The US Army adopted the Krag-Jorgensen in 1892 after holding a competition in which it beat out several other domestic and foreign designs (including several entered by Mauser.)After the competition, two US designers sued the US government over the selection forcing a review of the testing. Once again the Krag won the competition and was confirmed as the selection.
Fast forward to 1898 and the American operation to capture the city of Santiago de Cuba from its Spanish defenders. The outnumbered Spanish were dug in and well fortified on the high ground outside of the city. Most famously atop San Juan and Kettle Hill. The US Army took the Spanish positions following a frontal assault and suffered high casualties.
An Army board of investigation concluded that the high casualties were the result of the Spanish Mauser rifles being far superior to the Krag-Jorgensens carried by US soldiers. While most of the regular US soldiers were armed with Krags many were not. Indeed, the Buffalo Soldiers of the all-Black 10th Cavalry (who led the charge up Kettle Hill) appear to have been armed with antiquated black-powder, single shot Trapdoor Springfield rifles. The American artillery was similarly inferior to the more modern cannons employed by the Spanish.
Considering the inferiority of other weapons in American use during the war, the direct assault uphill on an entrenched enemy and the notoriously political (and at times blatantly corrupt) nature of weapons procurement contracts during that era, was the Krag scapegoated in order to get it replaced? While the 1893 Mauser was superior to the Krag, I doubt the difference was so great as to necessitate the cost of replacement after so recently having adopted it. Not to mention the Mausers used by the Spanish (or a closely related design) was entered into the contest by Mauser and lost out to the Krag. The design was good enough that the Norwegian and Danish Armed Forces (with necessary updates over time) continued to use them as their standard issue rifles through the end of WWII. Although they would likely have less resources to replace the rifles than the US Army did, this was still 60+ years since its first adoption by the Danes in 1889.
So, was the American Krag as outclassed by the Spanish Mausers as is commonly claimed or was its downfall a politically motivated attempt to get a domestic made replacement by people that never wanted it adopted in the first place?
Although I can't speak for the exact motivations of the Ordnance Department, I can say that the Krag absolutely was an obsolescent design that warranted replacement for a variety of reasons. The magazine design precluded the use of speed loading devices, the design was complicated and expensive to manufacture, and, most critically, it had a comparatively weak bolt with a single locking block. That last point played in pretty critically with the ammunition. 30-40 Krag was an obsolescent cartridge even for the time, barely reaching 2,000 fps with ammunition at the time - even with the long barrels the infantry rifles were using. Compare this to the 7x57mm Mauser, which was pushing a bullet around 2500 fps, resulting in a much flatter trajectory that had a lot of practical impact when it came to shooting at more distant targets. Although 7x57 Mauser had a lighter bullet, such velocities weren't impossible with heavier bullets, with Spitzer-bullet 8mm Mauser coming in at around 2700 fps.
So the Ordnance Department tried to fix this by developing "hotter" loads for 30-40 Krag. The cartridge was capable of it - trials would push the round to 2300 fps, though not on the Krag. That's because of the inherent failings of the Krag's design. The single locking block on the bolt made it inadequate for the kinds of pressures that would be produced by the cartridge the Ordnance Department was looking at. The 30-03 cartridge that would result from these trials would get a 220 grain bullet going 2200 fps at pressures the Krag was never going to be able to handle.
From there, further failings made the adoption of a new rifle seem more reasonable. The 30-40 Krag also suffered from issues with the large rims of the cartridge, which complicated loading and could lead to malfunctions due to rimlock. There existed methods to avoid rimlock (see the Mosin), but adoption of a rimless cartridge avoids those issues entirely and ends up being simpler. And while redesigning the Krag to handle a rimless cartridge would largely be a question of replacing the bolt, with the gun itself proving itself unable to handle the pressures produced by the kind of cartridge the Army wanted, we have yet another reason to go against the Krag.
Finally, there's the magazine. The Krag's magazine was a problem for a variety of reasons. Even if we ignore its unique shape, the inability to handle speed-loading devices was a major shortcoming. Army experiments leading up to the 1903 also reveal other concerns, primarily over magazine durability. This is actually an issue not exclusive to the Krag. The Ordnance department (as with many other armies all over the world) had concerns over protruding magazines being easily damaged, so they were looking for a system that was flush fit. And with the Spanish Model 1893 Mausers as a nice good example, they had a system that did everything they were looking for. The magazine was significantly simpler and more compact than that of the Krag while also being able to accept stripper clips.
