Bofors 40mm Gun

The Bofors 40 mm gun is the collective name for a family of automatic anti-aircraft guns of forty millimeter caliber designed and built by the Swedish armaments firm Bofors, developed across three main model generations that between them equipped air-defense units around the world from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. The original L/43 model entered service in 1934 and the improved L/60 followed in 1936, and both saw enormous use during the Second World War as short-range anti-aircraft guns aboard warships and defending ground positions of numerous Allied and Axis-aligned nations, with some L/43 guns remaining operational as late as the 1990s. A further-developed L/70 model, introduced in 1948, extended the weapon's Cold War service life as a mobile anti-aircraft and light anti-armor gun that remains in limited use with some military forces today, giving the Bofors 40 mm design family one of the longest continuous service histories of any anti-aircraft gun.