Gallager Carbine

Gallager Carbine is a black powder rear loader from the American Civil War .

The weapon was designed by Mahlon J. Gallager from South Carolina. The Richardson and Overman company in Philadelphia acquired the rights to build the weapon. On August 31, 1861, the first carbines were sold to the US Army after a hunting rifle with a longer barrel in .44 caliber had previously been built in very small numbers.

Technically it was the transition from the front loader to the rear loader. It was loaded from behind through the tilted barrel. Three different cartridges containing the projectile and propellant charge were used. It was ignited, as is usual with muzzle-loaders, with a primer that was placed on the outside of the piston . The cartridges had a small hole at the back, on which a small thin piece of paper was placed from the inside so that no powder could trickle out. The weapon was built in caliber 0.525 ″ with a 22 ″ barrel.

With more than 8 million pieces, the first cartridge variant was the most common. It consisted of wrapped brass foil and a paper cover. A cartridge made of deep-drawn brass and one made of wound iron foil with a paper coating were also used in much smaller numbers. All three cartridges had no rim due to their design, as the cartridge base was spherical. A groove that made it easier to take off was missing; this can be found on the brass loading sleeves, as supplied by the German manufacturer Erma for its replica of the Gallager Carbine in .54 caliber.

The rifle, although widespread, was not popular with soldiers. Often the cases could not be easily pulled out of the chamber due to expansion - not to mention the fact that they got very hot - the soldiers had to laboriously remove them with a knife. The carbine was primarily intended as a weapon for mounted cavalrymen, the handling was anything but ideal. Nevertheless, it was a groundbreaking development, as the carabiner consisted of very few parts, which, with a few exceptions, made only minor demands on the manufacturing processes and machines. Of the more than 23,000 copies produced, the US Army bought a total of 22,728 pieces during the Civil War. Towards the end of the war, some specimens were adapted or re-manufactured for the use of rimfire cartridges Spencer 56-52. These carabiners were z. B. delivered to France at the time of the Franco-Prussian War.

After the Civil War, adaptations to the .44 Henry rimfire cartridge or boring for use as a shotgun were common.