Svierish Rifle Development

The First Repeating Rifles
In 1883 the army began to realize something, with the rise of repeating rifles that in a potential war the army would be at a strong disadvantage with their m/1871 single shots. Upon this realization the army issued a request for repeating rifles and repeating conversions to be submitted for trials. By the beginning of the trials in 1884, 6 rifles and 11 conversions had been submitted. By the end of the trials all seemed to be going well, it seemed that the infantry was going to adopt a tube fed conversion for the m/1871, but at that point catastrophe hit, there was a magazine chain detonation in one of the rifles that destroyed the rifle, and severely injured the test shooter, causing him to lose sight in 1 eye and 3 of his fingers needed to be amputated. After this the infantry immediately discarded all tube loaders from the trials. By this point 2 rifles and 3 conversions were left, and it was decided that these 5 rifles would enter an extended field trial with 3 infantry battalions. Before the field trial the creators of the rifles were given 6 months to improve their rifles based on feedback from the first trials, however during this time one of the conversion rifles was withdrawn from trials due to instability with the company.

Smokeless Rifle Trials
In mid 1885 the remaining 4 rifles entered the 8 month field trial, however in the last 2 months of the trial a development was made that rendered all progress up to now void, Smokeless Powder was released unto the world. Ordnance issued an order to start a new set of trials for new smokeless rifles. By June 1887 5 rifles and 1 Conversion was submitted and the new set of trials began. Within the first month the conversion rifle was discarded as it proved it was still mostly unable to hold up to smokeless pressures when its receiver exploded. The remaining 4 rifles continued through the trials and later through field trials. By 1889 the trials had almost chosen a rifle, however all rifles were experiencing issues with jamming caused by rim lock. Then a new rifle was entered into the trials, despite them being closed for submissions, however an exception was made thanks to the designer’s connections. This rifle used both a new rimless round and a new magazine system and it was immune to the jamming that had plagued the other rifles. This immediately pushed it ahead of the others and caused ordnance to order versions of them in the new rimless round. It took until 1890 for the rifles to be rechambered and the trials resumed in April. But during this time the Viklunð rifle was trialed and improved with the aid of the Ordnance designer Jøakim Håkanssøn. This advantage almost solidified the Viklunð rifle as the new service rifle, and this was only further advanced when one of the rechamered rifle’s barrels burst due to poor heat treatment, however despite this being a manufacture error and no fault of the rifle, it was all the reason Ordnance needed to discard it. By 1892 the trials had concluded, the Viklunð-Håkanssøn rifle had been selected to be the new service rifle of the empire, but several changes were still made after this. These included lengthening the rifle to provide greater reach against cavalry, and several small changes that improved reliability and reduced cost. By 1894 the Rifle Had Been adopted and would serve for nearly 40 years. All was not well though, while troops did appreciate the new rifle at first, rather soon it grew to be resented for its weight, length, and magazine. In the time before clips and chargers the capsule magazine was fine, and even offered some advantages over others, however once stripper clips made box magazines able to reload 5 rounds at once, the capsule magazine lost any advantage it might have had in battle. However despite repeated requests to trial a new rifle, Ordnance refused to adopt a new weapon and simply made small, insignificant modifications to the rifle.

Straight Pull Rifle Development
After nearly 30 years of this, an Infantry Commander looking to the future formed an experimental unit of Motorized Infantry to attempt to enhance the reach and speed of infantry. But early on in his experiment he and his troops realized that the near 5 foot long m/1894 rifle was excruciating to fit in the back of the trucks, so out of his own pocket he issued his unit with small straight pull carbines. After 3 years of experimentation the army decided that, while his idea for motorisation was not quite suitable for the army, however he had armed his soldiers with a magnificent rifle, and ordnance ordered a test batch of them with several modifications, including extending the barrel and stock 6½ inches, adding a bayonet lug, and several smaller modifications. These rifles had a somewhat expedient set of trials, having effectively already been through 4 years of field trials with very few issues or complaints. The Rifle Was Formally Adopted In 1931 and served well from then on to 1944 when it began being slowly phased out. While it was a vast improvement over the m/1894, it was not free of issues, it was on the expensive end of rifles, and arguably less reliable than the previous weapon, but it was mostly made up for but the speed of operation and accuracy of the rifle.