Q: How would flintlock weapons work during a severe rain?
- Thread starter marcinL
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They could have just waterproofed the powder pans by attaching little cocktail umbrellas over them 😛 /s
Recreational shooters nowadays say that they try to keep that end of the gun under their coat or arm, or cover it with a patch of leather tied on while on the move. As for several shots in formation in the rain, I'm not sure. Maybe they simply wiped the pan with a thumb between shots? An upward angle must run the risk of rain collecting down the barrel; if it had rained on Bunker Hill, I imagine it would have been all the more Pyrrhic for the British.
Caplocks are slightly better off with nowhere for rain from above to directly pool, but the humidity can still add up around the cap.
Recreational shooters nowadays say that they try to keep that end of the gun under their coat or arm, or cover it with a patch of leather tied on while on the move. As for several shots in formation in the rain, I'm not sure. Maybe they simply wiped the pan with a thumb between shots? An upward angle must run the risk of rain collecting down the barrel; if it had rained on Bunker Hill, I imagine it would have been all the more Pyrrhic for the British.
Caplocks are slightly better off with nowhere for rain from above to directly pool, but the humidity can still add up around the cap.
That's what a bayonet is for. Or failing that, a musket can always be used as a high tech club to bash an enemy over the head.
Sometimes, the answer is yes! It is attested to that the Habsburg armies of Charles V, during their 1541 Campaign in Algiers, faced major difficulties in using their arquebuses due to rain, as well as due to high winds that would physically blow the gunpowder off of the exposed pans where sparks would be lit. These issues resulted in the development of the Miquelet Lock, which was an evolution of both the matchlock and the wheellock forms of firearms. The Miquelet Lock was the predecessor to the flintlock form of firearms, which were much more resistant to rain and wind preventing them from firing. Flintlocks were first developed in the early 1600s, and would be standard for firearm construction until caplock firearms (that is, those using proto-cartridges which fired within the barrel of the gun) in the 1800s. Flintlock weapons used pans of gunpowder that were fully covered by a steel "frizzen" piece, which would shelter the powder from fire and water, only opening right as the flint struck it as part of the firing mechanism. This greatly improved reliability.
So to answer your question - caplock and similar weapons prior to the 1600s were known to be unreliable in wind and rain, left unable to fire at all, while Napoleonic firearms would be far less susceptible to the same failures. It is worth mentioning, however, that while firearms using flintlock mechanisms were more reliable to fire in rainy conditions, that would not diminish the ancillary issues rain would cause them, in aiming, in the flight of the bullet, and in reloading.
So to answer your question - caplock and similar weapons prior to the 1600s were known to be unreliable in wind and rain, left unable to fire at all, while Napoleonic firearms would be far less susceptible to the same failures. It is worth mentioning, however, that while firearms using flintlock mechanisms were more reliable to fire in rainy conditions, that would not diminish the ancillary issues rain would cause them, in aiming, in the flight of the bullet, and in reloading.
Well no, but with provisos maybe. A typical flintlock of the Revolutionary wars/ Napoleonic era was very susceptible to water preventing it from firing. But there were ways around this at the individual level. Whether an entire army could manage to keep their guns useable, or if it was possible to keep weapons usable in the rain for more than a handful of shots.