Rosenfors bruk The Husqvarna factory, in the background the town of Jønkjöping
All pistols had slot for shoulder stock but these were never issued, only a very few was made for test purposes. An order for 60,000 pistols was placed, and the first the pistols were made with a loaded chamber indicator, but that was soon removed and the holes for it welded over. One witness remembers a heap of discarded pistols in the factory with a sign saying: “Here lies the result of unskilled peoples’ work.” The task was then transferred to Husqvarna in March of 1941. Originally the pistol production was intended to take place at the Rosenfors factory near the town of Hultsfred on the east cost of Sweden, but they were not able to produce the pistol. First the Swedes made a more comfortable loading (M39B) for the pistols, then sold them out and reissued the Browning 1907 pistol. I was on a pistol course with 5 other staff sergeants in Sweden, in just a week we blew up 9 pistols, the submachine gun ammo was too strong for them. The Swedish production m/40 pistol was downgraded and was made of molybdenum steel that resulted in many blow ups. Cannons were in short supply, my grandfather was commander of a cannon team on the harbor of Hälsingborg 1939 to 1941, his cannon was made of a telegraph pole and two wagon wheels, all painted nicely grey, it could be seen from passing ships and from Elsinore just 4 km away, where the Germans kept a strict eye after April 1940. Unfortunately the Swedes needed cannons too, so all the alloy steel went to cannon production. In 1940 two representatives from the Swedish army (Magnus Hedenlund and Charles Holmgren) managed to buy the production rights from Eimo Lathi in Finland, who at the time worked for the Tikkakosky factory. This example was used by the Finnish Navy before the Swedes got it The Finnish model designation, and the loaded chamber indicator abandoned by the Swedes Finnish 元5 pistol bought by Sweden (John Bills collection) Finnish SA acceptance stamp (John Bills collection)
Call the m/39 by the Swedes, only a very few Finnish L 35 pistols were brought in Sweden – probably less than 20. The Swedes adopted the Finnish Lahti Pistol in 1940 when Walther became unable to deliver more P38 pistols.
I had for many years contact with an old historical interested Husqvarna employee Gunnar Granquist his nephew Bertil Granquist has taken over his archive and he has been most helpful. I had a lot of information in my archive that is source for this article. As a weapons officer in the Danish armed forces I have handled and repaired the Lathi pistol that was a substitute standard pistol at the time. This pistol used the Bergman locking system but looked like a Luger, it replaced the Bergman pistol in the Danish army. If you contact him at he can add your pistol to his catalog, and possibly be able to tell you where it was originally delivered. Thanks, Peter!Īlso, Peter is currently working on researching Bergmann pistols, and would appreciate hearing from owners of various models. We will cover the mechanical aspects of the pistol in a later post, but this information from Peter is an excellent overview of the different markings found on different batches of the pistols. By 1946, the company had produced some 80,000 of the guns both for the Swedish military and, later, for the Danish police.Today we have a guest post by Peter Rasmussen on some of the history of the Husqvarna M40 pistol, also commonly called the Lahti. The Swedes tapped the L-35 for local production by Husqvarna, dubbed the M40 or Automatpistol M/1940 in Swedish service. A design of Finnish gun maverick Aimo Lahti, the L-35 was chambered in 9mm Luger and, while it looks a lot like a P08 Luger on the outside, on the inside it is very different, using a locked breech, single-action system rather than the curious toggle-action of its more famous doppelganger. With World War II underway and needing a more modern handgun to replace the dated Browning, Sweden adopted the only slightly modified L-35 pistol of Scandavanain neighbor Finland in 1940. Chambered in 9×20 Browning Long, Husky kept the pistol in production until 1942, even exporting the gun for military sales to Latin America and for the consumer market.
In 1917, HVA began making the John Browning-designed FN Model 1903 under license for the Swedish military as the M/07 pistol. that uses an improved Mauser-style action. This Husqvarna H-5000 is a bolt-action rifle chambered in 7mm Rem Mag.