Berlin-Lübecker Maschinenfabrik (BLM) was a manufacturer of handguns, infantry rifles, ammunition up to 2 cm, flareguns and precision military equipment in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

from 1936 to 1945. The company, based in

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

, Germany, was one of a number of metal-related businesses owned by Bernhard Berghaus, a German industrialist and member of the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

party who played an important role in the rearmament of Germany during the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

. BLM had a reported labor force of 3,809 in August 1944, comprising 1931 German men, 539 German women, 467 foreign women, 752 foreign men, and 120 war prisoners. The foreign workers were housed in onsite barracks. After the war, Berghaus was sought by the Allies for his participation in using forced labor in his facilities. The plant, located on Curt-Helms-Str. (today: Glashüttenweg), sat along the eastern bank of the Trave River north of the old City of

, an island in the Trave River.

Karabiner 98k Rifle

From 1936 to 1942, the company manufactured the

Karabiner 98k The Karabiner 98 kurz (; ), often abbreviated Karabiner 98k, Kar98k or K98k and also sometimes incorrectly referred to as a K98 (a K98 is a Polish carbine and copy of the Kar98a), is a bolt-action rifle chambered for the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartri ...

, the standard service rifle of the German

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

. The K98k is a bolt-action rifle based on the Mauser M 98 system. As a means of hiding the identity of manufacturers, the German Army required manufacturers to mark their equipment with codes rather than brand names. For the K98k rifles produced by BLM, they were designated with the German Army ordnance codes "S/237", "237" and "duv".

Gewehr 41 Rifle

In 1943, the plant began manufacturing semi-automatic Gewehr 41 rifles. The Walther-designed Gewehr 41 was intended to replace the bolt-action Mauser to allow German infantrymen to offset the advantages of Red Army soldiers equipped with the semi-automatic Tokarev SVT-40 rifle. The Gewehr 41 design proved unsatisfactory in combat and was later replaced by the re-designed Gewehr 43. BLM produced G41 rifles using the "DUV" code with "WaA214" inspection proofs.

Gewehr 43 Rifle

In 1944-45 the company made G/K43 semi-automatic rifles using the ordnance codes "duv" and "qve".

Scopes and Other Equipment

From 1941 to 1944, the company made all the

scope mount Scope mounts are rigid implements used to attach (typically) a telescopic sight or other types of optical sights onto a firearm. The mount can be made integral to the scope body (such as the Zeiss rail) or, more commonly, an external fitting t ...

s for the Zf-41 sniper scope. In 1944-45 it was 1 of 2 only manufacturers to make mounts for the ZF4 sniper scope. From 1936 to 1940, BLM supplied many parts for field

armourer Historically, an armourer is a person who makes personal armour, especially plate armour. Historically armourers were often men, but women could also undertake the occupation: for example Alice la Haubergere worked as an armourer in Cheapside i ...

s using the 'duv' identification code. On a small scale, the company made M1928

flare gun A flare gun, also known as a Very pistol or signal pistol, is a large-bore handgun that discharges flares, blanks and smoke. The flare gun is typically used to produce a distress signal. Types The most common type of flare gun is a Very (s ...

s and

MG34 The MG 34 (shortened from German: ''Maschinengewehr 34'', or "machine gun 34") is a German recoil-operated air-cooled general-purpose machine gun, first tested in 1929, introduced in 1934, and issued to units in 1936. It introduced an entirely n ...

bolt parts and barrels.

Innovation

The development department of the Berlin-Lübecker Maschinenfabrik developed a machine for the cold-hammer forging process. This combined

forging Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compression (physics), compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer (often a power hammer) or a die (manufacturing), die. Forging is often classif ...

and flow forming process addressed the need to (mass) produce more durable

gun barrel A gun barrel is a crucial part of gun-type weapons such as small arms, small firearms, artillery pieces, and air guns. It is the straight shooting tube, usually made of rigid high-strength metal, through which a contained rapid expansion of high ...

s in less time than those produced with traditional methods as some processing steps that would otherwise be necessary, such as tempering or putting in the

rifling Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groov ...

, can be dispensed with. The cold-hammer forging process starts with a (short) barrel blank that is already drilled out with a slightly oversized hole. A polished and hardened rifling mandrel rod is fitted to the hammer forging machine's driver, as is the barrel blank (the barrel blank surrounds the mandrel that corresponds to the reverse shape of the barrel including the rifling and if desired the chamber, so that no further work steps are required for cutting or pressing in the rifling). Then, the machine drives the barrel blank and mandrel into the machine, where the barrel passes through four hammers; one on each side. As the hammers strike the slowly rotating barrel, they impart about 140 tons of nominal forging force at a rate of about 1,000 strokes per minute, effectively squishing the barrel blank down onto the mandrel to bring the barrel blank to the intended length and shape and forming the rifling. The rifling can be absent, conventional or polygonal and the mandrel can also include a

squeeze bore A squeeze bore, alternatively taper-bore, cone barrel or conical barrel, is a weapon where the internal gun barrel, barrel diameter progressively decreases towards the muzzle (firearms), muzzle, resulting in a reduced final internal diameter. Thes ...

reverse shape. The compression of the steel molecules created by this immense force also hardens the metal without the application of heat and thus avoids the brittleness that is associated with heating steel to its transformation temperature, hence the term "cold-hammer forging". Since the rifling is formed at the exact same time as the metal is being forged, cold hammer forged barrels are typically known for retaining accuracy for a very long period of time. In fact, it was a process created specifically to extend the life of gun barrels by reducing the effects of wear. Cold-hammer forged machine gun barrels were

mass-produced Mass production, also known as mass production, series production, series manufacture, or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. ...

during World War II for the air-cooled MG 42 general-purpose machine gun which very high 1,200 to 1,500 rounds-per-minute cyclic fire rate imparted significant heat stress and wear during rapid firing and thus warranted frequent barrel changes.

Bombing Raid

On August 25, 1944, 81 B-24s of the American

Eighth Air Force The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Forces S ...

conducted a bombing raid over Lübeck, heavily damaging the BLM factory and killing or wounding 58 of the facility's workers and air raid personnel.Angriffsschlußbericht über den Luftangriff auf Lübeck am 25.08.1944 ("Final battle report regarding the air attack over Lübeck on 25 August 1944")
(in German) retrieved 2013-02-04

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berlin-Lubecker Maschinenfabrik Firearm manufacturers of Germany 1936 establishments in Germany 1945 disestablishments in Germany