Bofors 40mm Autocannon 1943, Part1
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- The Swedish Bofors 40mm, an anti-aircraft autocannon, gun was adopted by many countries. It fired a 40mm shell at a rate of 120 rounds per minute. This animation, part 1, shows the firing and loading mechanism. Part 2 should show the basic mounting and explain how the cocking, trigger and latches operate to regulate the operation of the gun. Note that Part 1 is still 'work-in-progress' and will require some changes, but the essential mechanisms shown are thought to be accurate. Animation created using Cinema 4D. Music credits are shown at the end of the movie.
I have a vase in my room that's made from a 40mm Bofors casing. My granddad found it when he was a kid during WWII here in The Netherlands. It's certainly a one-of-a-kind vase.
atleast it wont shatter when it falls
I believe There are still whole bunches live rounds around the world
@@xenotechfreak can't guarantee the floor won't crack instad though XD
I have 2 of them from when I was in the army (1994). We had model M1 1941. Talking about ancient technology. :/
@@nenad8845 I was in the army (1995) and using it as active weapon. The ammo was build around 197x locally (Taiwan)
The skill and commitment it takes to make these animations is immense.
Not really if you have access to the game World Of Guns, you could just steel the animations off of that
The skill and commitment it takes to actually build these things, all this effort just to kill and dominate people...
@@firefox7801 kill or be killed
Some of what this man does may very well be the only historical visualization left soon of any of this equipment. Enjoy his work, and support his talent for posterity.
@@marknovak8255 I'll nod my cigar to that, sir.
Finally, I hardly found any detailed mechanisms about autocannons on youtube but you finally made one! Thank you!
This isnt the best example of an autocannon as it functions more like a traditional quick firing gun (QF) with an automatic loader attached to the back. Most autocannons are more similar to machine guns in their machanism.
@@Blockhaj Nice autocannon to show would be soviet/russian 2A14 Afanasyev-Yakushev autocannon, used in ZU-23-2. Belt fed but it has vertically sliding breech block (or something very similar) like this Bofors gun.
@@notmilandia8461 Oh wow. Can you send an animation?
@@yelectric1893 I dont have an animation about it. Maybe one day someone will make one.
That's very true
Amazing how the mechanism of the 40mm Bofors hasn't much changed since the 1930s. Definitely well deserved to be the longest operational artillery platforms in the world.
Technically the postwar versions from the L/70 onward have a heavily modified mechanism where the loading tray tilts up so the empty case gets ejected under it before it tilts back down to load the next round, but otherwise yes, the basic idea is still there.
I never knew what to expect inside of a Bofors, but it definitely wasn’t this sort of breech block. I also like how it just yeets the shell forward.
*yeet*
Didn't expect it'd have vertical sliding breechblock like a regular cannon.
@@arya31ful yeah same I thought it’d be more like a rifle (rotating lugs) locking system. Then again it is 40mm
i believe "yeet" is straight from the swedish technical documentation.
Having gotten to "crew" an unfortunately inerted example on a trailer ground mount...this is fascinatingly complex to see.
Indeed
The idea of making a piece of history inert is SICKENING.
these animations and this channel is godly, no flashing colors or terrible music, no loud stuff, really good stuff
The best example of CGI I've ever seen, bar none. This man's skill is beyond amazing. At notice show restful the music is too.
These animations do a fantastic job of explaining the mechanical inner workings of these weapons.
The Bofors 40mm and the Browning are the definition of “old and reliable”. They are WW2 era guns that are still in fairly widespread use and have a reputation of being very reliable.
Pre-ww2 era
I was a qualified gunner in the 62nd Regiment (Shawinigan Reserve Canadian Army - with an AC-AC mission - anti-aircraft) on the the Bofors 40 mm. I had always believed that it was of British origin, like the Bren (Czechoslovakian design) and the Sten gun ( In the end, a German imitation by rhe British). It was a weapon that could still be used nowaday in ground close fights (Ukrain). It is light, easily trailored and its 7-round loader could be upgraded as well as its effective explosive charge.
