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The Whitworth rifle was an English-made percussion rifle used in the latter half of the 19th century. A single-shot muzzleloader with excellent long-range accuracy for its era, especially when used with a telescopic sight , the Whitworth rifle was widely regarded as the world's first sniper rifle .
The 12-pdr rifle was designed in the early 1850s by British manufacturer Joseph Whitworth, who had recently been contracted to improve the Pattern 1853 Enfield.During his experiments with the Enfield, Whitworth was inspired to begin experimenting with a hexagonally-rifled barrel; Whitworth would later apply these principles to his field guns.
The 3-pdr rifle was designed by British manufacturer Joseph Whitworth in the early 1850s. Along with Whitworth's 12-pdr rifle, the artillery piece was considered for adoption by the British government's Board of Ordnance, eventually losing out to the Armstrong gun. [1]
Whitworth rifle: Considered the world's first sniper rifle when used with a telescopic sight, the Whitworth was a British single-shot, muzzleloading rifle purchased by the Confederate government in limited numbers. Firing a mechanically fitted, six-sided bullet from a hexagonal bore, the Whitworth was capable of incredible accuracy at long range.
Whitworth also created the Whitworth rifle, often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy, which is considered one of the earliest examples of a sniper rifle, used by some Confederate forces during the American Civil war. Whitworth was created a baronet by Queen Victoria in 1869.
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("rifling") cut into the barrel walls.The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile (for small arms usage, called a bullet), imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the orientation of the weapon.
The gun used polygonal rifling, a principle invented by Whitworth in 1853.The concept was to use the hexagon to impart a very rapid spin to the projectile. The method of manufacturing the rifling was thus described by the Report of the Armstrong & Whitworth Committee of the British War Office (1866):
The Whitworth rifle proved to be an accurate and deadly instrument. Its most remembered act was on May 9, 1864, at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, where Union General John Sedgwick urged his men to leave a ditch in which they lay in order to cover from the Confederate snipers hidden 800 to 1000 yards away.