L-34 Sampo: Aimo Lahti’s Rejected Masterpiece

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! Finland’s standard light machine gun going into the Winter War was the LS-26, a gun which did not succeed in field use. It was complex and cumbersome, and Finnish troops quickly replaced it with captured Russian DP-27 LMGs. Part of the problem of the LS-26 was it’s recoil-operated design. Finnish military authorities specified a recoil-operated mechanism for their LMG in light of the success of the recoil-operated heavy Maxim guns in Finnish service. Gas operation was quickly recognized as a superior system for light machine guns, but too late to stop adoption of the LS-26. In the early 1930s, Aimo Lahti did design a gas-operated LMG, heavily influenced by the Czech ZB-26 system. A handful of prototypes were made by VKT, looking for both Finnish military acceptance and international sales. The gun was made in several calibers, most notably