I know, I know. I get what you're thinking.
But today, I want to take you back to the year 1905. Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House, and he was a man of strong convictions. He had just seen for himself, and actually handled, one of the new Model 1903 Springfield .30-03 rifles that were just starting to be produced in quantity at Springfield Armory and distributed to the Army. At the end of 1904, roughly 75,000 rifles had been manufactured.
The President, himself a war veteran (and later a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient) was unimpressed by one feature of the newest standard arm. In a move designed to save money and combine features, it was equipped with a ramrod-bayonet, illustrated below.
The concept was not a new one; the Model 1888 "trapdoor" .45/70 Springfields had a similar arrangement. However, the later Krag-Jorgensen rifles went back to a detachable blade bayonet.
Roosevelt, of course, was Commander in Chief of all the armed forces. He fired off a letter to the Secretary of War on January 5, 1905. He said: "I must say that I think that ramrod bayonet is about as poor an invention as I ever saw."
Immediately, production of the 1903 rifle stopped cold. The rod bayonet was scrapped, and a knife bayonet, Model of 1905, was adopted. Because the 1903 rifle was shorter than the Krag, the new bayonet was longer than that used on the Krag to give an equivalent reach. In 1906, the .30-03 cartridge was found to be inadequate with its 220-grain roundnose bullet, and conversion to the .30-06 cartridge with its lighter spitzer bullets was recommended. All rifles were to be modified for the new bayonet and cartridge, and this threw Springfield into the throes of two steps backward and one step forward. This didn't really get sorted out until about 1909.
Probably only about 50 original ramrod-bayonet Model 1903 Springfields exist to this day, and most folks don't even know that they existed.
John
"...as poor an invention as I ever saw."
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