Minié ball

• 1. Introduction

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  The Minié ball, a hollow-based lead bullet, struck a Confederate private in the side of the head on the 12th of July 1864. He served with the 53rd North Carolina Infantry. His regiment was taking part in Jubal Early's raid on Washington, D.C. The bullet had been fired from a muzzle-loaded, rifled musket, a weapon that was ordinary for its day. The wound it caused was not ordinary. Surgeons of the mid nineteenth century came to know this small cone of lead by the damage it did to the human body. This documentary asks where the bullet came from and why it needed such a strange shape. It asks what earlier designs failed to do, and why rifles had been so hard to load. It also asks what actually happened inside the bodies the bullet struck, and what became of this one private.

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• 2. The Rifling Problem

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  Spiral grooves cut inside a gun barrel are known as rifling, and they change how a bullet flies. The grooves give the projectile a stabilizing spin. That spin improves its flight after it leaves the muzzle, and it greatly increases both the range and the accuracy of the gun. A rifled barrel had a serious weakness, however. Gunpowder residue fouled the grooves after a relatively small number of shots, so the gun needed frequent cleaning. To get a ball to grip the grooves at all, it had to be rammed down the barrel, sometimes with a mallet. The balls themselves also needed greasing. A tight fit gave accuracy but made loading slow and punishing. What the army needed was a bullet that started loose in the barrel and finished tight.

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• 3. Early Experiments

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  In 1826, Henri-Gustave Delvigne invented a ball that expanded when it was rammed, so that it fitted the grooves of a rifle. During the 1830s, two French Army captains, Montgomery and Delvigne, built on that idea with a precursor to the Minié ball. Their design allowed rapid muzzle loading of rifles. That speed brought about the widespread use of the rifle, rather than the smoothbore musket, as a mass battlefield weapon. Another approach had appeared in 1832, when Captain John Norton proposed a cylindro-conoidal ball, a bullet with a cylinder body and a pointed cone front. It was not adopted. That shape, passed over in 1832, is the one the Minié ball would later wear.

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• 4. Inside the Bullet

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  In 1849, Claude-Étienne Minié designed the hollow-based bullet that now carries his name. The Minié rifle followed shortly afterward. The bullet was cylindro-conoidal, with grease-filled cannelures, which are rings cut around its outside. At its base sat a cone-shaped hollow. Minié fitted the bullet with a small iron plug and a skirt of lead. When gunpowder deflagrated, the pressure made that skirt expand. The expansion sealed the bullet against the bore, a process called obturation, and pressed the lead into the rifling grooves. A good bullet-to-bore seal meant very little pressure leaked past the bullet. That kept the muzzle velocity as high as possible. The design worked, but an armorer at Harpers Ferry would soon improve on it.

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• 5. Burton's Cavity

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  Captain James H. Burton, an armorer at the Harpers Ferry Armory, made a major improvement to Minié's design. He cut a deep conical cavity into the base of the ball. That cavity filled with gas more efficiently and spread the skirt outward. A higher share of the explosive force now pushed the bullet forward, and a smaller share went into fitting it to the rifling. Burton's version was lighter and faster, so it carried more energy and reached farther. It was also cheaper to make. His bullet weighed 1.14 ounces. It was this modified ball that went to the Crimean War and then to the American Civil War.

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• 6. Loading and Firing

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  The Springfield Model 1861 and the British Pattern 1853 Enfield were the most common weapons found during the American Civil War. Both were rifled muskets, and both fired the Minié ball. A soldier took the bullet quickly from its paper cartridge and poured the gunpowder down the barrel. The unexpanded bullet was then pushed down after it. Its loose fit let it pass the rifling at the muzzle and any carbon build-up left by earlier shots. A stroke of the ramrod packed the charge and filled the hollow base with powder. When the rifle fired, the bullet gripped the grooves and spun. That spin gave accuracy, and the steady seal gave consistent velocity and longer range.

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• 7. Wounds Unlike Any Before

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  Round balls from smoothbore muskets often remained lodged in the flesh, and observers noted that they could take a winding path through the body. Flexed muscles, tendons and bone could all push such a ball off a straight line. The conical Minié ball behaved differently. It had a higher muzzle velocity and greater mass, and it easily penetrated the body. It tended to cut a straight path and usually went all the way through the injured part. It seldom stayed inside. When it struck bone, it usually shattered it. The resulting compound fractures were generally severe enough to require amputation. A hit on a major blood vessel could be serious and often lethal. Surgeons recorded few cases as closely as that of one private from North Carolina.

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• 8. A Private's Final Days

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  A .58 caliber ball shattered the private's skull and lodged in the right hemisphere of his brain. He went into convulsions and became paralyzed on one side of his body. Yet within eight days of reaching the hospital, he started to recover. Three more days passed, and then his condition deteriorated. He lost consciousness and died, having survived his wound for 16 days. An autopsy found the right hemisphere extensively damaged, with large areas of it necrosed. The primary cause of death was infection, caused both by the initial injury and by the later necrosis of brain tissue. His brain was removed and preserved in formaldehyde. It was donated to the Army Museum in Washington.

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