Gevär fm1881 - magazine rifle of the Yarman system (Army Museum, Stockholm)
And before the "krag", the Norwegian army fired from a rifle of the Yarman system of the 1884 model, developed back in 1878. The Yarman is the first bolt action rifle to enter service in Norway and is also its own development. Prior to this, the armament of the Norwegian army was quite variegated. The rifles used were Wetterly, Winchester, Hotchkiss and early Remington-Lee models. Even the German Mauser M71 / 84 rifles and the early samples of Kropachek's rifles ended up here, on the rocky, fjord-cut northern shores of Europe.
Yarman's rifle with one of the bayonet samples.
In fact, armed with all these different-sized weapons, the Norwegian army at that time was something like a militia - a situation intolerable for any self-respecting country. But it just so happened that the Norwegian engineer Jacob Smith Yarman realized this before anyone else, who designed his rifle first for black powder cartridges, and then for smokeless cartridges. Moreover, his rifles were produced not only for the Norwegian army, but also for neighboring Sweden. First of all, Yarman prepared a rifle of the 1884 model of the year chambered for black powder cartridges of 10, 15 mm caliber and with an eight-round tubular magazine, which was located under the barrel by analogy with the Winchester magazine. And first, a single-shot rifle entered service. The Norwegian military considered - however, this was not only the opinion of the Norwegian military - that if the rifle fires 15 rounds per minute, then no cartridges would be enough for it!
Yarman's rifle device.
However, Yarman began not at all with a rifle, but with a cartridge. Any rifle is primarily a cartridge. So for his rifle, Yarman in the late 1870s - early 1880s, first of all, developed a cartridge that was approved by the joint Swedish-Norwegian commission in 1881, and only then in 1884 it was put into service along with the rifle.
Cartridge and bullet for Yarman's rifle.
It had a bottle-shaped brass sleeve with a noticeably protruding flange and a capsule socket for the central battle capsule. A charge of black powder weighing 4.5 g was used as a propellant. The cartridge case also housed (traditional for cartridges of those years) a seal made of two cardboard circles, between which there was a mixture of fat and wax. It was required in order to lubricate the barrel of the rifle when fired and thereby reduce the leadening of the barrel. The bullet was lead, blunt-pointed and with a notch in the bottom. As in the cartridge of the Berdan rifle, the bullet had a paper wrap, which also reduced the leadening of the barrel. The mass of the bullet was 21, 85 g, and when fired, it acquired a speed of up to 500 m / s. When the cartridge was modernized, a bullet with a steel shell was adapted to it, and black powder was replaced with ballistite, which gave it the same speed of 500 m / s and an energy of 2350 J.
Yarman's cartridge was in service for only seven years, after which they began to use the 6, 5x55 cartridge for the "Swedish Mauser". However, the stock of cartridges was not wasted. Some were adapted for harpoon guns, and some were sold as hunting rifles. This cartridge is no longer in production.
The shutter to Yarman's rifle.
The rifle had a simple breechblock with a straight grip at its rear, and when reloaded, it turned upward by 45 degrees. The ejector was located on the top of the bolt and was a simple springy metal plate. Weight - 4.5 kg.
Shutter device for Yarman's rifle.
The rifle was tested by a joint Norwegian-Swedish commission, and, as they say, "seemed" to her. But since by this time quite a lot of magazine rifles had already appeared, a desire was expressed to turn it into a "shop". Several prototypes of rifles were prepared, which had magazines. Ole Hermann Johannes Krag - the creator of the Krag-Petersen rifle and the future creator of the Krag-Jorgensen rifle - developed two versions of the magazine for the Järman rifle, one of which was almost identical to the one he later used on his future Krag- Jorgensen ". Jacob Yarman himself also made several variants of rifles, mainly with tubular magazines under the barrel or with removable magazines mounted on the side above the bolt. The latter was considered by the military unsuitable for use in army weapons, and in the end they still chose a tubular magazine. By design, it was similar to the tubular magazine of the Kropachek rifle and may have served as its prototype, although it may well be that the "source of inspiration" for the designer was precisely the Krag-Petersen rifle.
From top to bottom: Krag-Jorgensen M1894 (civilian model with telescopic sight), Krag-Petersen, Yarman M1884, Remington M1867 (Fram Museum, Oslo)
It should be noted here that no matter how perfect this design was, it had one very serious and irreparable drawback inherent in all rifles of this type. The combination of a tube magazine and ammunition with a "center fire" primer was too dangerous, especially when using cartridges with sharpened bullets. In addition, the balance of the weapon changed with each shot, which to a certain extent affected the accuracy of the fire.
