Richardson & Overman · Carbine
Gallager Carbine
Break action · .50 Gallager · introduced 1860
Also known as Gallagher Carbine
About the Gallager Carbine
The Gallager Carbine was a single-shot, breech-loading percussion cavalry carbine patented by Mahlon J. Gallager and manufactured by Richardson & Overman of Philadelphia. Pulling down the combined lever and trigger-guard slid the barrel forward and tilted it to expose the chamber for a .50 caliber cartridge. Around 25,000 were built during the Civil War, but the design's lack of any cartridge extractor, which forced troopers to dig spent cases out by hand, made it one of the less popular cavalry carbines of the war.
The Gallager had no extractor, so after every shot a cavalryman had to pry the swollen, fouled cartridge case out of the breech by hand, often with a knife, a fatal flaw when a Confederate charge gave him only seconds to reload.
Gallager Carbine specifications
General
- Type
- Carbine
- Action
- Break action
- Firing mechanism
- Hammer-fired
- Trigger
- Single stage
- Calibres
- .50 Gallager
- Magazine capacity
- 1 rounds
- Magazine
- Internal
Dimensions
- Barrel length
- 565 mm (22.2 in)
- Overall length
- 991 mm (39.0 in)
- Weight (empty)
- 3.40 kg (7.50 lb)
Barrel
- Rifling
- Right hand
Materials
- Barrel
- Steel
- Receiver / frame
- Steel
- Stock
- Wood
- Finish
- case_hardened
Performance
- Effective range
- 180 m
History
- Introduced
- 1860
- Discontinued
- 1865
- Production status
- Out of production
- Country of origin
- US
- Designer
- Mahlon J. Gallager
Features
- Sliding tilting barrel
- Lever trigger guard operation
- Iron patchbox
- Saddle ring
- No cartridge extractor
Safety
- Half cock hammer
Roughly 5,000 examples were chambered for the .56-52 Spencer metallic rimfire cartridge late in production. Iron mountings, blued barrel, case-hardened frame, and a long iron patchbox were typical.