"Hot Damn, This Finnish Anti-Tank Rifle Was Gigantic" Topic

"The mammoth Lahti L-39 anti-tank rifle, designed by Aimo Lahti — Finland's greatest gun-designer — served Finland well during the 1940s. The 20-millimeter, semi-automatic anti-tank rifle's barrel alone was 51.2 inches long, and the overall weapon weighed a staggering 109 pounds.

Through the 1930s, the Finnish military had debated the optimum caliber of weapon for use against armor. Officials suggested 12.7 millimeter, 13.2 millimeter and 20 millimeter — and planned to use the same caliber round in both anti-armor and anti-aircraft roles.

In 1935, the Finnish state weapons manufacturer Valtion Kivääritehdas, or VKT, prepared a prototype — the L-35/6, chambering the 13.2-millimeter round…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

YouTube link

lol good link SB
it certainly is a bit of a beast

Given that he hit the iMac side on, I'd say it was a pretty accurate weapon.

Not sure it is a man pack weapon though.

He really doesn't like Macs does he!

Forgotten Weapons had an interesting video on those a while back:
link

The Solothurn S-18 20mm AT rifles were similar in size and performance. As with the Lahti they started with the 20mm x 105, and moved to the 20mm x 138 cartridges.

The Solothurn was evaluated by the Finns, but their own Lahti won out for Finnish service. It was used in limited numbers by the Germans, as well as the Italians and the Hungarians.

Perhaps of interest, the Solothurn was evaluated by the US Army in 1940/41. The evaluation went well, and there was a plan put in place to purchase a few dozen units directly and set up US production for wider distribution to US forces. This plan was abandoned not because of any perceived deficiency in the gun, but because a suitable license for US production could not be negotiated. The fact that Solothurn, a Swiss company, was owned by Rheinmetal, a very German company, may have contributed.

With no means of securing availability of it's preferred weapon, the US Army continued its search for a suitable infantry AT weapon.

So it is entirely possible that one of the primary reasons that the US Army went to war in 1942 with a uniquely capable 12 pound rocket launchers firing HEAT rounds that could defeat 60-80mm of armor, was that the Germans wouldn't LET the US Army go to war with a 115+ pound anti-tank rifle that could defeat 30-35mm of armor.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I remember way back when this weapon was advertised for mail order sales! Say late 50s or early 60s because I saw the add in I believe "American Rifleman" a neighbor used to give me. Then some guy used one to punch holes in a bank vault door and that was it for buying a 20mm AT gun. I think they even made a movie about it.

I remember way back when this weapon was advertised for mail order sales! … Then some guy used one to punch holes in a bank vault door and that was it for buying a 20mm AT gun.

Not quite. At least, in the US, they are available periodically (though not always on any given day).

The gun:
dndguns.com/lahti.htm

link

(In both cases guns that were recently available … but none for sale at this particular moment.)

The ammo:
gunbroker.com/item/597921221

Note that they are listed as "Destructive Devices", and so are regulated and require proper licensing. No different than most other cannons, or hand grenades, or areal bombs.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The story on using a Lahti to open a vault:

link

Yeah, but as a "Destructive Device" it's essentially a matter of paying $200 USD in extra taxes and having a locking storage area for it. Just stick with solid ammo, as any explosive ammo is also a Destructive Device, and you gotta pay that $200 USD in taxes per shell.

The US had skipped the AT rifle in favour of the .50 M2. Which at the time of its introduction was arguably a major step up from the standard AT rifle of the day. The subsequent introduction of the bazooka made the AT rifle question redundant until somebody noticed that using a .50cal bullet on lightly armoured vehicles, personnel and selected targets was more cost effective than a missile or bomb.

Patrick I am afraid you are not quite correct.
The place in the TOE filled by the .50cal was not the same place ultimately filled by the bazooka. The .50cal was replaced by the 37mm AT gun. After that, a plan was put in place to provide additional AT assets at the company level. AT rifles were explored for this purpos. This fell through, and within a year or so the bazooka was developed to fill that role.

Yes, the .50cal HMG was seen as an AT weapon. But that was in the post-WW1 era (1920s). There were very few AT rifles in that time to compare it with. It was a higher echelon weapon, at battalion and regimental levels.

By the mid/late 1930s the US Army had already determined to replace the .50cal as the infantry regiment's primary AT weapon. Watching the events in Europe, they observed the rise of the small AT cannon, and after an in-depth evaluation of the German 37mm PaK, designed their own 37mm AT gun to replace the .50cal as the weapon for AT formations.

