Civil War Mortars and Grenades

[Burncycle360]

With the advent of the percussion cap, is there any reason drop fired mortars and hand grenades (in the modern sense) wouldn't have been technically possible had someone thought of them?

I don't mean exact replicas of course, given metallurgy limitations. The mortar may not be man portable for instance, requiring much thicker walls, but in general the thing that seems to make the mortar possible would be a percussion cap being set off at the bottom of the tube to initiate the deflagration of the bag charges, and another at the front for the fuzing mechanism.  

 

The hand grenade is decidedly simple with a spring loaded hammer swinging around to strike a percussion cap, and igniting a time fuze.

 

Obviously historically both of these went through many iterations before finding a mechanism that was reliable, but I've been curious about this for some time.  Both would have changed the a nature of battle significantly. 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Burncycle360

[Argus]

No, but also no. I mean the technology is there in outline, much as they could have had Sten guns at Bull Run/Manassas to use a old plot line. Only you'd need to inject the operational concepts and the certainty of success back into the past to see any result. Even then, there the basic question of would it really be worth the effort? 

"You want to put a gunlock on a grenade... what is wrong with a friction tube that can't be fixed at half the price of blowing up a gun lock every time you want to throw a bomb at someone, oh and when do we ever do that anyway?"

"So you want to make a mortar that fires when you drop the bomb down the bore.... why? I'm not sure I see how this translates into deeper penetration into protected spaces like magazines or improves the fire starting ability of the weapon -  oh you mean for rapid fire in a Coehorn sized piece, I see, but for pitched battle rather than siege use you say? Why this is most interesting, 10 rounds a minute, with fins like an arrow to stabilise the 12lb shell, oh yes and 2,000 yards, well my word indeed sir! Never mind the nice men with the white coats I beg, they have mothing but your best interests in mind, and while you are resting, your clearly far too active imagination, you may chose to ponder how one might direct the the fire of your device from the midst of the smoke it would be making... yes take him away gentlemen I'm sure he is quite harmless."   

[bojan]

Nothing preventing invention or even production of either. But there was nothing preventing production of black powder in Roman times, or smokeless one since the early 19th century, yet it did not happen.

With hand grenades largest problem was doctrinal, not technical (Germans did well with simple friction fuse in hand grenades even in ww2), but there was no perceived need for a mass grenade use other than in specific situation. Even later most militaries did not. At the start of WW1, of all combatants, on Serbia issued grenades to rank and file soldiers by default (whole 1st call got two Vasic M.12 grenades per soldier). None other did, either keeping it for specialized troops, or keeping it to be issued "as needed" for a specialized occasions.

With rapid fire mortar largest problem would be utterly primitive fire control, not enabling it to use rate of fire.

 

5 hours ago, Argus said:

..."So you want to make a mortar that fires when you drop the bomb down the bore.... why? I'm not sure I see how this translates into deeper penetration into protected spaces like magazines or improves the fire starting ability of the weapon -  oh you mean for rapid fire in a Coehorn sized piece, I see, but for pitched battle rather than siege use you say? Why this is most interesting, 10 rounds a minute, with fins like an arrow to stabilise the 12lb shell, oh yes and 2,000 yards, well my word indeed sir!

Experiments with rapid firing mortar type weapons went as far back as late 1700s. Problem was that technology for repeated cheap making of precision components (bombs outer surface/guide ring and barrel) was just not there. Hence projectiles that used wadding/sabot to properly seal barrel were preferred, eliminating any posibility of the rapid fire. Until you had mass use of precision lathes (and ACW was not that time) it would remain "easy in theory, hard in practice" Once you have precision lathe it is super easy, Stokes made his first mortars in what was effectively rear area repair workshop, by using high pressure steam pipe (possibly steam cylinder?) of 3 French inch inner diameter, skimmed inner surface to make it precise enough and that made for an official caliber of 81mm mortar (81.4mm bore diameter). It is also a reason why it was called 3" Mortar, despite not being 76.2mm 

PS. Rough work on ballistic calculator says about 1/2 range compared to smokeless for such low pressure applications. If you ditch stabilizing fins (like early Stokes mortar) probably no more than 500-600m.

Edited May 31, 2023 by bojan