First time ever I could see the inner mechanism so well illustrated. Thanks!
I really want to see a model of the 20mm Orliken and its Advanced Primer Ignition (API) system! I wanted to see a model of an API gun soo bad, that my brain refused to separate Bofors and that gun. Thankfully I did a quick search and confirmed that yes, the man who spends hours modeling machine guns knows more than me lol. Hopefully you can do an API gun in the future as well!
(Sorry if I missed it if you already have a video out)
The 20mm oerlikon is pretty much just a really scaled up straight blowback smg
@@a.t6066 Though you're right in the operating principle, the mag release safety measures and so on and oddly complex + the sear housing is spring-loaded to dampen the impact of the bolt being hung-up by it. The guy made a vid on it now though!
This is the only video that explains how a cannon works . I looked for this operation for a long time and I finally found it , and i thank you for making this video . Thank you . Keep it up , you explain veri well , more than any other video
What I love about Thease videos is you think "but how dose...." then blam its like they can read your mind there it is explained brilliantly well. Grate work
This is great. We needed something like this when I trained on the M42 Duster. It had 2 of these mounted on it.
3:08 It seems like the cartidge gets literally "Thrown" into the barrel by the mechanism and not pushed all the way by a piston, judging by the fact that it is an AA weapon it have to work pointed upwards most of the time, ho can the shell fight gravity to get into the barrel without even failing once? It looks like a weird technical solution.
Yeah it does
It is designed to give it enough force to be able to fight gravity at any angle. This can be easily figured out by using the equation for force F=ma or force = mass x acceleration with the mass being the shell and cartridge which would most likely stay the same, then you have acceleration or force, at which point what I would do is I would chose a random force(any number) rearrange the formula to A=f/m and simply increase or decrease the force to get it higher than 9.8m/s/s(gravity of earth) at which point the shell would remain stationary in the air, then you just increase the force to get it there faster. Simple
btw if you are doing physics or are doing engineering and I did anything wrong please do tell because I am still trying fully grasp everything
@@Cooper_Chu everything perfect but acceleration is m/s^2 = m/(s×s) = (m/s) /s
because acceleration is constant velocity change over time
Tl:dr: it just throws shell hard enough to feed at any angle.
@@kino_61 Thank for the feedback but please, stop being pedantic, it works either way
Thanks for the great job Rob !
Another astonishing "how it works" video of a very interesting gun .
Amazing. Thank you. Genuine thanks and praise. Seen 3 of these in different locations this year. Bizarre history of Sweden being neutral and providing arms designs and minerals etc to both sides. Ball bearings being important too. Strange times.
Unfortunatly Sweden did suply germany and allowed them to move troops throug sweden, but we did allot for the allies to
It looks so complicated yet so simple, that's awesome
Fascinating how reliant this design is on the cartridges sliding a long distance after being given an initial push and even having enough power to activate a trip at the other end of their slide, I would guess that this sort of system would not be at all reliable in tiny light weight cartridges like shoulder fired rifle cartridges where the cartridges are controlled pretty much all the time by heavy moving steel weights.
That's what makes the gun fire so fast; on normal guns the bolt has to move all the way back for extraction, and then forward to ram the next round. Since the bolt has to be strong enough to withstand the force of firing, it's heavy, and the recoil and springs can only push it back and forth so fast, limiting the rate of fire. But in the Bofors, the breechblock moves down and up just far enough to clear the breech (much less distance), and the rammer only moves back and forth far enough to throw the cartridge into the chamber (also much less than going all the way back and forth). The rammer is much lighter than a normal bolt since it doesn't have to withstand the force of firing, so that lets it move even faster with the same spring energy. Because the breechblock and rammer have less mass and don't have to move back and forth as far, they can be pushed/cycled much faster than a bolt with the same energy, and this made the gun fire as fast as it did. Every other AA gun in WWII either was less powerful or fired slower than the Bofors, which is why the Bofors was so successful.