Then, observing developments in the early stages of WW2, notably the "Panzerblitz" across Poland and France, in 1940 / 1941 the US Army determined that dedicated AT formations was not good enough, and that the each infantry company needed its own AT weapon(s). They acquired and evaluated the 20mm Solothurn AT rifle as a candidate. After determining it's suitability for the role, plans were made to acquire 50 pieces (I an not clear on whether the initially planned order included the evaluation units or was incremental), with the goal of setting up US based production, in order to have an assured supply to provide AT rifles to every infantry company.

The army was not able to implement this plan because, unhappily, they could not come to an agreement with Solothurn on licensing of the 20mm AT rifle. It seems that Rheinmetal may have pushed Solothurn on this question.

The army continued seeking a solution. Fortunately, in 1942 some clever guy in ordnance, namely one Lt. Uhl, working with the army's new AT rifle grenade, came up with the idea of putting a rocket motor on it and launching it out of a piece of pipe. The bazooka was born.

This became the infantry company's AT weapon. Had nothing to do with replacing the .50cal, which had already been replaced as an AT weapon years before.

Or so I have read. Wasn't there at the time.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Interesting thread…

Amicalement
Armand

The weapon was nicknamed Norsupyssy (Elaphant Gun) by us Finns.

When I used to game with WW2 Russians in 1/300 I found their anti-tank rifles only marginally useful against tanks. The ranges that the small scale enabled ensured that infantry rarely got near enough to any tank to defeat its armour. It was usually obvious to the tanks where the infantry must be, and they would just avoid.

Against softer targets it was another matter, however. I remember games where ATR sections, for want of anything much better to do, would manoeuvre to take pot shots from five or six hundred metres away at trucks, half-tracks, command vehicles, motorbikes, jeeps, limbered guns, and anything they could see. The rules wouldn't permit normal rifle shooting against a human-size target at those ranges, but a vehicle was something else; you used the gunnery table.

They didn't hit very often, but the fact that they might made them a bit of a pest. The Germans once had a nice little bottleneck as they moved through a built-up area that was blocked by one vehicle shot up by anti-tank rifles.

AIUI there are weapons now in service used for much this purpose. The ghostwritten book by the bloke who holds the record for the longest-range sniper kill describes him doing this. He would shoot guys off their motorbikes, then shoot the motorbike. In the case of the record range shot, after he potted the machine-gunner, he also potted the gun (or thought he had – the Afghans recovered it).

The weapon was nicknamed Norsupyssy (Elaphant Gun) by us Finns.

And it was very efficient in this anti-elephant role, as proven by the fact that there are very few elephants (or even mammoths) left alive in Finland…

The Finns also used them in the great Troll War.

B

When I used to game with WW2 Russians in 1/300 I found their anti-tank rifles only marginally useful against tanks. The ranges that the small scale enabled ensured that infantry rarely got near enough to any tank to defeat its armour. It was usually obvious to the tanks where the infantry must be, and they would just avoid.

Ah, but that's at least half the value of an infantry AT weapon… keeping the tanks away.

I know that many wargames, and many scenarios, don't provide any means of demonstrating this. Your goal is to kill tanks, and the ATRs have reasonably short effective range against tank armor, and are slower than the tanks so can't catch up to them, and usually need a side or rear shot, which the tanks will rarely offer.

But if your scenarios are well constructed, your infantry is trying to HOLD some terrain, and any experienced gamer is going to be hesitant to drive his StuG, Pz IV, or even Panther platoon into the middle of a defensive zone that has a platoon of 9 ATRs hidden away waiting for him. If you can drive his infantry to ground with your mortars and MGs, his tanks are just NOT going to wander in by themselves.

At least, if the rules and the scenario are well constructed, that will be the effect.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Another thing to include in any assessment of AT rifles, at least with respect to Soviet use in the mid-war period – Even in 1943 these were still being fielded in large numbers in the East. Although the Soviets knew full well that these weapons had no realistic chance of knocking out heavy German tanks, with enough ammunition, they were capable of producing a certain percentage of "lucky hit" mission-kills: denting the barrel of the main gun, killing unbuttoned TCs, smashing vision blocks, breaking a track pin, snipping radio antennae, etc. … or even just distracting the crew. During Manstein's post-Kursk Kharkov counterstroke, German tanks displayed as many as several hundred hits from AT rifles.

As well, no soft transport was safe until these AT rifle teams had been swept from the area.

FWIW.

B

They would be good against Halftracks too.

I suspect they'd be effective against most gun shields and people taking cover in buildings as well.