Here is a March, 1895 article from "Journal of the United States Calvary Association". It has criticism of, defense of, and recommendations of the Magazine Rifle design. There appears to be a rather terse response from the Springfield Armory.

  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login
  (You need to Login

'Knute" - An interesting read; Thanks for posting.

FWIW - my thoughts:

Lt. John T. Haines, (5th Cavalry, U.S. Army), in his March, 1895 response, seems a little bit 'snarky' and defensive.

His insistence that the correct name for the arm was: "U.S. Magazine Rifle Model 1892" and not "Krag-Jorgensen", probably reflects official sensitivity to continued criticism that the U.S. had adopted a 'foreign rifle'. (Of course the slang name "Krag" was destined to survive and the rifle became an Icon)!

I am not aware of Lt. Haines official position, but, his response to Lt. Lyon's comments in "The Army Navy Journal", were sent from Springfield Armory.

Ultimately a lot of the points discussed were adopted: changes to the hand-guard, safety-mechanism, muzzle crown, cut-off lever, cleaning-rod, and weight reduction.

Rear-Sight changes and 'improvements' became a "strange and wonderful" part of the Krag .... ooops ... Magazine Rifle Story.

"Bullet Drift" proved to be an amazing and rather peculiar challenge and side-story with our Krag-Jorgensen system rifles and carbines and how they performed.

Lt. Lyon's thought that changing rifling-twist direction would 'correct' felt effects of recoil to the cheek and poor trigger pulls sounds pretty naïve and dated.

"Snarky" is the exact word that came to my mind, also. I am going to make an attempt to see who this guy was. He must have had some "skin in the game" or he would not have been so sensitive. I started a separate post about an article he wrote a few months later about the "1895" carbine. He seemed much more reasonable in that article.

By the way, for those interested, below is the link to both articles in the Journal. Many cavalry subject are covered besides the rifle/carbine.

  (You need to Login

Here's our guy............John Taylor Haines, a graduate of West Point. He had ordnance duty at the Springfield Armory from 10/1/1894 to 10/1/1895. Looks like he later got typhoid fever and when he recovered he was a recruiter.

This is from a registry of West Point:

  (You need to Login

  (You need to Login

Thanks for finding the 'Bio' information on Lt. John Taylor Haines.

BTW - I thought it real interesting to see the mention of successful Danish and Norwegian 'chargers', to allow rapid-loading of the magazine, in Lt. Haines 1895 response, published in the 'Army Navy Journal'.
(A quick-load solution was there from the start. We just didn't use it).

That's outstanding! 

I find it absolutely hilarious that SA had no pertinent remark other than attempting to "spank" the writer for referring to the origins of the rifle,,,,,, ;D

I'm not sure if the writer, Lt. Haines, spoke for the Springfield Armory, but he did write from the Springfield Armory. I believe that due to his involvement in the testing for one year that he became a "believer" of the Krag Jorgensen design as adopted by the United States and was part of a team to improve it. The Model 1892 hadn't been out all that long and of course had some faults. He took the criticism by the uneducated (my assumption of what he thought) too personally and wanted to set the record straight. He let his emotions take over the pen.

The United States paid Krag and Jorgensen "up front". But the U.S. Magazine Rifle design that followed it, the Model 1903 Springfield, was based on a design by Paul Mauser of Germany. Mauser received a settlement of an eventual $200,000 through the back door for infringement on his patent. This may not have been disclosed to the public as much as the Norwegian design. Even the U.S. Model 1917, which exceeded the Model 1903 in numbers during the Great War, originated in England and was based on the Mauser design.

Sorry, I let my emotions take over the keyboard. ;)

Here is an article by Lt.-Col. Andrew H. Russell of the Ordnance Department. It showed up in the "Journal of the Military Service Institution" from 1906, page 47. It has some surprising revelations of the box magazine design and the "cartridge clip"  (along with Krag info).

The link is below, but I also added the first few pages to whet your appetite. This article is best viewed once downloaded as a pdf file. If you are interested in the U.S. Magazine rifle development and what did/did not transpire, there are some significant claims in this read.

  (You need to Login

  (You need to Login

  (You need to Login

Here is a more favorable article on the Krag vs. the Spanish Mauser, although some of the reasoning may be soon after outdated. It comes from a weekly periodical called Timely Topics and this issue is dated November 11, 1898, shortly after the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

  (You need to Login

  (You need to Login

A lot of "spin" there.

Anyone, familiar with the 'contract rifles' built by the Ludwig Loewe and DWM companies in Berlin, knows that the workmanship was very high in quality, materials and uniformity!

---

I'm glad that the inferior Mauser designed rifle, had in no way, any affect on future U.S. firearm designs!

Long live the Krag!!!  ;)

Yes, the Mauser System was a 'Dead End', that came to an early demise in the evolution of arms.

It is pretty rare to see any reference to it. ;)

---

I can understand the Springfield Armory "bad mouthing" the Mauser with impunity. What I got a kick out of was the way the Mauser was considered a "repeating" firearm like that was a bad thing and that it couldn't be "single-loaded" like that was a good thing to have.

Here's another soldier that isn't going to let anybody off the hook for criticizing his rifle. It is in response to another reader of a magazine called "Recreation". He is writing from the Philippine Islands.

  (You need to Login

  (You need to Login

Curious, Springfield dropped the Krag, and started producing the 1903, a Mauser copy.