All that being said, you bring up valid points, and it's not exactly out of character for the Ordnance Department to make nonsensical decisions with poor reasoning. In this case, however, we have similar instances to show that these decisions have a decent chance of being made in good faith. The British had a similar experience in the Boer War, where they felt outclassed by the flatter-shooting 7mm Mauser cartridge - in their case developing a standardized "short" rifle and adding a charger guide to address their biggest complaints during the war. Germany's adoption of the Gewehr 98 offers a similar situation with the replacement of a recently adopted but sub-par rifle. The American experience here seems to be a mix of both of these situations - the Krag was recognized as being underperforming in the Spanish-American War, but the Ordnance Department determined a new design was more conducive to their new requirements than their existing rifles.
I think you'll find the answer in a previous post.
The Krag was in many ways an outdated design before it was even adopted, although the US retained some backward thinking at the time anyways, the result being that the perceived strengths (Magazine cutoff!) were valued more than the comparatives weaknesses relative to developments not only in Europe but even some comparative arms used in the US, so really, one might say that the US was already overdue in replacing it from the beginning, but the war against Spain helped to highlight several deficiencies of the rifle, and kicked the US into recognizing those deficiencies, and quite explicitly looking to seek out a modern replacement. Rose sums it up nicely in describing how the Army was moving away from its campaigns of oppression in the West to now performing on the world stage when he writes of the reforms that occured at the turn of the century:
The new U.S. Army was to be a gleaming model of modernity, a bureaucratically designed example of scientific management and progressive ideals in action.
So, what were those issues? The first was the limitations on rate of fire that it allowed. The Krag used a rotary magazine loaded through a side-gate, which required each round to be inserted singularly. The Mausers, in comparison, used stripper clips, which allowed quick refilling of the magazine in one push. Although not widespread, the introduction of the stripper clip predated adoption of the Krag, and en bloc clips and box mags were older than that, which more than anything helps illustrate how behind the times the Krag was from the start.
The second was the performance of the .30-40 Krag round, which was slower and more curved in its trajectory compared to the speedy, and flatter, performance of the 7mm Mauser of the Spanish rifles, which at the time of its introduction was one of the best performing rounds available for a military rifle (it is interesting to note, however, that, while on the one hand many were impressed by the performance of the Mauser round, some observers complained that both rounds performed worse than the older .45-70 of the Trapdoors in terms of practical performance at short ranges... that is to say the perception of so-called "stopping power").
In theory, both of these defects were correctable. I am aware of experiments in adopting Krags to be charger loaded, although they never came to fruition, and efforts to adapt the Krag for a higher-performing round were attempted as well, but this hit serious snags, as the Krag was simply not designed with the accompanying pressure levels in mind. At the very least it would require a redesign of the bolt and chamber for an additional locking lug, and if you're doing that why would you stick with the magazine design at all, so really, you aren't updating the Krag, you're making a new rifle, right?
In point of fact though, the Krag design was not entirely jettisoned, and while the M1903 certainly can't be called a Krag, the new rifle wasn't built entirely from the ground up. Although borrowing heavily from Mauser designs, both captured Model 1893s from Spain, as well as the newer G98, the resulting design presented in 1900 retained much of the Krag design if you ignore the action itself - which copied the Mauser double-lug design - and the cartridge it chambered, but even that work had initially started as an attempt to rework the Krag to be a double-lugged design. Keep the action out of sight, and the two are pretty damn similar looking after all. Deemed to be on the right path, but not quite what they wanted, the design was sent back for more work, particularly staggering the magazine, and using a rimless cartridge.
Those changes still didn't impact the broad image though. The resulting M1901 could, if you want to be glib, be called a Mauser action molded to a Krag body, and you wouldn't be that wrong. Tests of the M1901 in various configurations, such as barrel length and where to mount the sling, but little significant was changed in terms of the fundamentals, with the M1903 being officially adopted in June of that year. There were still teething issues, most famously with poor performance of the .30-03 necessitating the adoption of the .30-06, a spitzer round, which necessitated rechambering the existing rifles. The difference in the two rifles was clear and obvious to most soldiers, who enjoyed the faster rate of fire they were capable of with it, and of course the high levels of accuracy the M1903 offered - not only in comparison to the Krag, but generally considered to be so in comparison to other contemporaries including the Mauser itself. Early combat reports from the Philippines pointed to the choice being the right one.
