Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA with
an 1898 Krag rifle.
But the rifle itself isn't what we want to talk about.
Today what I want to talk about are the bayonets
that were developed for it. The Krag was the
United States Army's first actual repeating rifle.
It was our first smokeless powder rifle,
it was our first bolt action file, it was our first
modern-ish rifle in kind of a long time.
This replaced the Trapdoor Springfield which was a single shot, black powder, large bore, old-style rifle.
And ... as was typical with rifles of that type, it came with a triangular spike bayonet.
A socket bayonet that fitted around the barrel itself.
And when the Army adopted the Krag they actually made a really good decision, which was,
"Those triangular bayonets really might kind of be obsolete by now, what's Europe doing?
You know what? In Europe, they are all using knife bayonets, so let's take a look at some of those.
OK, we took a look at the Swiss knife bayonet and that looks pretty awesome,
let's just copy that and use it on our new Krag rifles." And they did.
But clearly that was a good and effective idea, and so it couldn't last without some challenge.
And that's where these two come in. Now let me show you all of these up close.
So the original Krag 1892 bayonet, like I said, is a copy of
the standard Swiss knife bayonet from the early Schmidt–Rubin rifles.
And it's a very effective bayonet. It's a decent length, it's I think 11.5 inches long,
it's not one of these really overly long types, but it's long enough to actually do some good.
It makes a good field knife.
Really an excellent design. Guys were very happy with them.
But the US has a history at this point of trying to make multi-purpose gear.
We don't want to issue two things to the soldier if we can issue them one thing that will do two different jobs.
And you can see this in 1873 when the US Army developed and issued a trowel bayonet
that was supposed to be both a bayonet and an entrenching tool.
That didn't last very long and wasn't very effective.
They tried it again in 1880 with a combination field knife and trowel.
That was slightly less terrible because you weren't expected to actually clip it onto the end of the rifle,
but it was still a pretty terrible tool for both digging and stabbing people.
So that didn't last all that well either.
And this good idea fairy struck again in 1900 with the development of
what is commonly referred to as the 'Bowie Knife' bayonet for the Krag.
Now this was actually, believe it or not, intended, to be a combination ... bayonet and fighting knife and entrenching tool.
How exactly they thought this could actually be used as an entrenching tool, I am not sure.
But they made 2,000 of them in 1900. They sent 1,500 of those to the Philippines
for trials use. They sent another 500 to the US garrison in Cuba.
And it was not a success.
So, it looks pretty mean. However it's not a very good bayonet, it's pretty unwieldy.
This Bowie knife isn't really a stabbing sort of weapon there.
It's a far worse entrenching tool, just useless for digging with.
And it wasn't really heavy enough to function effectively as a utility knife.
Especially not in areas like the Philippines, where what guys really wanted, what was really practical,
was the native sort of bolo knife that had a really heavy chunk of blade out here
that you could use for chopping through vegetation.
This looks like it might be good for that, but the way it's balanced is really more like a fighting knife.
There is not much weight out here, it's a pretty thin blade, there's a lot more weight back in the handle.
And this would be no good at all for chopping.
So this was pretty dismal failure.
And in response
we got this guy.
This was developed by a Captain Hugh Wise, who was an American officer in the Philippines.
And, as I mentioned, what was really handy for guys in the Philippines were the local bolo style of knives.
And so he came up with this idea that they should have a bolo-style bayonet.
And he made one in the Philippines, in the field, and then sent it back to Springfield for testing,
like, "Hey, here's what we really want. Get rid of this thing, and give us something like this."
And Springfield took a look at it and they went ahead and they manufactured 50 for testing in 1902,
and then another 6 in 1903.
And they sent them back out to the Philippines for trials where,
honestly, they probably wouldn't have been all that successful, because this sort of dual use stuff usually isn't.
However this would be a much better chopping tool.
If you look at the width of the blade here compared to the Bowie bayonet,
you can see a really substantial difference.
The Bowie bayonet is this very thin blade, where the Bolo is nearly a quarter inch thick on the spine.
So there is a lot more mass and heft to the Bolo bayonet.
Now it would still probably be a pretty mediocre bayonet, as a stabbing implement clipped onto a rifle.
But I suspect that was a little bit less important, of less practical use than
having it as a handy field knife or sort of quasi-machete.
A couple of details to point out here from a collector perspective.
Both of these styles of bayonet, both of these models, were marked US on the right side,
and they were both dated.
So the Bowie bayonets were made in 1900, like I said 2,000.
There is one book that says 2,800, but everyone else pretty much agrees on 2,000 of them.
And then the bolo bayonets, far scarcer, only ... 56 made.
This being one of the 6 that was made in 1903, the other 50 were made in 1902.
Neither of these patterns were serialised, so there won't be any numbers on them.
And both were ultimately sold as surplus when they were determined to be obsolete.
Now the bolo bayonet here had a little more potential to it, and maybe they would have continued development,
or put it into some sort of limited production, except that it was a little bit too late.
Because in 1903, when they were making the last small batch of trials prototypes,
well, the US Army replaced the Krag with an entirely new rifle, the 1903 Springfield.
And the 1903 Springfield came with its own brand new bayonet,
it was a return to the rod bayonet.
It would fairly quickly revert back to a blade bayonet,
very much of the same pattern as the original Krag blade bayonets.
But they did actually make some efforts to try out a bolo-style bayonet for the 1903 Springfield.
And I actually have a separate video on one of those. So if you are interested in
where this went, the answer is, well, it got even bigger for the 1903 Springfield.
So you can check that video out if you like.
These are both of course very scarce and very cool bayonets.
I think they do a really interesting job of illustrating some of the thinking,
or lack thereof, that was going on in the Army.
And really kind of highlight the US quasi-colonial operations in Cuba and the Philippines
around the turn of the century.
A period of our history that a lot of people don't think about so much anymore, I don't think.
Anyway, hopefully you guys also enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
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