World War II Database

Country	Finland
Type	Machine Gun
Caliber	7.620 mm
Capacity	20 rounds
Length	1,109 mm
Barrel Length	500 mm
Weight	9.300 kg
Rate of Fire	500 rounds/min
Range	400 m
Muzzle Velocity	800 m/s

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

The Lahti-Saloranta M/26 (LS/26) light machine gun design was originally designed by Aimo Lahti and Avro Saloranta in 1925. Later in the same year, it was selected as the Finnish Army's standard light machine gun. Production began in 1927 at the Valtion kivääritehdas factory in Finland. In 1937, China placed an order for 30,000 weapons, but only 1,200 were actually delivered, largely due to German and Japanese diplomatic pressure. Finnish troops found them to be too complex for cleaning and field stripping purposes; despite of their accuracy, they were often stockpiled, the front line machine gun crews preferring to use crude but reliable captured Soviet machine guns such as the Degtyaryov Pekhotny "DP" machine guns. Production for the LS/26 light machine gun design ended in 1942; by that time, more than 5,000 were built. By the summer of 1944, 3,400 were still in operational status.

Although designs exist for both 20-round and 75-round magazines for this weapon, the Finnish Army used the 20-round box magazine variant almost exclusively.

Source: Wikipedia

Photographs

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