(Apparently Bofors did initially develop guns with a normal bolt, but they couldn't get a decent rate of fire until they adopted this idea.)
Oh but it was used with rifle caliber ammunition to great success - the Madsen light machine gun is closely related, the only major difference being that the Madsen uses a pivoting block while the Bofors uses a sliding one. The thing is that you don't need such a complex mechanism for a rifle caliber automatic weapon, a simple bolt moving back and forth will do.
Bofors made a 20mm aa gun too and it works almoast the same way
@@lucianene7741 The Madsen mechanism has a lever pushing the cartridges the whole way to chamber powered by a huge spring that pushes the whole barrel and subframe assembly forwards. A lot of mass moving together with the cartridges.
@@THX-zk3qq Mass of a rifle bolt is not very large, mass required to withstand the force of firing is even smaller. An AR-15 bolt is only ~50g, the bolt head which is the stressed part is less than half of that. So therefore claiming that bolts are large because they need to contain the force of firing is wrong on two counts, a: bolts are in fact not very heavy and b: they could be even lighter than they are and still contain the explosion just perfectly fine.
The reason rifles use heavy bolt carriers is basically to achieve reliable operation by overcoming various forces such as friction by using the bolt inertia. This is why there are light weight competition bolt carriers for AR-15's that are however not very reliable.
Also the point about movement is completely wrong as well. On any normal rifle the cartridges themselves have to move more or less the same amount during chambering and extraction as on the Bofors and therefore it cannot be said to be an advantage of the Bofors.
I was born in 1973 and I have been officially trained on this weapon during army service about 25 yrs ago. Amazing animation, if I can see it decades earlier......
What? You were in the army at 12/13 yrs old?
@@keithw4920 good catch ! My math is bad since school.....haha
@@keithw4920 he was about 23 at the time imbe cile. Math isn't your strength I can see. I did it on top of my head and had the estimate to the year in 2 secs. easy calculous.
My dad fired it when he was a young officer as well, onboard a cruiser for the Argentine Navy. Never asked him where the pin that holds the 4 rounds together went after firing the last round. I guess it's expelled fallining straight down by gravity force. Cheers I was born in 1975!
I've spent multiple hours on several ships from WW2 where these guns were an integral part of AA batteries......and still couldn't tell you what's inside. Thank you!!
The Oerlikon I've seen torn apart in a workshop on the USS North Carolina.
Very nice, thank you for illustrating the ubiquitous Bofors 40mm !
This is a really complex one and I'm excited for part 2
Thanks for video
Finally i got conclusion on difference between gas operation and Recoil operation
The sound effect is spot on!
Great video. My only suggestion would be to add a bit at full speed. People see the workings at 5 seconds per cycle but only at full speed do they see just how incredible the engineering is. I hope in the next section you cover the selector at the back of the autoloader and the release of shells from the 4 round clip, more great engineering and thought in those things.
For those interested the loading tray the the shell drops in to only moves some 8 inches back and forth in a complete cycle. This movement is one way to keep the gun mechanically correct. On the outside of the right hand side of the ejector chute is a small lever which the recoiling breech hits, this lets you know if the recoil is within tolerances. As the viscosity of the oil in the recoil mechanism changes with temperature, the length of the recoil also lets you know if the jets in the recoil piston need adjusting.
Truly amazing engineering.
Much more complex than I had imagined. Thanks for the very detailed video.
great video. As a former instructor of an A.AC.Cs. in the IAF I have 2 remarks:
1. the L-70 has much more complicated feeding system which enable higher firing rate .
2. this gun (L-60)has been copied by the russians for their 37 mm A.AC.C.
Truly amazing! Thank you for this detailed video. Now I can explain to folks how my Bofors Gun works.
I always wondered how autoloading works in there.
So glad for this video!