Yarman's rifle bolt handle.
The bolt handle of the carbine model 1886
In addition, the rifle was also a very powerful bayonet weapon, since it had a straight stock neck, convenient precisely for bayonet fighting. The bayonet was very long and was a real T-shaped epee blade, similar to the bayonet from the Gra rifle, but without the hook on the crosshair.
Aim.
The sight was graduated from 200 to 1600 m. It was noted that Yarman's rifle was a remarkably accurate rifle for its time. In 1886, the joint Norwegian-Swedish commission that had chosen her earlier prepared a list of all tested rifles. And judging from this list, it can be seen that the Yarman M1884 was significantly better than the other rifles tested. So it turned out that "Yarman" with its 10, 15 mm bullet at a distance of 438 meters had the best accuracy among all the others. In this it was very favorably different from the Remington M1867, and also the Gra rifle. Even the Mauser rifle (presumably it was the Gewehr 1871) had a slightly worse performance in terms of accuracy.
It was on Yarman's rifle that a rather funny U-shaped magazine of the Ludwig Liové system, arr. 1880, which was supposed to turn it into a store with a better balance compared to rifles with an under-barrel magazine with a minimum amount of alterations. (Defense Museum, Oslo)
The store was attached to the stock from below, and the cartridges were fed by a spring through the hole on the right directly into the receiver when the bolt was moving. But … the design was unsuccessful! (Defense Museum, Oslo)
In total, at least 30,000 Yarman rifles were manufactured for the Norwegian army during the ten years between its adoption in 1884 and the subsequent adoption of the Krag-Jorgensen rifle in 1894. Another 1,500 were produced at the same time for the Swedish fleet. In the Norwegian army, it replaced the Remington M1867 rifle, and even then, when it was replaced with a more advanced rifle, part of it was kept in warehouses. In 1905, when there was a threat of war between Norway and Sweden, these rifles were distributed to the reserve soldiers. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of rifles were either sold on the civilian market or converted into M28 harpoon guns. From the mid-1920s until the German invasion of Norway, civilians could buy rifles for about a quarter of what a brand new Krag-Jorgensen would cost them. The price, as you can see, was quite reasonable, but not many rifles were sold. Then the idea arose to sell these guns and ammunition abroad. In 1929, about 5,000 rifles were sold to some German company, but their fate was unknown. In 1936, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia initiated negotiations to buy 20,000 Yarman rifles with ammunition for his police, but the sale was interrupted by the Norwegian parliament, which argued that the sale of such an outdated weapon would badly affect Norway's image.
Right view. (Defense Museum, Oslo)
Here is what is written about this store in the book by V. E. Markevich "Hand firearms" (Polygon, 1994. P.422) "Shop in the form of a flat box along the length of the cartridge; it embraces the gun from below and from the sides in a semicircle. The left side of the store is closed, the right side is open and equipped with a special feeder (distributor). The box contains a zigzag leaf spring that feeds the cartridges. The magazine holds 11 rounds, the 12th is inserted into the barrel. You can fill the store in 15-20 seconds. You can fire 12 shots in 24-35 seconds. Outside the store there is a button for retraction and locking of the feed spring when loading, or when it is necessary to eliminate any delay. Store weight - 380 grams.
Liove's store had the same awkward shape as Tenner's Russian store before him. The difference between the one and the other store was only in the details of the device, for example, Tenner had a wire feed spring, Liove made from a plate, a slightly different distributor, and so on. In addition to the bulkiness and increased weight of the gun, Liove's store also required reworking the bolt handle, which was also expensive, so the store was rejected."
Left view. (Defense Museum, Oslo)
In 1938, a private investor, Trygve G. Gigen, a former captain of the Norwegian army, caused a real international scandal by offering to sell Yarman's rifles to Ceylon. The British Consulate General complained to the Norwegian government, pointing out that Ceylon is a British possession, so there can be no question of any private sale of arms to this island. The Norwegian government reprimanded Gigen, after which he withdrew his proposal. He also offered to sell these rifles to Lithuania, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bulgaria, as well as Italy and the Netherlands, but all these attempts ended in nothing. It is believed that during the German occupation of Norway, the Germans destroyed 21,000 Yarman's rifles, as they were only suitable for partisans.
