Subsequent patents for improvements were taken by Lee as follows: No. 513,647, January 30, 1894, and No. 547,583, October 8, 1895, and the gun used by the United States Navy is modeled along the lines of Lee’s invention.
FIG. 280.—KRAG-JORGENSEN MAGAZINE RIFLE.
The Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle was patented June 10, 1890, No. 429,811, and February 21, 1893, No. 492,212. It is the arm adopted by the United States infantry service, and is seen in [Fig. 280]. The fixed magazine chamber, shown in the cross section, passes through the breech laterally below the barrel, and is filled with cartridges on one side of the gun, which cartridges pass through the breech laterally, and, turning a curve, enter the barrel from the opposite side. When the bolt is drawn back by the knob handle a cartridge is fed up into position to enter the barrel, and when pushed forward the cartridge is forced into the bore of the gun, and at the same time a spiral spring is put under tension to set the hammer of the gun, which carries a firing pin at its front end. When the trigger is pulled the hammer and firing pin plunge forward to explode the cap in the cartridge, and when the handle of the bolt is drawn back again to extract the empty shell, a fresh cartridge rises to take its place.
The Mauser Rifle is shown in [Fig. 281]. This is the arm of which so much was heard during the recent war with Spain, and against which our soldiers had to contend. Five cartridges are carried in a magazine immediately in front of the trigger, and are fed up by a subjacent spring, one at a time, centrally through the breech into line with the barrel, as the bolt with the knobbed handle is worked back and forth. The cartridges are carried by the soldier in groups of five in a “clip,” which is a simple strip of metal with inturned parallel edges, which enclose the flanged heads of the cartridges as they project at right angles to the clip. To transfer the cartridges to the magazine, the clip with its cartridges is placed above the barrel, and the cartridges forced down out of the clip into the magazine. In the Mannlicher gun, adopted by the German army, the clip which holds the cartridges is itself inserted into the magazine, along with the cartridges.
FIG. 281.—THE MAUSER RIFLE AND CLIP.
The modern trend of development in firearms has been toward the reduction of calibre, the standard for small arms being 30⁄100. The lead bullets are covered with a seamless jacket of harder metal (Geiger’s patents, No. 306,738 and 306,739, October 21, 1884), which prevents the “leading” and fouling of the gun, and the distortion of the bullet. Modern magazine guns permit twenty-five to thirty shots a minute as single loaders, and besides they hold in reserve five cartridges. They have a killing range of a mile, and the cost of the cartridge is 3.2 cents. At a trial at the Washington Navy Yard a few years past a steel projectile 1.07 inches long and 32⁄100 calibre penetrated solid iron 1.15 inch thick, fired at an angle of 80°. It also penetrated 50 inches of pine boards, and its range was estimated at three miles.