The Mauser influences would, of course, be absolutely undeniable, to the point that there were actual legal issues that soon arose, specifically about the bullet design. DWM would eventually bring suit about patent infringement in 1914, but legal proceedings were put on hold in 1917 due to the minor issue of the US and Germany being at war. The US tried to solve the issue by seizing the patent under wartime provisions, but in 1921 a tribunal nevertheless ruled in DWM's favor, and the United States was ordered to pay them $412,550.55 for violations... a payment which, of course, covered the bullets used in the war between the two countries. This wasn't the only payment that the US made to Germans either for the rifle. Several other infringements occurred in the design of the rifle itself, not just its ammunition, but these were settled with a post-facto contract that required a payment of $0.75 for every rifle, and $.50 per 1,000 clips. The contract was capped at total payment of $200,000, which was reached before the war, but nevertheless, the US paid out to the German firm quite a pretty penny to build the rifles eventually carried against her a few years later (although, as the pedants are itching to point out, the M1917 would be used in larger numbers).
To be sure, this is all quite ironic. You aren't totally off the mark in talking about pride of domestic know-how, and before the final signing off on the Springfield, discussions broached the possibility of literally building Mausers under license, but were rejected out of that sense of national pride. The US couldn't claim status as a first rate power, and a first rate military, if they were looking to others for their arms. But in rejecting doing it openly, in the end it meant they just cribbed from them instead.
We digress though, the main point, so far, should be two fold. The first is that the United States was clearly taken by the Mauser design, to the point that they were cribbing from it in several ways; and the second is that despite this, the Krag wasn't quite as abandoned as things might imply. The M1903 was far more than a mere update to the Krag design, with the core of the Krag entirely abandoned, but much of the Krag was nevertheless retained in the choices that went into the M1903, and if anything, this quickly started to cause problems.
Early M1903s are a bit infamous for their own problems with high pressure, and this can in part be blamed on the fact that M1903 production was conducted with as close as possible the same manufacturing as the Krags had been, with the same steel. The heat-treatment used for hardening of the steel for the receiver could sometimes result in very brittle metal, which usually was found in test firing with over-pressured cartridges, but this wasn't always the case, especially when production ramped up during WWI, resulting in less oversight, and shoddier workmanship both for the rifles and the ammunition. The problem was eventually solved - you guessed it - by copying the method that Mauser used, which solved the brittleness and basically doubled the pressures the rifle could withstand in testing (if you are a collector, this is something you need to always be aware of, with any rifle in the serial range <800,000!).
So to return to what you asked, the impact of the Spanish-American War can't be ignored. The first encounters with an enemy armed with modern, European made arms since adopting the Krag immediately showed the US just what the deficiencies of their current arm was, and impressed upon the Army that to live up to the self-image they envisioned, they needed an arm that was cutting edge and modern. And beyond that, while technically done domestically in patriotic interest, the replacement design borrowed quite liberally from the Mauser concepts anyways, although it also can be seen, through a few degrees, as a descendent of the Krag. The US Army saw the Mausers in action, and basically started immediately saying "That. We want that." So they took their Krags, junked all the important parts, and jammed that in there (yes, that is a slightly irreverent tldr, to be sure).
Sources
Haas, Frank de. Bolt Action Rifles: The Definitive Work Covering Every Major Design Since the Mauser of 1871. DBI Books, 1995.
Mowbray, Stuart C. & Joe Puleo. Bolt Action Military Rifles of the World. Mowbray Publishing, 2009.
Poyer, Joe. The M1903 Springfield Rifle and its Variations. North Cape Publications, 2011.
Rose, Alexander. American Rifle: A Biography. Delcorte Press, 2008.
Thompson, Leroy. The M1903 Springfield Rifle. Osprey Publishing, 2013.
I cannot spoke to social/political motivations, but I can speak to the rifles themselves.
Quick note; the Springfield Model 1892 (aka the Krag) was manufactured in the US by the Springfield Armory, as was the M1903 Springfield. It was a question of domestic designers wanting to receive royalties for designing the rifle, not as much domestic manufacturers wanting to manufacture the rifle. Springfield had the rights to contract out manufacturing of the Krag, although they never needed to.
Smokeless powder was developed to a stage where it was economically feasible to outfit armies with smokeless powder rifles right about that time period. The thing that makes smokeless powder smokeless isn't that it doesn't produce smoke. (they do) When black powder burns, a significant amount of solid residue is generated, which is extremely sticky and gets everywhere. The residue is very hydrophilic so water condenses on it rapidly, gumming up various mechanical bits, causing corrosion, etc. Smokeless powder burns almost entirely into gases which do not recondense inside the firearm. Much of the residue they leave behind is just unburnt powder, which may finish combusting on subsequent shots. The relative cleanliness of the discharge means that a smokeless powder rifle can fire many more shots than a black powder rifle before it will need to be cleaned, and that it can use much more complicated mechanisms. Additionally, it's the transformation from a solid to a gas which propels the bullet; because smokeless powder does this much more completely, it results in a significantly more powerful shot.
