40 mm bofors

[Pierre N]

very impressive video , 40mm tested by russian guy

[Richie B]

Nice toy

[big ned]

I like the bit where he gives the good news to (if you squint!) Christian Ronaldo......

[zwerge]

Just the thing to take moose hunting,you kill it and butcher it all in one shot,but maybe a bit too much hamburger?

[Steve T]

That was great One hell of a barrel climb though on full auto !

Steve T

[António Fragoeiro]

I like the bit where he gives the good news to (if you squint!) Christian Ronaldo......

Poor cristiano Ronaldo Never liked him

[HARRY THE MOLE]

Very interesting video! My uncle served on the 40mm Bofors during the last war, and I used it's successor the La40/70 from 1969 until we converted to Rapier in 1973. I don't recall any barrel climb when it was being fired though. The gun had a rate of fire of 240rpm. It could be fired manually - with a crew of four manning it, auto - with a crew of three, or it could be fired via the radar (FCE7) with a crew of five - two on the radar and three on the gun.

Gunner number three sat in the left seat and had full control of the gun via a triangular shaped bow which enabled the gun to be slewed in any direction. Two loaders stood at the rear of the platform in a metal ring, their job was to feed the four-round clips into the the feed-pawls from the rack at the back of the gun.

We used to travel up to the ranges at Tondendorfe (Germany) to fire out to sea. A Hawker Sea-Fury would tow a wind-sock for our target, and it was always rumoured that the aircraft were manned by women-pilots. Many years later I found out this was true. The owner of the planes was a woman by the name of Baroness Riebnitz von Thyssen. At the end of the shoot she would bring her plane in at zero feet and fly the full length of the firing point waggling her wings - before climbing away and doing a victory roll.

The FCE7 radar set linked to the gun had an oil-filled mechanical computer. Every so often the bore of the barrel of the gun had to be tested for wear. The new information was fed into the computer at the side of the radar. It all sounds very crude by today's standards, but the gun was extremely accurate for low-level defence.

Stoppages were a hazard though. There is a cover plate just over the breech to allow access to free stoppages. The worst stoppage you could get was a round part inside the breech. The drill in the event of a missfire was to give the round one minute to see if it would go off. And if that didn't happen, the top cover plate had to be opened and the round forced backwards and out of the breech with the aid of a crowbar. Just before I joined the regiment there had been a stoppage on one of the guns and a certain Major Pink was assigned the task of freeing the offending round. He opened the top cover plate and started edging the round to the rear. There was an explosion and he was decapitated.

Another way of freeing this kind of stoppage was to use rods similar to what a chimney sweep uses. There is a cup-shaped cover at one end and at the other are attached two ropes. The rods are fed into the barrel until the fuse of the offending round is felt, and then they are withdrawn a short distance backwards. Two members of the gun-team each grab a rope and return to the back of the gun. A quick pull backwards on the ropes was usually enough to free the round.

A friend of mine was detailed to lower the rods down the barrel on one such stoppage, but instead of using the ropes he just pulled the rods back and them rammed them forward with his hands. As soon as the cup attachement hit the shell it detonated. In the resulting explosion Archie Moor lost his left hand, the ropes wrapped around his arm and stripped the flesh down to the bone from just below the elbow as well The picture was taken at Dortmund (Napier Barracks) when we had stripped the gun for cleaning. I am the person kneeling by the gun.

Harry