Breechloader

rifle with its breech open. A breechloader is a firearm or artillery piece in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech (rear) end of the barrel. The vast majority of modern firearms are breechloaders. Before the mid-19th century, most guns were muzzleloaders, guns loaded from the muzzle (front) end of the barrel. Only a few muzzle-loading weapons, such as mortars, rifle grenades, some rocket launchers, such as the Panzerfaust 3 and RPG-7, and the GP series grenade launchers, have remained in common usage in modern military conflicts. However, referring to a weapon explicitly as breech-loading is mostly limited to weapons in which the operator loads ammunition by hand (and not by operating a mechanism such as a bolt action), such as artillery pieces or break-action small arms. Breech-loading designs provide several advantages, chief among which is reduced reload time. Rather than having to push propellant and projectile through the whole length of the barrel and pack it down, they can be simply inserted into the chamber far quicker. The reloading process itself is also streamlined, as the weapons do not need to be maneuvered around as much; for artillery, this also allows gun emplacements to be smaller and the crew to remain better protected. Rifled or fouled barrels do not impede loading the breech.…

rifle with its breech open. A breechloader is a firearm or artillery piece in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech (rear) end of the barrel. The vast majority of modern firearms are breechloaders. Before the mid-19th century, most guns were muzzleloaders, guns loaded from the muzzle (front) end of the barrel. Only a few muzzle-loading weapons, such as mortars, rifle grenades, some rocket launchers, such as the Panzerfaust 3 and RPG-7, and the GP series grenade launchers, have remained in common usage in modern military conflicts. However, referring to a weapon explicitly as breech-loading is mostly limited to weapons in which the operator loads ammunition by hand (and not by operating a mechanism such as a bolt action), such as artillery pieces or break-action small arms. Breech-loading designs provide several advantages, chief among which is reduced reload time. Rather than having to push propellant and projectile through the whole length of the barrel and pack it down, they can be simply inserted into the chamber far quicker. The reloading process itself is also streamlined, as the weapons do not need to be maneuvered around as much; for artillery, this also allows gun emplacements to be smaller and the crew to remain better protected. Rifled or fouled barrels do not impede loading the breech. Another advantage is that projectiles could be made to fit the bore tightly, increasing power, range and accuracy. Unloading a breechloader is much easier as well, as the ammunition can be unloaded from the breech end, which can often be done by hand. Unloading muzzleloaders requires drilling into the projectile to drag it out through the whole length of the barrel, and in some cases, the guns are simply fired to facilitate the unloading process. The advent of breechloading gave a significant increase to effective firepower by its own right, and it also enabled further revolutions in firearm designs such as repeating and self-loading firearms. File:Three shot breach loading cannon Henry VIII 1540 1543.jpg|Three-shot experimental breech-loading cannon (burst) belonging to Henry VIII of England, 1540–1543 File:Early breech loaders.jpg|15th and 16th century breech-loaders on display at the Army Museum in Stockholm File:Cannon new Scania1.jpg|Replica of a medieval Swedish breech-loaded "cart gun" ( ) File:Breech loading firearm belonged to Philip V of Spain by A Tienza Madrid circa 1715.jpg|Breech-loading firearm that belonged to Philip V of Spain, made by A. Tienza, Madrid circa 1715. It came with a ready-to-load reusable cartridge. This is a miquelet system. File:Mechanism for 1715 breech loading firearm.jpg|Mechanism of Philip V's breech-loading firearm of the Ferguson rifle Patrick Ferguson, a British Army officer, developed in 1772 the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock firearm. Roughly two hundred of the rifles were manufactured and used in the Battle of Brandywine, during the American Revolutionary War, but shortly after they were retired and replaced with the standard Brown Bess musket. ==Breech mechanism== A breech action is the loading sequence of a breech loading naval gun or small arm. The earliest breech actions were either three-shot break-open actions or a barrel tip-down, remove the plug and reload actions. The later breech-loaders included the Ferguson rifle, which used a screw-in/screw out action to reload, and the Hall rifle, which tipped up at 30 degrees for loading. The better breech loaders, however, used percussion caps, including the Sharps rifle, using a falling block (or sliding block) action to reload. And then later on came the Dreyse needle gun that used a moving seal (bolt) to seal and expose the breech. Later on, however, the Mauser M71/84 rifle used self-contained metallic cartridges and used a rotating bolt to open and close the breech. ==See also== Breechblock Interrupted screw Rifled musket Rifled breechloader ==Further reading== Greener, William Wellington (1892). The Breechloader and How to Use It ... Illustrated. London: Cassell & Co. Held, Robert (1970). The Age of Firearms; A Pictorial History from the Invention of Gunpower to the Advent of the Modern Breechloader. Northfield, Ill: Gun Digest Co. Layman, George J. (1997). A Guide to the Ballard Breechloader. Union City, TN: Pioneer Press. ==External links== Firearms from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on breech-loading weapons

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