Why Wasn't the 40-mm Bofors Round was Used for Instead of the 37-mm or 2pounder?

Copyright 2015 J.D. Neal

Its easy to conjecture that if the British had used the 40-mm Bofors AA
gun round rather than the 2-pounder, and if the USA had used it rather
than the 37-mm, things would have been much nicer in the world of tanks
and anti-tank guns. The British and USA would have been able to share
ammunition and the 40-mm was more potent than either round used by
either country. Heck, why didnt they just use the Bofors gun reworked
for single-shot tank use? After all, wasnt the 40-mm Bofors an extremely
successful weapon?
For one thing it was a foreign design. Not that they had problems with
foreign designs, as shown by the fact that they purchased the rights to
manufacture both the Bofors and the Oerlikon 20-mm. Rather, being foreign
it was not directly accessible. The creators didnt say, Hey, heres a
gun and ammo. Take it and use it as you want. Instead, they offered
rights to the equipment, which had to be purchased.
The next consideration is the value of good ole 40/20 hind sight. At the
time the Bofors was just one of many designs being offered by competing
companies for the same concept. No one knew which ones were the best and
which ones were mediocre.
Related to that, neither the USA nor Britain knew they were going to
adopt said weapon in large numbers in the future. They could not say,
Hey, were going to adopt this Swedish cannon in 1938 or 1940 so lets
chamber our anti-tank guns in it now.
Time itself explains almost everything. The Bofors came to life around
1935. Much of the interest in the 40-mm was drummed up by its use in the
Spanish Civil war of 1936 to 1938; it was credited with destroying many
of the aircraft shot down by anti-aircraft guns, which was a PR piece
that singled it out over the competition.
The British were able to test Polish made guns in 1937. By 1938 it had
designed the 6-pounder to replace the 2-pounder. Upgrading or changing
the 2-pounder to use the 40-mm round made no sense when they already had
a gun to replace the 2pdr.
The 2-pounder is only famous for its use by the British because of
Dunkirk in 1940, when the British lost so many anti-tank guns that they
choose to keep producing the 2-pounder rather than 6-pouner. Otherwise,
British forces in Africa might have been equipped with 6-pounders; or at
least equipped so early that the 2-pounder was a brief has-been.
The USA tried to buy a Bofors gun to test in 1937 but Bofors didnt sell
guns for evaluation. In 1938 Bofors offered to ship a gun (free of
freight for the gun) and ammunition for the USA to evaluate. The
cablegram received by the U.S. was miss-read as meaning for a cost of
$243,600, which (given 1930s dollars and a slender budget) was too much
for a simple test firing. Consider that the real price was $21,400 you
can see how absurd the miss-quote seemed.

When the war started in September 1939, the Bofors guns gave sterling
service against strafers and dove bombers, intensifying the U.S.
militarys desire for the weapon. It wasnt until 1940 that the US
acquired examples and plans that allowed it to begin the process of
copying, improving (for their uses and manufacturing techniques), and
producing the Bofors.
The 37-mm gun used by the USA originated back in 1937. Even then it was
realized it was an inferior tank/anti-tank round but the generals in
charge ignored that and insisted that the Infantry wanted a very light
weapon they could pull around on foot. Thus the 37-mm was The Gun until
1940 when the rapid fall of France and most of Europe scared some common
sense in them. At that time, they decided to build tanks with the 75-mm
gun and use the 75-mm gun as an improvised anti-tank gun. The 3-inch gun
would be developed as the high velocity weapon for the anti-armor role.
Updating the 37-mm gun to use a cartridge from a gun they had yet to
evaluate when they already knew the 37-mm itself was anemic made no
sense.
As it is, the 37-mm was chambered
37-mm automatic gun that the Army
around 1918 and finalizing around
neutered some due to the adoption
blow up prematurely if pushed too
tank and anti-tank gun was pumped
of oomph.

for a rimmed version of the semi-rimmed

had developed (very slowly) starting
1939. The anti-aircraft gun version was
of a self-destructing round that could
hard. The 37-mm cartridge used for the
up and actually delivered quite a bit

The Bofors round was not very different than either the 2-pounder or 37mm in power. The Bofors fired a 2.2-pound shot at around 2,800 feet per
second. Early 2-pounder rounds fired a 2-pound shot at 2,650 f/s; and hot
loaded rounds at 2,800. The U.S. 37-mm is berated by some people as
inferior but not so: it fired a 1.9-pound shot at 2,900 f/s (early
loads were based on the neutered 37-mm AA gun with a velocity of 2,650
fps, which may be why it is deemed inferior). All three weapons had
much the same armor penetration abilities.
Thus, upgrading weapons that were obsolete and intended to be replaced
for a slight change in power made no sense.
The 37-mm continued to be used and became famous (notorious, actually)
due to an innate inability of the US Army to get anything productive
done. They could have fielded the M7 light tank with a 57-mm or 75-mm gun
in 1941 (perhaps 1942) and hence eliminated the 37-mm armed M5 from the
picture. They could have replaced the 37-mm towed gun with the 57-mm
before the end of 1942 but they did not (field commanders griped bitterly
that the 57 was just too big for their poor ole infantry to push around).
(The British had the 57-mm designed as the 6-pounder - and ready; all
the US had to do was build them!) The last few months in 1942 when the
USA started fighting in Europe (or more exactly in Africa/Tunisia)were
fraught with warnings about the 37-mm. The first few months of 1943
revealed that the 37-mm was a pop-gun. This gave them emphasis to

actually replace, but that process proceeded at a glacial pace, impeded

by incompetence and very poor decision making.
The 2-pounder and 37-mm wouldnt even be known by most people if the
countries that used them had followed an intelligent and speedy
replacement program. Which explains why people sometimes wonder why the
40-mm was not used instead.
The answer being, the 2-pounder and 37-mm themselves should never have
been used in the first place.