I’ve heard the Swedes specified that their own special steel be used in the production of the M96’s..? Can anyone confirm that?
Mauser Waffenfabrik made the initial batch of 38k of the new M/96 rifles in Germany during 1899-1900,
but the vast majority of the ~ 550k M/96 rifle production was done in Sweden from 1899 to 1927 (Carl Gustafs Stads Geverarsfaktori), and during WWII at the Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebloglong factory, where 83k of the shorter M/38 rifles were made from 1942-45.
My assumption is all Swedish made M/96s and M/38s used domestic Swedish steel, since they had large iron ore deposits. I don't know if the initial pilot batch of 38k M/96s rifles made in Germany in 1899-1900 used Swedish iron ore or not.
Digressing a bit, but it is my understanding that among European countries, the iron ore in the northern area of Sweden was considered in the first half of the 20th century to be very high quality due to a relative lack of impurities - and these large iron ore deposits provided Sweden with a nice exportable resource to other European countries.
That geological distinction presumably applied to the domestic steel used in various, generic Swedish-made items, ie, pots, pans, knives, etc. - its not just the old M96 rifles that benefitted from the use of high quality steel native to Sweden. Fwiw, Nazi Germany coveted high purity Swedish iron ore...
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Swedish iron ore is very pure (specifically low sulphur content). Before the modern Linz-Donawitz-steelmaking process, sulphur impurities were very costly to remove.
However the main reason Germany desired Swedish steel was not for its quality but its quantity.
40% of Germanys prewar iron ore supplies was imported from Sweden. Wiki-article which might be of interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_iron-ore_mining_during_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_iron-ore_mining_during_World_War_II
" In the year before the war (circa 1938), Germany received 22 million tons of iron ore from various sources. Although it was able to produce around 10m tons of its own iron ore each year, it was of low grade quality and needed to be mixed with high grade material from other countries such as Sweden, which annually supplied it with 9 million tons: 7 million from Kiruna and Gällivare in Lapland and 2 million from the central Swedish ore fields north-west of Stockholm.
...why does this matter in the context of the M41/M41B sniper rifle? Well, historically speaking the two are somewhat connected. In 1940 Sweden had no domestic optical telescope manufacturing capacity at the start of WWII - and thus could not quickly make thousands of optical rifle scopes for its planned sniper rifles using the M96s ...so Hitler and the Swedish gov't arranged a sort-of secret deal where Germany would supply 5000 AJACK (4x) scopes and short rail scope mounts to Sweden - in exchange for a certain tonnage of Swedish iron ore that Germany needed for its own military production. All of the original AJACK scopes on the M/41 were made in Germany and are dated 1941-1942. However, after Germany's military set-backs in Stalingrad circa 1942, Hitler personally ordered that no more rifle scopes be exported to Sweden, and all domestic German optical scope manufacturing capacity was allocated specifically for the German Wehrmacht.
I read that only about 2k to 3k of the planned 5k scopes had been delivered to Sweden when Germany backed out. So, in late 1942 Sweden was forced to quickly make its own domestic 3x scope called the M/42, and later followed by the simpler to manufacture M/44 scope. However it was not as advanced or robust as the higher magnification German-made AJACK scope, so during the post-WWII era (circa 1955), most of the M/44s were removed from service, and the original 1941-42 AJACK scopes were sent back to Germany to be re-furbished. The scopes were re-built with multi-coated lenses to improve light transmission during this process, and they also had a "B" suffix added to their serial number in that 1955 re-build program, as seen in the 3rd picture in my post. (Note: The short rail scope mounts were also updated with a recoil/set-screw to keep them from loosening up, and along with a few other updates to the rifle, and they became the M/41B).
Just a random historical factoid re Swedish M/41B rifles, and how Swedish iron ore was traded for German sniper scopes and mounts during 1941-42...
Source:
Crown Jewels: The Mauser in Sweden (2003), by Dana Jones
