Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwight Gruber
Thor,
Thanks very much for the comparison pictures, very interesting and revealing. The Swedes did away with the Finnish accellerator.
Charlie,
They are fairly common. The Swedish army used 9mm submachine gun ammunition in them, which is quite a bit more powerful than the standard 9x19mm Parabellum. This proved to be excessively hard on the pistols, and one of the reasons they were phased out of service was for physical breakage failures.
--Dwight
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Some tidbits from a former GI in the Swedish Marine Forces:
The guns that are sold in the US as "Lahtis" are actually two slightly different pistols. The original version is the Finnish Valmet L-35, which after some design changes was adopted by the Swedish army as the Pistol M/40. The article Edward Tinker linked to will tell you more about the differences between these two pistols. They are not even close to the Luger design, other than the obvious similarities in appearance.
The submachine gun ammo (M/39B, commonly used in the M/45B or "Swedish K" submachine gun I used to carry) is not really more powerful than any other 9mm, but the jacket is quite a bit heavier than other 9mm varieties. This leads to higher pressures and extensive barrel wear in weapons that are not designed to use this kind of ammo. The Swedish Army soon realized that the M/39B put too much stress on the M/40, and banned the use of it in this pistol. The only manufacturer claiming that the M/39B is ok to shoot in a handgun is Glock, which probably led to the adoption of Glock 17 as the current Swedish GI issue Pistol 88. The octagon rifling in this is said to compensate for the heavy jacket, without causing excessive chamber pressure.
According to some sources, the M/39B qualifies ar an armor piercing round (jacket weight vs core weight) due to the heavy jacket, even if it was never intended for that purpose. Still, I have seen people selling it as AP and "Cop Killers" at gun shows.