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Austrian Lorenz

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I have been researching the Austrian Lorenz. The Wikipedia article on the Lorenz said there are three different versions: short range, medium range and long range. According to the article each of these three versions differed in the in the design of the lands and grooves in the barrel. Has anyone ever heard of this?
 
I looked at the exact wording of the Wikipedia quote and am honestly not sure what the poster means. In any event it is incorrect. The M1854 Rifle-Musket in Austrian service was fitted with two different types of rear sights, but both had the exact same rifling pattern and twist rate. The "type I" Lorenz has a simple block type rear sight. In Austrian doctrine, this version would be the mainstay of the issued longarms for line infantry regiments. Though it seems like a point and shoot, Austrian manuals actually indicate different points of aim depending on the range, so that the block sight could be used in excess of 300 schritt. The "type II" has a leaf sight ranged to 900 schritt, and was issued to NCOs and the better shots in the third rank.
In American Civil War usage there are two other patterns of rear sight sometimes encountered, though both are quite rare. Some arms refitted in Belgium have an Enfield pattern rear sight added to them. They were also rebored to nominally .58 caliber. There are also a handful of commercially made Lorenz rifle-muskets with abnormally short rear sights more akin to what is seen on M1854 Extracorps Musketoons. In both cases, these features are not found on guns in their original Austrian service configurations.

I think the Wikipedia article may be confusing the whole M1854 family of arms and lumping them together with the "Lorenz" rifle-musket. There is indeed a short M1854 Extracorps Musketoon (short range), the standard M1854 Rifle-Musket (medium range) and the M1854 Jagerstutzen which, though shorter than the rifle-musket, has a much more sophisticated rear sight ranged out to 1,000 schritt (long range).
There is a lot of bad information on Austrian arms, and more than a few other types of Civil War imported arms, on the net. If you're interested in collecting stuff in that vein you'd be well served by picking up a copy of "European Arms in the Civil War" and/or "Firearms from Europe".
 
Grayrock Volunteer, Thank you for answering my question. Very interesting. I like to research the Rifle Muskets. Also of interests are the bullets used in the Lorenz. Hopefully the JPG is attached. Do you think their accuracy was comparable to the Minie Ball?
 

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Grayrock Volunteer, Thank you for answering my question. Very interesting. I like to research the Rifle Muskets. Also of interests are the bullets used in the Lorenz. Hopefully the JPG is attached. Do you think their accuracy was comparable to the Minie Ball?

Very much so. The Lorenz family of arms are quite accurate when used with their intended ammunition. I believe most of the period complaints about them stemmed generally from the use of American sized .54 caliber ammunition, which is too small to adequately expand to take the rifling, accompanied by the lack of consistency in the bore sizes of the Lorenzes that were rebored to .58 caliber in Belgium.
Neither side bothered to translate any Austrian manuals, though any officer who had served in the US Ordnance Department in the 1850s should have been well aware of at least some of the chief differences in Austrian arms and ammunition as Alfred Mordecai's inspection tour of European arsenals took him through the chief Austro-Hungarian arsenal at Vienna where he made a neatly detailed report of its operations and Austrian arms technology.
 
So,, the explosion of the propellant black powder charge was sufficient to cause the Lorenz bullet to "accordion" down, which then expanded the bullet and allowed it to engage the riflings? If that is correct, it is the opposite of the Thouvenin System. That is to say, instead of the force of the ramrod from above deforming the bullet to engage the riflings....the force of the explosion from below deformed the bullet.
 
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