Great work as always!
This video makes my leg hairs grow longer
Whatever I was watching can wait. Alert = watch now!
Another superb pice of work. Thank you.
Wow, that's complicated! It's amazing they managed to get that all to work reliably.
I have been looking for an explanation for a long time. Thank you.
Been reading about this mechanism for a long time. And have been searching videos that will show how it works in real time. I have found nothing, until now. I'm a long time subscriber and I really love your work. Keep it up! I suggest an Oerlikon 20 mm for the next video. Thanks!
This channel is great! I've always wonders about the 40mm internal workings
Наконец-то, хоть кто-то в ютубе сделал видео о том, как работает хоть какая-то автопушка, почему эта информация почти недоступна?
Thank you.
This is freaking amazing!!! Thank you!! Tak, Daniel, Merci,
Marvelous, thank you! This will help me immensely in building a working copy.
I am very much looking forward to the next part. Excellent work!
Someone's on a watch-list 😅
The next model was released in 1948. That model had a rate of 240 rounds per minute. A fantastc mechanical design. I know, I was its service engineer.
that's more complicated than I thought ... thank you for the clarification👍👍👍
On gunstation five and six on AC130A . I crewed on in the early nineties.
So awesome. I'd be happy to just walk through an AC-130 and here you were paid to fly around in one.
U should rename the video to Bofors 40 mm L/60 to not confuse with the Bofors 40 mm L/70.
Did they change the main mechanism on the 70?
@@Maverick-gg2do The 70 has an improved version of the mechanism were the casing is ejected through the bottom instead of at the back to double the fire rate by having a shorter stroke of the mechanism. Thats the simple explenation so yes its a different gun.
@@Maverick-gg2do the L/70 also fires a much larger cartridge, resulting in higher V⁰, allowing for effective use of APFSDS ammo in the IFVs on top of the obsolete AA impact/time fused HE, the old AA proximity fused HE or the updated 3P multifunction fuse HE/Frag shells.
The mechanisms are complex yet easy to understand thanks to our videos!
We had a 40mm bofors gun on the foc'sle of HMS Stubbington, a Ton class minesweeper I was on in 1980 something. It was crewed by an aimer on the triggers, a loader on the platform, and me running back and forwards from the ready use locker carrying the clips of four shells. I was a bit short of stature, so I used to stand on a milk crate to pass the clips up to the loader during live firing execises.
This gun is really fun to Shoot. Was a gunner in the navy on a mtb with one of these on it. Pain to clean tho.. Full tear down every Friday for a hole year..
i so want to see part two these are fascinating
Very complex and cool autocannons are nice
Please make the part 2!!! I love this topic
A music of life on a killer machine.woow just woow
prity neat its like a breach loading QF gun with a auto loader
Awesome illustration. Thank you for sharing
All you videos are the best I've seen
Very well done. Nice music too!👍☘️
I find it particularly fascinating that much of the mechanism of the Bofors 40mm gun appears to be derived from some of the singleshot rifles of the 1870s in particular the Sharps Model 1878.
Thats how most breech loading artillery works, even to this day.
One of the best channels on yt!
Thank you.
nicely done, easy to follow, all the details.
Wish we had this animation when I was learning to be a gunner on AC-130H
So if I understand it correctly, the feed mechanism doesn't ram the shell straight into the breech, but instead pushes it for a bit and lets inertia do the rest of the job similarly to how loaders "punch" the rounds inside a tank. Interesting, but why ? I could swear the shell would fall back before reaching its position when at high firing angles.
Be aware that this animation is playing about 8 times slower than it would in real life so that you can see how everything works.
I used to maintain one of these (Mk3 mounting) back in 1992/3 onboard HMS Orkney that was dated from 1943.
Thank you I was looking for one of these on the 40mm a few months ago
Thank you so much! I really wanted to know how these large autocannons work, but couldn't find.
I'm amazed at what turns up in my feed. It's interesting but I wonder if UA-cam knows something that I don't.
