Bofors 40mm L/60

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.

40mm BoforsIn the 40mm Bofors Vault page, we have added a very detailed Navy manual on the Bofors, describing the mechanism, firing procedure, disassembly, and maintenance.

1 Comment

  1. The Bofors 40mm L/60 has long since been replaced by the L/70 version with a longer barrel, higher rate of fire, belt feed options ( instead of the standard clips ) and sundry other detail improvements to make an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.

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