Any body out there have any information or pictures of the air rifle Lewis and Clark took on their trek across the Western US. Would be interesting to see how it worked and specs and size of projectiles. Must have been quite a rifle.
Thanks
BJB

IIRC there was an article in the "Rifleman" some years back. It included info on large bore air rifles in general . Very impressive ballistics suitable for large game !!

Look here:

http://www4.vmi.edu/museum/air_rifle.html

http://www.beemans.net/Lewis%20&%20Clark%20Airgun.htm

the one that cracked me up years ago was the story about the USS Vesuvius, a Spanish-american war vintage cruiser with pneumatic main guns.

AD

Guys, thanks for the info. I found this one article that says the caliber was .51 which I find hard to believe. .31 sounds much more like it. Interesting link to the rifle and the trip.
Bruce



http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1829

quote:

Originally posted by Allan DeGroot:
the one that cracked me up years ago was the story about the USS Vesuvius, a Spanish-american war vintage cruiser with pneumatic main guns.

AD

I think there were two of these vessels commissioned. Very large bore guns with large gun-cotton exploding projectiles (or was it nitro-glycerine?). The fear was of setting the warheads off in the barrel with the concussion of a black powder main charge, so the shell was fired with compressed air.

One even fired a round near a town in combat, IIRC. The explosion from the new shell was so traumatic the town surrendered immediately.

One gun was completely fixed in the hull, you contolled range with air pressure and the other vessel had limited elevation adjustments. Both required the entire ship to move to traverse. Very stable high explosive warheads made them obsolete not long after they were commisioned. Is that about right AD, or am I remembering wrongly?

They actually used a composition of Nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose usually refered to as "blasting gelatin"

But they used a "Desensitized" version.

The guns could only be aimed by pointing the ship
the elevation changed by varying the air charge.

Range was short and the ammo supply was small.

The USS Vesuvius was eventually converted to carry torpedo tubes instead., but still a 15" air gun?

the only bigger one I know of was the pneumatic launchers for the (now retired and dismantled) Peacekeeper ICBMs

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