An expansion, but in many ways a revolutionary one; a repeating carbine still had to be manually cocked (like a pump action shotgun), and so the rate of fire from a true automatic is, was, and always will be much greater. Likewise with the revolver over the automatic handgun; prior to the invention of speed loaders, revolvers had to be clumsily reloaded one round at a time once the cylinder was empty. An automatic, like modern military handguns, could have preloaded magazines aplenty which take a second or two to change out.
The advanced cyclic rate of fire is really the critical thing when it comes to comparing standard firearms of the 1860s with those of, say, the 1960s. The transition can best be seen, I think, in the trenches of WWI, where the generals who had been trained by the veterans of the 1860s wars still lined their troops up like they needed to rely on volley fire in order to provided sufficient firepower. But they were going up against the first true automatic weapons, machine guns that used the gas discharge of the round firing (or the recoil of the bolt) to reload and recock the weapon in the blink of an eye. As a result, we got trenches, and the hellish no man's land in between.
Quick reloads and advanced cyclic rates give light infantry (like the Marines and Army Rangers and Airborne) the bedrock foundation of their tactics, which is called "fire and maneuver." If you ever watch the second episode of "Band of Brothers," there's an example in which the men of Easy Company take and destroy a German artillery position (that is apparently still taught at West Point as the textbook example). They laid down what's called a base of fire, using their machine guns to blanket the enemy positions and force them to keep their heads down; meanwhile, the company's maneuver elements flanked the position and took the first artillery piece. Once that was done, portions of the maneuver element could themselves lay down a base of fire, allowing the machine gun teams to move up and continue the process.
This kind of thing is very nearly impossible with 1860s-era firearms, which is why you saw a very different kind of warfare, with big wheeling lines of infantry, firing volleys into the opposing lines, hoping to wear them down through superior numbers and speed of reloading. But in those days, you were talking about an extremely proficient individual being able to reload a muzzle-loading rifle or musket three or four times a minute, whereas an M-16 can theoretically fire 700 rounds a minute. That's a frankly epic leap forward in the volume of fire available on the battlefield.
Now, the secondary consideration there is that high cyclic rates and automatic reloads are only an advantage if you have the ammunition stores to back them up. If you burn through thirty rounds in two seconds, and that's all you have, then the advantage is back to the guys with the older weapons, because all you have is a fancy club.
no subject
The advanced cyclic rate of fire is really the critical thing when it comes to comparing standard firearms of the 1860s with those of, say, the 1960s. The transition can best be seen, I think, in the trenches of WWI, where the generals who had been trained by the veterans of the 1860s wars still lined their troops up like they needed to rely on volley fire in order to provided sufficient firepower. But they were going up against the first true automatic weapons, machine guns that used the gas discharge of the round firing (or the recoil of the bolt) to reload and recock the weapon in the blink of an eye. As a result, we got trenches, and the hellish no man's land in between.
Quick reloads and advanced cyclic rates give light infantry (like the Marines and Army Rangers and Airborne) the bedrock foundation of their tactics, which is called "fire and maneuver." If you ever watch the second episode of "Band of Brothers," there's an example in which the men of Easy Company take and destroy a German artillery position (that is apparently still taught at West Point as the textbook example). They laid down what's called a base of fire, using their machine guns to blanket the enemy positions and force them to keep their heads down; meanwhile, the company's maneuver elements flanked the position and took the first artillery piece. Once that was done, portions of the maneuver element could themselves lay down a base of fire, allowing the machine gun teams to move up and continue the process.
This kind of thing is very nearly impossible with 1860s-era firearms, which is why you saw a very different kind of warfare, with big wheeling lines of infantry, firing volleys into the opposing lines, hoping to wear them down through superior numbers and speed of reloading. But in those days, you were talking about an extremely proficient individual being able to reload a muzzle-loading rifle or musket three or four times a minute, whereas an M-16 can theoretically fire 700 rounds a minute. That's a frankly epic leap forward in the volume of fire available on the battlefield.
Now, the secondary consideration there is that high cyclic rates and automatic reloads are only an advantage if you have the ammunition stores to back them up. If you burn through thirty rounds in two seconds, and that's all you have, then the advantage is back to the guys with the older weapons, because all you have is a fancy club.