so was the purpose to conserve ammo ??? slow things down??? seems kinda anti military, by todays standards
By today's standards, it does seem odd, but it was the policy of the era. Even the 1903 Springfield has a magazine cutoff.
The concept was that soldiers fired individual aimed shots. At identified targets (the enemy soldiers, primarily). Magazine capacity was to be kept "in reserve" so as to be available to repel attack. Suppressive fire was the job of artillery (if you had any) and those new fangled things they were calling machine guns, or to organized volley fire of squads, platoons or companies.
And this policy didn't change, really, until part way through WWII!
I have heard that rifle armed marines (Springfields) in the early Guadalcanal campaign were issued 40 rounds which was expected to last them two weeks in combat!
The Krag was a wonder, really. Vastly superior to the single shot it replaced. Unfortunately, the Krag was technologically inferior to the Mauser system.
TO me, the beauty of the Krag has always been the ability to dump rounds into the magazine in any fashion, as long as the bullet was to the front, the rifle would feed. No other bolt gun firing a rimmed case works as smoothly.
you can load a Krag wearing mittens, without much trouble. Might sound insignificant, but in the cold, its a different story.
The stripper clip system of the Mauser proved to be much better suited to combat than the Krag system, which is why the Krag passed in service to the Mauser pattern 1903 Springfield.
