Gatlings: is Monaghan right?

[elisabeth]

In Jay Monaghan's biography, "Custer", there are one or two slightly startling assertions.

One (on p. 371) is that when the LBH expedition left Fort Lincoln, the Gatling guns were carried on packhorses.

As this is a generally respected book, one hesitates to dismiss this statement out of hand as just a mistake. Yet the whole Gatling guns debate revolves around their being too cumbersome to take over rough country. That idea seems to be substantiated by the difficulties they caused on the Reno scout. So even those who criticise Custer for not accepting Brisbin's 2nd Cavalry offer usually agree with his reasoning in leaving the Gatlings behind.

If Monaghan is correct, and they could have been dismantled and carried on packhorses or mules, it puts a different complexion on things. Anyone know where he got this? (He gives no source.) And is it correct, or not?

[stevewilk]

Monaghan certainly must be mistaken. I've always read that the Gatlings were drawn on their carriages, pulled by condemned horses, ie mounts deemed no longer servicable as cavalry mounts. The weapons were quite cumbersome and undoubtedly heavy which is why they were mounted on carriages. What would be the advantage to dissassembling them if marching over level terrain as the command did leaving Ft. Lincoln, when they could just as easily be pulled?

The guns were carried on Reno's scout, and they caused all sorts of trouble. It was then, marching over the rugged badlands terrain that they were partially dismantled:

"...At some of the ravines had to unlimber guns and unhitch horses, and haul (parts) over by hand. Passed over very rough ground".

Pvt. John McGuire, Co. C 20th Infantry quoted in Willert's _To The Edge of Darkness_ p. 161.

By the end of Reno's scout, the guns were eventually abandoned. Again, McGuire:

"....We had left our Gatling gun a few miles in the rear, on a high abrupt hill. We found it impossible to bring it down without the aid of ropes...

At one time, men lifting and pulling guns got tired and gave up, and other men had to be sent to get them up. " (Willert, p. 173)

These comments indicate the guns were pulled on carriages, not carried on packhorses. If they could have been taken apart, why didn't they do it? And you would still need to mount the guns on tripods, which the command, to my knowledge, did not have. Even if they could have dismantled the guns, they would have been with the pack train, no doubt, and we know that Custer's packs did not make it to him anyway.

Gatlings did see action during the Red River War in 1874-75 and also the Nez Perce War in 1877, where the guns raked the Indian village at the Clearwater battle. Still, Nelson Miles, who employed the guns during his winter ops in Montana in 1876-77 labelled the weapon "useless" in fighting Indians.

[elisabeth]

That's what I thought, Steve, but thanks for confirming it.

[alfuso]

Elisabeth

There was a small gatling that could be carried on horseback and set up on tripod. But the 7th guns were substantially bigger.

The 7th's .50 calibre gatlings weighed 1600 lbs each with their limber. They couldn't be mounted on a tripod, I doubt they were even designed to -- they would have to stay on their limber. Which was tall and the operator would have to stand up to fire. Two other men would have to move the limber to help the gun sweep. A man would have to be assigned to keep feeding ammo into the gun.

IF there was time to set up the guns and bring up the mules.

Ten extra mules would have to have been assigned to carry the gatling's 3000 or more rounds. That would be another 5 soldiers assigned to deal with them.

And as gatling rounds were expensive and round minute of fire would use up a few hundred, there was little or no gatling fire practice.

Read the book "Gatling: 19th century machine gun to 20th century Vulcan" An entire chapter is devoted to the gatlings of the LBH.

alfuso

[jdmackintosh]

Hi Elizabeth,

He may have been thinking of the small mountain howitzers that were carried on the backs of mules, the small wheels, ammunition, as well as the actual howitzer itself divided up among the animals. The 7th was accompanied by at least at one such detachment from an artillery regiment during the 1877 Nez Perce campaign but it wasn't used.

John

[elisabeth]

Thanks, Alfuso and John -- I hadn't realised there were two different sizes of Gatlings, which is what had me confused. (I'd always wondered why they couldn't have been carried on mules, as I've seen that done in many movies(!); this explains it.)

Am I imagining it, or didn't Stanley use mountain howitzers to some effect on the Yellowstone campaign?

[Gumby]

Elisabeth,
The Gatling guns in question were not made to sweep the field. They were best used in a defensive position. The only place the guns could have been used was on the bluffs by Reno and Benteen. However, whoever would have been foolish enough to stand up to operate them would have been shot down by warriors on Sharpshooters' Ridge or some other area.

Custer NEVER authorized ammunition for practice because of the expense, so even the men assigned to operate them would not have been proficient in their use.

[El Crab]

The Gatling guns were pretty effective against Zulus. They were utterly useless against Lakotas.

[Gumby]

Other problems with the models that were along on the Sioux Campaign was that they were using black powder and reportedly jammed up pretty quickly and over heated do to a lack of a cooling system.