This precipitated extremely rapid and chaotic advancement in firearms between about 1887 and the end of WWI. The introduction of smokeless powder had a comparable impact to firearm design that the introduction of the jet engine had to aircraft design. By 1917 armies were fielding semi-automatic rifles, fully automatic sub machine guns, and fully automatic light machine guns. The landscape was very different.
The Mauser 1889 was Mauser's first smokeless powder rifle. It suffered from many teething problems, but it was an incredible leap forward compared to black powder rifles. The 1893 Mauser, bought by Spain and used in the Spanish-American War, corrected many of these deficiencies. The Springfield model 1892 was a very early design, relatively unchanged from its 1886 design. It has a number of deficiencies compared to the Mauser. The Mauser used a 5 round internal box magazine that could be fed in one motion using a stripper clip; the Krag has a 5 round internal rotary magazine, into which rounds must manually be loaded one at a time. The two rifles can fire the 5 rounds from their internal magazines at similar rates, (although the Mauser does have a smoother action) but a Mauser can fire 10 bullets in significantly less time than the Krag can.
The Mauser also had a significantly more powerful loading. The 7x57mm Mauser had a muzzle velocity of 2300ft/s and an exit energy of 2,024 ft-lbs, while the Krag was 2000ft/s and 1700ft-lbs. The Mauser had a flatter trajectory and was more accurate. After the Spanish-American War, the army introduced a new loading of the Krag which increased 2,200 ft/s and 2,000 ft-lbs, however the increased chamber pressures caused by the new loading was damaging the locking lugs, and the cartridges were recalled and restored to their original specifications.
In hindsight, the improved ballistic performance of the Mauser probably didn't result in improved combat effectiveness, but it was absolutely perceived to at the time. All contemporary armies were attempting to increase the power of their rifle cartridges, and would continue to do so until absorbing the lessons from WWII. The 30-06 M1906 rounds used in the M1903 Springfield gave it a muzzle velocity of 2,800 ft/s and 2,800 ft-lbs, which was an extraordinary increase over the Krag and a significant one over the Mauser. A large argument for more powerful rounds was the expectation that people would be engaging the enemy at ranges above 1,000 yards; the idea was that whoever had the most powerful, longest range rifle would dictate the range of the battle. In reality, everyone learned that nearly all infantry combat took place from within 75 yards, despite the fact that the rifles carried by all sides were nominally capable of shooting out to 1,000 yards or more. Submachine guns and early assault rifles proved to be vastly more effective in after action reports, despite submachine guns only being effective to within 100 yards, and assault rifles only within 300. That's neither here nor there though: thinking at the turn of the century was that power and accuracy at range were a supreme advantage.
The M1903 Springfield (which replaced the Krag) carried substantial similarities to both the 1898 Mauser and the Krag. It had the same 5 round internal box magazine+stripper clip arrangement and the double locking lugs of the Mauser. It was so similar that Mauser sued, and won, for patent infringement. Meanwhile, much of the gripping, as well as the sights and magazine cutoff were lifted from the Krag. I would argue that the M1903 Springfield was not an original design; it just took the best parts of the Krag and the Mauser and married them together. Furthermore, it was in-house designers at Springfield Armory that "designed" the M1903, and no royalties were paid (besides Mauser, who received royalties because of the lawsuit) so your hypothesis that domestic designers wanted to oust the Krag doesn't stand up.
/u/Meesus /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and /u/pigeon768
Thanks for the answers guys! This is why I love this sub.
As a follow-up, why would Norway and Denmark continue to use a clearly inferior design for so long? On the one hand it was a native Norwegian design and with relations between both countries being so close (after 1905 their Kings would be immediate family members) I can understand the desire to retain a native Scandinavian design. On the other, 60+ years is a longtime to keep a flawed design. Especially after observing from a far what did and didn't work as neutrals in the Great War. Were the Norwegians and Danes able to figure out solutions for the Krag's weaknesses or did they merely think it was adequate for their relatively small militaries?
Edit: also u/PartyMoses
Although the Krag had a very smooth action and was tough and reliable, it took longer to Load than an Mauser M93 and the loading action was even harder in combat situations, plus added with the fact that it couldn’t take higher caliber ammunition over the rimmed .30 made it less useful against Moro insurgents on drugs The krag would’ve have served the us army better had in been introduced in the late 1880s or very early 1890s were the krag would have been an advanced design however because the US Army was late to adopt a bolt action rifle, the krag would suffer because of this, Thankfully the US Army adopted the M1903, based of the Gewher 98, one of the best bolt actions made, which was way better than krag and would prove its worth to the army to the point many honor guards still use it, The krag is an example of how fast military technology was progressing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before ww1