Kammerladers quickly gained a reputation for being fast and accurate rifles, and would have been a deadly weapon against massed ranks of infantry.

While the first flintlock breech-loading rifles, such as the Ferguson, were launched decades before 1842, Norway was among the first European countries to introduce breech loaders on a large scale throughout its army and navy.

The caliber chosen for the new rifle was 18 lødig (gauge); in other words, one could manufacture 18 round bullets out of one Norwegian pound of lead.

Every breechloader must have some form of mechanism that allows the breech to be opened for loading, yet securely locked for firing.

Achieving a gas-tight seal was difficult with the metallurgy of the day, and it can be argued that the Norwegian kammerladers are the first fully successful military breechloaders — the needle gun was slightly earlier, but it leaks a significant gas pressure around the breech.

The loading sequence is as follows (refer to picture): The exact rate of firing with the kammerlader depends, as with all manually operated weapons, entirely on the shooter.

While the sources do not give any indication as to the rate of fire attainable by the average soldier, it is known that it was higher than for a muzzle loading musket — roughly four rounds a minute — and most probably lower than the contemporary German needle gun's 10 to 12 rounds a minute, since the kammerlader has a more elaborate loading procedure.

Towards the end of the service life of the kammerladers, most of the small bore rifles were modified to allow the use of rim fire ammunition.

Sources vary in the reported muzzle velocity, but it is known that during tests in 1849, the bullet penetrated 2 inches (51 mm) of wood at a distance of 800 alen (500 m).

The 12.17 x 44 mm rim fire cartridge is placed backwards, facing the shooter, before everything is rolled back forward.

Pictures showing the Landmark conversion can be found here [2] A number of the kammerladers were also converted with the Remington action, by replacing the receivers but keeping the barrels and woodwork.

Almost all the military rifles were modified once or more, resulting in a very wide range of different models for a collector to collect.

Some of these were supposedly used for illegal hunting during World War II, when the occupying Germans had seized all modern weapons owned by civilians.

The only contemporary European rifle which it can be compared to is the Prussian needle gun — the only other breech loader adopted for service in the 1840s.