e boat would be in many pieces, with lots of debris floating atop the water. To say the least, these bombs were a highly effective method of attack. The Gatling gun was a gun far ahead of its time, for it is still used very effectively in combat today, and will continue its effective presence in combat well into the twenty-first century. The Gatling gun was a hand-crank operated weapon with six barrels revolving around a central shaft. A 'hopper' was placed on the top of the gun, and gravity served to load the ammunition into the chamber. Gatling used six chambers to allow a brief cooling period for the gun before firing again. Since the gun could fire six hundred rounds of ammunition per minute, each barrel fired one hundred rounds per minute.Coehorn Mortars and Armstrong Rifles were used as projectile attack alternatives when a garrison needed a powerful blow to be delivered. The projectiles used in the Coehorn Mortars ranged form a weight of seventeen pounds, all the way up to 24 pounds. Named after Dutch engineer Baron van Coehorn, this mortar was a light seige weapon used mostly in trench warfare, and was carried by four men. The Armstrong Rifle, on the other hand was quite a large piece of equipment weighing over seven tons. The Civil War did very much for our nation, one key aspect of which was the development and advancement of our nation's defense mechanisms. The United States advanced leaps and bounds in the development of new weapons, and improvements on weapons that previously existed. This is merely a small display of all of the improvements the United States made during the Civil War; a war of bloody conflict and spite. Without these weapons, the war may not have ended just as it did, and we would also not have the advanced weapons systems that we have today....
