Krag Collectors Association Forum

We all are enthralled with the Krag Jorgensen rifle (in love with seemed too strong or wishy washy), but have you ever considered how you would have felt about the selection of a foreign rifle in 1892 for the Military? I know how I felt about the Beretta replacing the Colt Model 1911 handgun. It wasn't originally favorable. Don't get me wrong, I do love (there I said it) the history of the Krag. However, put yourself in the shoes of the common American male in that period. Would you have given the Krag a chance with very little knowledge of it? A .30 caliber, Norwegian designed and whacky magazine hinging on the side. Inventors names that you never pronounced correctly in your lifetime and didn't know any better.

The article below is from the Army and Navy Journal dated 10/29/1892. It starts out stating that the rifle will never be in "the hands of our troops". Thus was the opinion of many at that time.
Politics were in play and a new board was announced. Below is an article from the same Journal, dated 4/29/1893.
Of course, the Krag-Jorgensen design was accepted.
So what would you have thought? The gun wasn't commonly called a "Springfield", but instead, the Krag. It is what it is, and a great gun at that. Albeit with a short history, which gives it more mystique and uniqueness.

Just going from a single shot to a repeater like a Krag would have been a thrill. But the new smokeless powder was much more powerful and accurate at distances greater than 100 yards. What's NOT to love compared to the super heavy single shot blackpowder Trap Door! Ammunition was smaller and lighter also. Carrying a bunch of heavy rounds is difficult as a soldier with all your other gear. Even with loading the new magazine rifle one round at a time, having the 5 rounds in reserve and using the chambered round as a single shot rifle was a great advantage.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there were American bolt action designs that were submitted, but not accepted. Some thought that those designs were better. By the way, I've provided the link below in the past to show the Norwegian pronunciation of Krag-Jorgensen. May sure to scroll down to the Norwegian ones and click on the black speaker symbols and not the blue. Krag does not rhyme with flag.

https://www.pronouncekiwi.com/Krag-Jorgensen

I wàs not much of a gun guy in the late '70s when on the missile crews. The sites only had two .38 snub nose revolvers for nuc codes defence.

I didn't think one way or the other by the time the Beretta showed. It was another gun I got to shoot on the Government's dime.

So yes. I would have been a Krag man from the start.

...until the next best came along. I love the Ford Model TT trucķ but I like power, AC, and cruise control better.

Knute1 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 4:07 am I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there were American bolt action designs that were submitted, but not accepted. Some thought that those designs were better.

Yes there were American bolt actions being tested but they weren't very good. External hammered bolt actions with fed through the receiver tube magazines. But the key here more than the rifles was the round. There was no ingenuity there with any of these as they were all BP 45-70 rounds. While Europe had embraced the small bore jacketed round propelled by smokeless powder all the US manufacturers had proposed was more of the same with multiple round capacity.
So given that as well as the normal amount of corruption and kickbacks that follow any government decision is most likely how the Krag was accepted.

The .30 Army round was designed and pre-selected by the Army. It would later be dubbed the 30-40 Krag, unofficially. The Army was considering a rimless design, but decided against it for a few reasons. One reason is they weren't confident in a rimless cartridge feeding through the Gatling Gun.

The fifty-three gun designs submitted were to use the .30 Army cartridge supplied by the Ordnance Department. Barrels were even furnished to the designers if they wanted. The Board had a set of criteria. Apparently, the speed of reloading wasn't heavily required. But the trials were exhaustive and designs were put through punishment.

Below is a link to the "Annual Report of the Chief of Ordnance to the Secretary of War, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1892". Page 181 is a list of (53) designs submitted, followed by a summary of each. Some designers submitted multiple designs, including Krag-Jorgensen.

https://books.google.com/books?id=uS4-A ... &q&f=false

Was it in the selection criteria that it had to be a bolt action?

I don't believe that the designs submitted were required to be bolt-action, though many of the new designs in other countries were. The Army was looking for a "magazine" rifle, or in otherwords, a repeating rifle. In the link I provided above go to page 27 for more information on the selection of "The Magazine Small Arm". Also, on page 29 is information on the cartridge. Note that Krag-Jorgensen provided a rifle design using the rimless cartridge. This design operated just as well as the rifle design with the rimmed cartridge, but the Ordnance Depart still stayed with the rimmed cartridge design in the final design.

They went with the rimmed cartridge because it ejected easier than the rimless cartridge.

IMO:
The Frankford Armory .30 caliber rimmed and rimless candidates, as well as the .303 British round, seem to have evolved from, (Swiss inventor), Col. Rubin's cartridges.

The rimmed .30-40 cartridge got the nod, because of improved certainty of extraction and a better gas seal in the event of case wall failures.

I believe, if I was involved, I would have favored the Lee-Speed rifle and the Lee magazine. This action was one of the competitors in the 1892 tests. It evolved from the Lee Black-Powder actions. The British adopted it in 1888 and it almost beat out the Krag, in the Danish rifle trials in the late 1880s.

The British Lee could have easily been manufactured by Remington. (I am not suggesting the model 1899 Remington-Lee, which was a fragile and flawed design).

I also may have been attracted to the Mannlicher and Berthier 'turn-bolt' designs.
The 1891 Mauser would also have been to my liking.

However, the U.S. Ordnance Department 'criteria' clearly ruled out my 'hypothetical' selections.

The Krag candidates all had very advanced ergonomics. But, I likely would have seen the various Krag designs as a machinist nightmare.

With advanced steels, I probably would have pushed for the single-shot Remington Rolling-Block as a National Guard and Cadet weapon.