The Bofors 40mm gun was first developed in the early 1930s, in response to a 1928 request by the Swedish Navy for a ship-mounted anti-aircraft weapon. The firm developed automatic guns in caliber ranging from 20mm to 57mm, but the 40mm because a tremendous commercial success. They were used by many nations on both sides of World War II in both naval and ground applications, and the gun is still in use to this day.
In the US, production was done by the Chrysler corporation during the war. The Bofors design was a very complex one, and originally used a lot of hand fitting in assembly. Chrysler was unable to simplify the design, but was able to dramatically reduce manufacturing time by changing to more production-friendly methods (like the use of cast and powder-metal parts instead of all milled components) and the use of fully interchangeable parts.
The ground variant was typically a single gun mount and air-cooled, while Naval guns used a water cooled jacket around the base of the barrel and were generally mounted in pairs and quartets. Modern versions use powered magazines capable of firing up to 330 rounds per minute.
Manuals (English)
40mm Bofors AA gun manual (US Navy, 1943)
Resources
Allpar.com has an interesting article on the Chrysler manufacturing of the 40mm Bofors.
Great manual…excellent drawings !!!
Seems like it’s not just a manual but a thorough book about this gun !
Hello,
Maybe you can make a video of a long forgottened Webley revolver,many pistols has been shown but nothing on Colt45,Webley Revolver models,Nagant revolver and other Revolver models…
Only pistols had been explained here…
Twin Bofors were even mounted on to an M41 Light tank. This produced the M42 “Duster”, antiaircraft platform.
An interesting manual…
The breech mechanism on the L60 seems to be significantly different to one I recall on the L70 which I played with in the late 60′s..
I recall the L70 had a long loading tray which pivoted down from the rear of the breech mechanism, which does not seem to be present on the L60.. am I right or just dreaming?
Also, as I recall, you had a long tool known as “the samouri sword” which you fed through a hole in the rear of the breech to extract the round sitting in the breech mech when you stopped firing or when you had a misfire…
Cancel my last…
Just spotted the loading tray!
The only difference I can see (apart from the L70 being a single barrel) is there was a lever on the magazine cams that you used to force the round down into the hopper.
We used L40/70s in the 1960s in the UK for reserve AA. The Navy still had 40/60 on some of their ships and there was loads of 40/60 ammo about. We had spare barrels and breech blocks for the 40/70s that llowed the use of 40/60 ammo, which was a good thing as the 40/70 HE fuzes were banned for use as they were not raindrop safe. We only had plugged HE for range practice which exploded on traced burnout. We had proper fuzed L60 HE shell, buto only ever used it at ground targets!