Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: G0ALY on December 05, 2006, 07:58:51 PM
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I’ve picked up a (replica) 1853 Enfield rifled musket for deer hunting. While doing some research on the .58 caliber Minie ball, (I want to start casting my own)… I found this tidbit of information about the rifles that were picked up after the battle of Gettysburg. Remember that each rifle could hold only one charge, once it was loaded it must be fired before another charge should be added… It gives a glimpse of just how intense it must have been.
Of the approximately 35,000 muskets picked up from the Gettysburg battlefield, it was discovered:
11,000 were unloaded
24,000 were loaded
6,000 held one charge
12,000 held two charges
6,000 had from three to ten charges each
One had twenty-two charges.
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To my best ability from watching the movie several dozen times:
Some of them, they load and load, they never fire. They just keep right on loading. Some of them come home with seven, eight bullets rammed up in the barrel. Never fired a shot! colonel sir.
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They have one on display at the wax museum thats down the ridge from the electric map.
The rifle is in the glass case with x-ray film that shows you that it has 7 or 8 charges in it.