The Bofors 40mm gun is one of the outstanding designs in light artillery – it was originally designed in 1932, and is still in use today with only minor modifications (and much improved targeting controls). It uses a long recoil action and a sliding breechblock, and the WWII versions fired about 120 rounds per minute.
In the 40mm Bofors Vault page, we have added a very detailed Navy manual on the Bofors, describing the mechanism, firing procedure, disassembly, and maintenance.
Of all the classic 7.62mm battle rifles of the Cold War, only the G3 remains in modern military service updated to serve alongside the more recent 5.56mm rifles (no, the M14 DMR rifles don’t count). […]
When the Swedish military decided that 1937 seemed like a pretty good time to be getting some new submachine guns, they arranged to purchase a version of the m/31 Suomi from their Finnish neighbors […]
Sweden was a remarkably early adopted of the light machine gun, for a nation not involved in World War One. Looking over the designs that existed right after the war, Sweden opted to purchase 700 […]
© 2024 Forgotten Weapons.
Site developed by Cardinal Acres Web Development.
The Bofors 40mm L/60 has long since been replaced by the L/70 version with a longer barrel, higher rate of fire, belt feed options ( instead of the standard clips ) and sundry other detail improvements to make an already outstanding automatic cannon even better. The water-cooled version of the L/60, typified by twin ( as in the illustration heading this article ) and quadruple close-in AA installations pioneered by the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, is now virtually extinct. Modern naval applications of the Bofors generally involve air-cooled L/70’s instead, which in some ways would seem to be a retrograde step, since naval vessels usually have the capacity to afford a water cooling system for the guns, a distinct advantage when prolonged firing is involved.