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I found some old snapshots of myself and a few friends firing the L 39 Lahti anti tank gun.
Difficult to date the photos but do remember the 20mm shells were a $1.00 each back then, I did take one apart and it had two gray bags of powder inside.
We fired this Lahti at 100 yards and the blast and concussion were remembered, later on my friend sold it as it was just too expensive to fire. There was a crank to pull the bolt back and a lot of magazines with the gun.Attachment 89811Attachment 89812
Wow, a $1 a round! There's a 101 round lot of AP on GunBroker starting at $6200, reserve not met...
Russ
Wow, I would really like to shoot that cannon!
There's a guy comes to the Calgary show that's been bringing those for some years, not sure if he still brings them. There's a couple of members in Calgary would know. He offered shooting quantities of ammo too.
As the L39 Lahti was selling for around $99.00 it was a good buy, but what we really wanted was the Solothurn S18-1000 semi auto that was recoil operated and was mounted on rubber tires. It used a longer 20mm (20x138mm) but the sellers had a lot of ammo, trouble was it costs around $250.00 or $350.00 which was just too much !
Photo shows two 20x113B mm short cartridges from the Lahti L39. The blue nose with white band is Finnish A/P tracerAttachment 89838Attachment 89837
Speaking of costs of things, here's an ad that appeared on one of our local forums... Here's what we can expect to pay right now for a gun of that sort...
Russian Anti Tank Rifle - PTRD-41 (1944)
Russian anti tank rifle, made in 1944.
Comes with 5 brass cases, 5 turned projectiles, chamber brush and what I believe to be a broken shell extractor.
It's over 6' and 40 lbs, so shipping likely isn't an option.....I will ship it, but at your cost.
Asking $4800.00 obo - EMT
Thats pretty cheap really Jim when you consider the price of some of the kit out there mind you a can of powder would not last long firing those hunks of projectiles
In case some have not seen the L 39 in action;
20mm L39 LAHTI - YouTube
Photo shows the 7,92x94mm, Soviet 12,7x108mm and 55 Cal Boys (13,9x99Bmm)
I have always wanted a 7,92x94mm and decided to turn one out in aluminum on my lathe,
I have since seated a longer German bullet (without the tear gas).
The Soviet 12,7mm was still in use during the Viet Nam War and this cartridge in my photo
is Chinese dated 41 64, nicknamed the 51 cal by US Troops during that periodAttachment 89879
I'd make them myself I guess...could also make them out of lead and load pyrodex...just for short bangers. We don't have a range equal to the gun. Why load for plate at 1000 when we have three hundred... I might consider rebarrel to .50.Quote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS
I remember the Lahti's were being used by anti-Castro Cubans to blow up Cuban Navy PT Boats. That was years ago and the Russians gave Castro new boats and the problem went away.