Whilst we develop, change, expand and enhance the museum experience here at Armourgeddon, we are always on the lookout for more pieces to add to the collection. It’s a bit like a trip to a sweet shop for the Armourgeddon team; locating, exploring, visiting, buying and then transporting the pieces, but it is a very long, often frustrating and always laborious process.

This month, the focus has been on adding a further piece to the gun collection already on site. A Bofors gun was the target, and this week we have had one successfully land at Southfields Farm.

The Bofors 40 mm gun, usually referred to simply as the Bofors gun, is a multi-purpose auto-cannon, anti-aircraft weapon, designed in the 1930s by the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors. As one of the most popular medium-weight anti-aircraft systems used during World War II, the gun was deployed by most of the western Allies as well as by the Axis Powers. A small number of Bofors 40mms remain in service still, and saw action as late as the Gulf War.

The British Army first examined the weapon when receiving a number of Polish-built examples in 1937 for testing. The gun was known as the "QF 40 mm Mark I" or "Mark I/2" after a minor change to the flash hinder. After receiving a licence, the gun was converted from metric to imperial measurements. Numerous changes were made to the design to make it more suitable to mass production. The original Bofors design was intended to be hand-assembled with many parts labeled simply "file to fit on assembly", requiring many man-hours of work to complete.

The British testing experiments found that aiming the guns against high-speed aircraft was a serious problem. The gun could be trained quickly, but aiming accurately while doing so proved difficult. As a solution to this issue, the British introduced a complex mechanical analogue computer, the Kerrison Director, which drove the laying electrically. The director was operated by a 3-man team, simply by pointing it at the target at the same time as dialling in estimates for range and various atmospheric conditions. The director aimed the guns by automation, directly through powered mounts, as the gunners loaded the clips. Backup sights were fitted to the individual guns, replacing the former reflector sight and lead-calculator with a ring-and-post sight known as a "pancake".

In this form, the ‘Quick Firing’ "QF 40 mm Mark III" became the Army's standard light anti-aircraft weapon, operating alongside their 3-inch and 3.7-inch heavy weapons. Considered vital to the defence of England after the fall of France in 1940, that a movie ‘The Gun’ was produced to encourage machinists to work harder and complete more of them. By the end of the war total production from British, Canadian and Australian factories was over 2,100, while U.S. lend-leased examples added about 150.

The Army experimented with various self-propelled anti-aircraft systems based on tank chassis. Changes to the breech for this role created the "QF 40 mm Mark VI", which was used on the Crusader to produce the Crusader III AA Mark I. The main self-propelled version of the Bofors used the gun set on the chassis of a Morris Commercial four-wheel drive lorry. These guns were used in support of Army divisions’ to provide swift protection against air attack without the need to unlimber. The guns saw service in North West Europe, where six Bofors of 92nd (Loyals) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, landed with the British 3^rd Infantry Division and Sword on D-Day to protect the vital bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River, famously shooting down 17 German planes. Later in the campaign, Bofors were used for ground shoots as well as in an anti-aircraft role in quite wide-reaching theatres of war. The Bofors often found highly specialised roles in the British Army. For example, during the North Africa Campaign at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Bofors were used to fire tracer horizontally to mark safe paths for units through the German minefields. This practice was further developed during operations in North-West Europe, where bursts of colour-coded tracer were used to define the axis of advance of the different formations in large-scale night attacks.

The Canadian Forces also used Bofors on their surface fleet, not removing the guns until the late 1980s when they were considered to be outdated.

Our Bofor Gun is thought to be a Canadian design and manufacture, built in 1943. The Canadians devised a ‘Bantam’ two-wheeled carriage during initial manufacture, to make the Bofors Gun suitable for carrying inside transport aircraft such as the C-47 Dakota. The ingenious design used a three-legged girder carriage carried on a single axle. When on tow behind a Jeep, two of the grinder legs were joined to form a towbar while the third girder leg was telescoped into the central frame. Production in Canada began in the autumn of 1940 with the main production was based at the Dominion Bridge Company at Vancouver, British Columbia but there was also a facility in Hamilton, Ontario where the Canadian Naval versions of Bofors Guns were produced.

Having just arrived on site, the Bofors will head into the workshop once some wheels have been sourced and fixed onto the chassis to enable easier transportation, it will be completely stripped down, all parts will be fully serviced and needle-gunned before being painted and re-assembled. We are hoping to have the Bofors in place in the museum ready for the open season at the start of April. Watch this space for updates!