Misinterpretation of name of a Civil War bullet (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

While Pennington got the distinction between Minie- and miniballs
correct, he misspelled "ordnance" as "ordinance".

>
> For those who might be interested, here is a letter to the editor
> (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 18, 1992, p. A21/2) about how the fearsome
> Civil War bullet "Minie ball" was misinterpreted as "miniball"
> (title): "'Minie" A Fearful Name In Battles of Civil War"
>
>     "Your Jan. 15 page-one article on explosive-ordinance
> disposal (EOD) in Kuwait said Charles Hall, the young EOD
> man you profiled, spent his youth searching for "miniballs" from
> Civil War battlefields.  More likely they were "Minie" balls,
> named for their inventor, French officer Capt. Claude E. Minie.  They
had
> hollow bases and conical rings and expanded enough when fired to
engage the
> rifling of the barrel, making the far more accurate rifle (as opposed
to a
> smoothbore) practical as a military weapon.
>
>     "These were the bullets of choice in the Civil War and far from
being
> the teeny-weeny projectiles suggested by the article, they were a
whopping
> 0.58 inches in diameter, a full inch long, slow moving and heavy with
a
> fearful stopping power that could wrench off an arm or a leg with one
shot.
> They were effective to a range of about 250 yards and deadly to about
500
> yards.
>    SAMUEL PENNINGTON
> Waldoboro, Maine."
>
> Gerald Cohen
>

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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