Hi! I hope that somebody over here will be able to answer to my question! I was serving Yugoslaw army in 1985, AA unit, Bofors 40mm. If I remember well, my gun was made by Westinghouse in 1944! Is that possible? Andre
Looks like it according to: HyperWar: US Navy Bureau of Ordnance--Guns and Mounts Chapter VI If not the gun then the mount.
It isn't impossible that the portion of the weapon you remember reading had the name Westinghouse on it, the Chrysler corp. was mainly responsible for the assembling of the Bofors for both the US Army and Navy, but they also had many pieces made for each one by sub-contractors. Here is decent site about Chrysler's production, and it includes this: No fewer than 12 Chrysler factories were involved in making and assembling the parts, and in the end, the project involved 2,000 subcontractors in 330 cities. The guns required 3,000 machines for creation, with 10,000 employees, 1 million square feet of floor space, and 2,000 subcontractors. (underlines mine) Goto: Chrysler Corporation, Gun Maker: Bofors Guns of World War II
Here's a book that might contain more info: Battlefronts of History: Westinghouse in World War II: David O. Woodbury: Amazon.com: Books
The capability of the original Bofors against modern fast planes is marginal, given the amount of "conversions" that happened with the Yugoslaw army it's possible the gun was upgraded to a 40/70 from the original ww2 weapon, do you have any pictures?
It was probably the long-barreled single mount. The navy used the dual mount with the shorter barrels. Can anyone give the difference in velocities between the long and short barreled versions
The 40/70 was a postwar development, as noted in response to the increasing speeds of aircraft; it also doubled the rate of fire. Muzzle velocity varied with type of ammunition but was around 2800fps for the 40/60 and 3300fps for the 40/70. Wartime Bofors were designated either 40/56 or 40/60 by different countries; but they were all the same basic weapon, in single, twin, quad mountings (the RN even had a sextuple Bofors that missed getting into the war), land or ship, power-operated or manual.
Of course. The Communists' default policy on the disposal of old weapons systems was: 'We don't!' After the Cold War ended large amounts of Lend&Lease weapaons surfaced in the USSR, like M1911 pistols. The original packaging material was untouched! AFAIK the T-34/85 saw action in the Yugoslaw civil wars of the 1990s and the Finns recently retired their last 88mm AA-guns.
