Kingdom, these problems surfaced in the RBL 7-inch Armstrong gun a.k.a. the 110-pounder. This was an early British 178 mm rifled built-up breech loader. When the problems could not be solved, production of the 110-pounder was discontinued in 1864, and the United Kingdom reverted to muzzle loaders for the higher cailbers.
The first modern breech-loading rifled gun is a breech-loader invented by Martin von Wahrendorff with a cylindrical breech plug secured by a horizontal wedge in 1837. In the 1850s and 1860s, Whitworth and Armstrong invented improved breech-loading artillery.
The abandonment of the Armstrong breech-loading design led Britain to begin a major program of building rifled muzzle-loaders to equip its fleet. The Armstrong 110-pound gun was succeeded by various RML 7 and 8-inch guns. 7-inch Armstrong breech-loaders under construction at the time of cancellation were completed as RML 64-pounder muzzle-loaders.
Armstrong gun deployed by Japan during the Boshin War (1868–69).. An Armstrong gun was a uniquely designed type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy gun designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured in England beginning in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich.
Springfield Model 1866 breech. The Springfield Model 1866 was the second iteration of the Allin-designed trapdoor breech-loading mechanism. Originally developed as a means of converting rifle muskets to breechloaders, the Allin modification ultimately became the basis for the definitive Springfield Model 1873, the first breech-loading rifle adopted by the United States War Department for ...
They were a bit liable to disturbances, [9] but the problem with the wedge breech was solved to satisfaction. [10] In 1864 a comparative test of three types of 70-pounder guns took place. In this test, the Armstrong breechloader could not stand up against newer Rifled Muzzle Loaders (RML) designed by himself and Whitworth.
As of December 2022, only 23 specimens are known with the 1868 date on the breech block. Latest to surface is #25, joining earlier finds of #62, #36, #127, #6 and #93. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, many army units continued to use outdated rifled muskets and other weapons like the Spencer .56 caliber repeating rifle and Sharps .52 caliber ...