[rdl6989]

They couldn’t hit an elephant at that dist...

-General John Sedgwick’s final words at the battle of Spottsylvania.

[rdl6989]

They couldn’t hit an elephant at that dist...

-General John Sedgwick’s final words at the battle of Spottsylvania.

[ReformedBeckite]

....These weapons were given to the very best marksmen in the Confederate Army.....

Being a sniper during the Civil War was very highly prestige position, it also had the highest causality rate among all the different positions in an army. The one reason because of this is because most of the time when a sniper is shooting he was the only one shooting and it wan't hard to know where he was, it was pretty hard to hide as a sniper in the Civil War because after you take a shoot everybody knows where you were hiding from the smoke from the gun powder after the discharge. A lot of time to counter a sniper they would bring up the cannons and let loose with grape shot or what ever in the general direction of the sniper and the odds of him being killed was very high.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

An interesting tidbit is that while the general impression that Confederate soldiers were better shots in general than Union troops is true, when it came to dedicated sharpshooting the north had the edge in both organization and ability. Some union officers, the well-known Hiram Birden among them, actively sought and recruited professional long range shooters, and worked to have them armed and organized to best utilize their skills.

[SkyDancer]

The marksmanship in the Union Army was so terrible that after the war the NRA was formed to train civilians in marksmanship.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Oh the eyes of youth.

When I used to have to qualify, it was so easy, I could see the .38 bullets leave and track them all the way to the target like they were on a string. Hip shooting was a breeze.

[SES1066]

There are five documented Confederate States Army (CSA) Whitworth Rifles in the United States and the one that I am most familiar with is my G.Grandfather's (Charles T Ingram) on permanent exhibition at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City, OK. C.T. Ingram joined the CSA on 12/31/1861 and was in the Western Theater until his capture and parole at Vicksburg in July 1863. He was issued the Whitworth after his parole expired and served with the CSA Army of the Tennessee under Gen. Patrick Cleburne until the war's end. This Rifle was in our family's possession ever since Pvt. Ingram eluded capture and went to Bonham, Texas after the US Civil War.

My Father, Col. Ed Speairs, a proud member of the 45th in WW2 and Korea, donated this family heirloom to the Museum around 1988. At that time he was informed that this weapon had the best provenance (history) of any of the known rifles in the USofA. When the Museum contacted the Whitworth historical society in Manchester England, they verified the serial number as one of the 'lost Confederate Whitworth Rifles.'

[ThinkingBuddha]

https://www.full30.com/video/4cdcff939c8e889e35489b555f9b604e

https://www.full30.com/video/df3fd6c3c80185553e1d2f86e9427d70

[Vinnie]

I’m guessing this is the Whitworth that invented unique sized nuts and bolts used in British machinery.
IIRC a relative had a Jaguar XK120 and had to buy Whitworth tools to work on it.