Original Item: Only One Available. Totally inert and demilitarized according to BATF guidelines with hollow body and inert fuses. These pieces of ordnance cannot be converted to an explosive device and are not available for export.

This is an outstanding example of a WWII U.S. Navy Bofors 40mm Cannon ammunition can! Included inside are a total of 8 Inert 40mm Rounds. 5 rounds have inert fuses and tips and the other 3 inert rounds have all wood training tips on them. They sit nicely inside the can in their proper carriages and are still easy to attach the feeding clip onto the base of the rounds. 5 of the rounds have the date of 1943 on them while the other 3 training rounds do not have any markings visible. As for the can, there are no markings visible on it. The can measures in at 25” tall and 11” wide/squared. There appears to be no physical damage to the box, besides the cosmetic issues of the markings being worn away. The rounds have no significant damage visible on them and the paint on the wooden tipped ones are still mostly retained and still look beautiful.

This is a wonderful set for the ordnance collector! Get ready to add this rare ammunition can for the famed 40mm Bofors to your collection!

Bofors 40 mm Automatic Gun L/60
The Bofors 40 mm Automatic Gun L/60 (Bofors 40 mm L/60, Bofors 40 mm/60, Bofors 40/60 and the like), often referred to simply as the Bofors 40 mm gun or the Bofors gun, is an anti-aircraft autocannon, designed in the 1930s by the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors. It was one of the most popular medium-weight anti-aircraft systems during World War II, used by the majority of the western Allies, and some Axis powers such as NSDAP Germany and Hungary. A small number of the weapons remain in service today, and saw action as late as the Gulf War.

In the post-war era, the Bofors 40 mm L/60 design was not suitable for action against jet-powered aircraft, so Bofors developed a new 40mm gun with significantly more power — the Bofors 40mm Automatic Gun L/70. In spite of being a separate development, although based on the same core action and looking visually similar (comparable to the AK-47 vs the AK-74), the Bofors 40mm L/70 gun is also widely known simply as "the Bofors" or the "Bofors 40mm gun". The L/70 design never achieved the same popularity and historical status as the original L/60 model but has still seen great export and popularity to this day, having been adopted by around 40 different nations and even being accepted as NATO-standard in November 1953.

In order to supply both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy with much greater numbers of the guns, Chrysler built 60,000 of the guns and 120,000 barrels through the war, at half the original projected cost, and filled the Army's needs by 1943. Over the lifetime of the production, their engineers introduced numerous changes to improve mass production, eventually halving the overall time needed to build a gun. Most of the changes were in production methods rather than the design of the gun itself. York Safe & Lock also produced the weapons, though its attempts to coordinate drawings across the program were unsuccessful, and this responsibility was transferred to the Naval Gun Factory in July 1943.

There were many difficulties in producing the guns within the United States, beyond their complexity (illustrated by the use of 2,000 subcontractors in 330 cities and 12 Chrysler factories to make and assemble the parts). The drawings were metric, in Swedish and read from the first angle of projection. Chrysler had to translate to English, fix absolute dimensions, and switch to the third angle of projection. Chrysler engineers also tried to simplify the gun, unsuccessfully, and to take high-speed movies to find possible improvements, but this was not possible until near the end of the war.