The Berdan II bolt action rifle,Col. Hiram Berdan is best known to history for the founding of a reg

The Berdan II bolt action rifle,Col. Hiram Berdan is best known to history for the founding of a regiment of sharpshooters for the Union Army during the American Civil War. However, he was also an inventor, engineer, and arms designer who would invent an important Russian rifle overshadowed today by firearms such as the Mosin Nagant and AK-47. After the American Civil War Hiram Berdan began work on a number of firearm designs, including the Berdan primer and the Berdan I rifle. The Berdan I rifle was a simple breechloading trapdoor design similar in function to the Springfield Trapdoor rifle. However the rifle failed to garner much interest in the United States, both from the military and the civilian market. However, the Russian Army was interested in the design, purchasing 30,000 in 1868. This gave Hiram Berdan a foot in the door of Czarist Russia, where his famous Berdan II rifle would become his most lucrative design.The Berdan II is a single shot bolt action rifle with a split bridge receiver, which was primarily used by the Russian Army from 1870 up to 1895. It was designed to be a competitor with two other common bolt action designs of the age, the French Chassepot and Prussian Dreyse needlefire rifles.  However, the Berdan II surpassed both designs in that it utilized a self contained metallic cartridge, the 10.75x58mm Berdan cartridge which also was Berdan primed. With Russia’s adoption of the Berdan II in 1870, Russia was one of the few countries in the world to use a metallic cartridge firearm as a standard infantry service rifle, let alone a metallic cartridge bolt action. The only other metallic cartridge bolt action infantry rifle I can recall that was a standard issue weapon at the time was the Swiss Vetterli.  Thus, the Berdan II gave Russia an edge in firearms technology, if only for a very short time. The Russians were also impressed by the rifle’s simplicity and rugedness, traits which Russians demand of their weapons to this day.Around 3 million Berdan II rifles were manufactured. Initially they were produced by American firms such as Colt and Winchester, then British Small Arms. Eventually they were produced by the Tula and Ishvesk Arsenals in Russia. The Berdan II was featured in prominent use by the Russian Army in the Russo Turkish War of 1877. In 1891 the Russian Army adopted a bolt action repeating design called the Mosin Nagant, thus the Berdan II began to be phased out until it was completely withdrawn from frontline service in 1895. It remained in used as a reserve weapon during the Russo Japanese War and World War I, with many being converted to 7.62x54R Nagant. Around 30,000 were sold to the Ethiopian Army during the First Italo Ethiopian War in 1894. They were also used as a reserve weapon by the Bulgarians, Serbians, and Greeks in World War I, and by the Finnish up to the Winter War and World War II. -- source link

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