When he said 💥
I felt that.
My Grandfather was a twin mount Bofors crewman on a Destroyer in the Pacific theater during WW2. He was deaf in one ear.
Nice! It'd be interesting to see how a WWII 2pdr pom-pom or US 1.1" gun works in comparison but I'm not sure you'd be able to find plans for them unfortunately.
The 2-pounder pom-pom was just a scaled-up Maxim. Just check vbbsmyt's videos for the Maxim 1885 or in particular the MG08, and that's exactly how the pom-pom works.
@@THX-zk3qq I think he is referring to the QF 2lber MkV and later, not the earlier pom-poms. I for one would be very interested to see the action of the multiple barrel versions of this weapon.
@@JohnyG29 That's the one I was referring to, should have been more specific, sorry.
Seconded. The 1.1 has reciprocating barrels and apparently some kind of counter-recoil weight mechanism. I have some detail pictures of the 1.1 mount on display aboard USS North Carolina if the video creator needs some reference material- feel free to reply or message me.
I would love it if there were an animation for a revolver cannon. I can't seem to figure out how they work! Awesome animation as always btw.
ua-cam.com/video/7_7zG7RSgss/v-deo.html Is this what you were looking for?
ua-cam.com/video/GkOP8Lwdmgg/v-deo.html The guy who made this video also made one on the Hotchkiss revolving cannon.
@@garygenerous8982 thanks guys, but those are technically rotary cannons, not revolver cannons. Revolver cannons only have one barrel.
@@samhansen9771 Ah ok, my mistake. Hope you end up finding what you are looking for.
WOW... Very well put together animation... I really enjoyed watching this. I can only assume, that is not a system that one simply field strips for cleaning... never mind the shear weight of the unit being on a scale of heavy heavy-duty ... What a clever machine. I could be wrong on this next statement, but, please feel free to collect me if I am wrong, these units are still being used by several military's across the world, the USA being one of them. I thought one or two of these units hang out the side of the C-130 gunships, it may only be one unit, I don't remember for sure.. The videos I seen of the gunships sending rounds, sounded really cool ,and had a pretty smooth firing rate, for such a huge projectile... I would like to thank you for taking the time to build this animation, and also sharing it, for all to see. You got some skills brother....
so a slower and more powerful version of 30 mm gatling?
How do people think of these, like wow. It's just mind blowing if you really think about how it works, and how someone(s) thought of all of this
The way the breech works (how the back of the cannon is closed) is the same as earlier, hand-loaded artillery pieces. It's a quite low-tech solution called a "falling block action", the breech block (the thing that shuts the back of the barrel) slides up and down -perpendicular to the barrel in a cut out slot.
Next thing is the way the recoil is managed: it is a combination of springs, a hydro-pneumatic system and a rail that lets the barrel of the gun travel backwards, as the energy of the recoil is dissipated and stored. It can be compared to the shock absorbtion system in a car or motorcycle, although cars made in 1938 had much less advanced shocks. The rail makes sure the barrel returns to it's original position. Without the recoil system, guns would smash their carriages to pieces or they would at least be thrown out of position.
These systems were developed in order to make consistent aiming of artilley possible. Aiming an artillery piece accurately over thousands of meters requires very precise adjusting. Aiming artillery is a process ofaiming, firing a shell, spotting where the shell landed, adjusting and repeating. This only works if your gun is in exactly the same position as when you fired your last shell.
With the gun moving back and forth in a rail or track, you have the opportunity to create a mechanical "program" of things happening att different stages in the travel, by adding physical features of the track, that are "read" by a "follower", a feature on the gun itself.
So, that may be a way of breaking down the engineering behind this mechanism. It's really cool, and in my mind, it' s even cooler when you break through the mystery and start to understand the different engineering principles.
Relaxing and satisfying
Ok... answers all but one question for me. How does the feed work around the loading clip and what happens to it?
