[ Bofors 37mm AT Gun ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning into another video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com.
Today we're out here at the range taking a look at a 37mm Long Bofors gun.
This is an anti-tank gun, it was in the Finnish military.
So these guns were originally manufactured by the Bofors Company in Sweden,
or designed by the Bofors Company in Sweden.
They were put into prototype phase in 1932,
and by 1934 they were fully developed and ready for sale.
They were exported to a number of countries, including Finland.
They were also manufactured under licence by a number of ... countries.
This particular one is in the 37mm long Bofors cartridge,
most of them are in the shorter cartridge.
So a few general statistics. This whole assembly weighs about 800 pounds.
It has, with a well-trained crew, a rate of fire of
12 rounds per minute against moving targets, which is pretty impressive.
And this thing will penetrate 40mm of hardened armour plate at 300 metres.
So it was a light gun.
For the Finnish, used in the Continuation War and the Winter War,
they found it was effective against the Russian light tanks, the T-26 and T-28 and the BT.
When they started going up against T-34s this wasn't sufficient.
And the ... Finns didn't have nearly enough of these.
When the Winter War started, the Finns had one of these guns for every 40 Russian tanks.
It is a recoiling action, so the barrel and breech will come back under recoil of the gun.
It has an auto-eject feature which can be turned on or off.
Right now the auto-eject feature is disabled,
because the guys who shoot this want to make sure the brass stays in good shape.
The loading lever is over here.
Operating this lever drops the breech block, you'll see that in action in a minute.
There is a protector here, so that the gunner sits like this,
this prevents him from getting his leg in the way of the recoiling action.
We have an optical sight here.
Yeah, let's get in and take a look at the controls here.
We have an optical sight here, elevation and windage controls on it.
Then down here, this is our elevation adjustment.
Turning this crank handle, there's a gear wheel inside.
This is our windage, there's another large rack and pinion inside the axle assembly.
So this rotates the gun side to side.
This guy elevates and depresses the gun.
This also acts as our trigger.
You hold the front here and pull this lever back towards your hand, that will fire the gun.
There's not a whole lot else to it, these are extremely well-designed guns.
They are durable, they are very practical.
Every detail on it is there for a specific reason.
It's not like on a lot of the American artillery pieces where it's simple,
not quite to the point of crudity, but very simple.
And it's not like the German guns that are just radically over-designed.
The Finns just built a really awesome little anti-tank gun.
So let's turn this over to Bob, who actually owns the gun.
And he's going to fire a round out of it which is I think really awesome, so let's check it out.
- So? - I'm going to go ahead sight it in.
And we're going to sight it in on a safe that's out here that's painted black and orange.
- Alright. - And we'll load the gun and see what it can do.
- Sounds good. That safe is the one with the orange X on it?
- Yep. - Cool.
He's working the windage adjustment dial there.
A little bit of elevation.
Can you show the camera what that shell is?
That's the Bofors long, that thing is pretty huge, cool.
That goes in, and automatically closes the breech block.
- And we're still on. - Still on target?
- Ready? - Ready, fire in the hole. - Fire in the hole!
- Ahhh! - Oh! - OK, backup.
- So we had a failure to fire. - Ready? - Ready. - Fire in the hole!
- Damn! Whoo! That's impressive!
Sweet! - High? - High.
- Alright. - Damn, that means you have to do it again.
- Alright, we'll do it again. - Alright.
- Alright, basically we're going to drop the ... block on it.
There's a lever on the side which will push your extractors in.
- Alright, so the extractors hold the action open until you manually push them in.
Drop the block. - And then we squeeze the trigger.
- And click. - We're good. - Alright.
- Alright, like I said, I'm going to get some slow motion of this.
- And did you say we're just high on the left side, right? - Yes. - Alright.
Fire in the hole!
- Thanks for watching guys.
Tune in again to ForgottenWeapons.com for some more cool anti-tank guns.