You will have to wait for Part 2.
Ooooo
Very good. Will help me when I build on to defend against the ATF invasion.
Brilliant work, as usual. Keep it up!
Small question for anyone who knows big cannons. Is the breech block system similiar to how bigger breech block cannons work?
Yes and no. Lot’s of artillery use the sliding breach as demonstrated here however lots of cannons also use a screw type breach
@@patriothaven671
I know screw breeches are used because of the bagged charge methods, but I've been curious how the breech block system works for a long time. As in, how the block closes once you put the round in the chamber and how the casing ejects when you fire. There's a bunch of cannons that I notice eject the casings at different times during the recoil too.
@@undertow619 it’s all in the timing. Many sliding breach blocks work very similar to the sharps rifle (allot look like an upscaled sharps) as for ejection timing that’s dependent upon designer. As long as chamber pressure isn’t excessive when the breech opens it can eject anytime during recoil or recovery
The US Navy's 5"/38 has something similar. The rim of the case releases a vertically sliding wedge breechblock, and a cam pulls it open on recoil. It uses a manually operated hydraulic ram to load.
Thank you for amazing videos
you may want to have the rest of the gun in a transparent mode while previewing detailed mechanisms... for those of us who are multi-tasking and looking at other screens- Nice Job very interesting.
How about the experimental Fokker Leimburger 12-barrel rotary machine gun? Anthony Fokker claimed he managed 7,200 rpms in 1919 when it worked right.
A Really Good Item To Try Would Be The 35mm Autocannon Used On The Nose,-The Prop Hub,- Of The P-39 Air Cobra!-But The Most Interesting Thing About This Gun Was, When Air Cobras Where In The Pacific Theater Of War, P.T. Boat Crews Would Be Very Keen In Getting Hold Of This Weapon From A Crashed Plane And Mounted It On The Re-Enforced Bow Decks Of Their 80-Foot Elco Boats (Later Versions Of The Boat J.F.K. Was On!)-These Weapons Would Prove To Be Such Good "Barge Busters" In Sinking The "Tokyo Express" Japanese Supply Line, That The Companies That Made Them Produced An Easy-To-Install "Kit" Of This Gun Purposely Made For The Boats In The Later Half Of The War!-It Would Be The Right Idea To Demonstrate Both Types Of Mountings For This Gun, Both Airplane And Boat!
Great work
Bofors 40mm Auto Cannon
Iconic and powerful than 37mm (a little), and still use until today.
swedish engineering at it's finest
@Jack Renders Bofors is Swedish.
@Jack Renders :)
Awesome design..thanks
You madlad. Where in the world did you get all the blueprints?
Ashy: The Historic Naval Ships Association has numerous manuals, including 3 on the 40-mm Bofors. I used those. Rob
Amazing work yet again
I Might have missed the point at which the trigger is pulled...but is this basically an open bolt system? Ie fires on an open bolt.
Correct. Part 2 will show more detail on the trigger catch.
Love it , Thank you .
Another excellent job.
War thunder got me interested in these animations lol. I always wondered what a bofors cannon was
Thank you.awsome video👍
very clear..
What a AMAZING Work!!!
I don’t know why the algorithm sent me here but I intend to learn this wisdom.
Is wonderful :3
Almost thought this was jared owen, lol, but great job on the animation!
Amazing work! You definitely have to include ads
My granddad trained with the bofors during his time in the danish home guard in the 60s he got the rank of corporal before he left the military
It looks like it uses the same sliding block action as conventional artillery.
Yeah, you can almost see the engineers scratching their heads:
” maybe, instead of pushing in the shell by hand, if the shell sits on a big coiled spring here... but how do we charge the spring and how do we position the shell on the spring...”
The falling block is such a low-tech solution. They must have had great fate in it, because they went through quite a bit of trouble to create an auto-loader that works with it.
A machine that ”just throws the damn thing in there” sound like an engineer’s nightmare