Trego's Mountain Ear

As a western American, the guns I’ve seen and the people who introduced me to them incline me to think of John Moses Browning as the world’s greatest gun designer.  This poster is from an article at The Guns of John Moses Browning | Armory Blog that does a pretty good job of convincing me that John Moses Browning was America’s greatest firearms designer.

The list of guns he designed is long – and most of the folks who are my age have used more than one of his products . . . yet Finland’s Aimo Lahti could also be a contender for the greatest. 

Kevin O’Brien probably said it best “The spiteful Soviets, whose troops had been shot full of holes by many Lahti designs, demanded that that the Finn retire from arms design, and he did, living on a pension until 1970.”  O’Brien has a lengthy post about Lahti and his accomplishments at weaponsman.com. 

Lahti’s career was shorter than Brownings – he signed on with the Finnish Army as a master armorer in 1921, and began design work on the Suomi 31 the following year.  22 years after starting the Suomi 31 design – in 1944 – Lahti’s retirement was demanded by the Soviet Union as part of the peace treaty.  He did retire on a major general’s salary.

 In more peaceful Utah, Browning built his first rifle in 1868, and continued producing more designs until his death in 1926.  I have a lot of respect for John Moses Browning – but he did have 58 productive years compared to Lahti’s 23, and he was never explicitly written into a peace Treaty.

Historical Firearms — The Guns of Aimo Lahti Between 1922 and 1940,… provides some photos of the many guns Lahti designed.  Unlike Browning, I have not fired the Lahti guns – the US is a lot bigger place than Finland, and many Browning designs were for civilian markets.  The only Lahti I had a chance to acquire was the Lahti pistol – and at the time I believed more in 45 than 9mm.

As a youngster, I saw advertisements for his anti-tank rifles (but a hundred dollars was  lot of money back then):

To end the story – most of you have heard of Simo Hayha and his Mosin Nagant rifle – but he also used Lahti’s Suomi M31 in his sniping career.  Lahti designed a submachine gun that would shoot to one minute of angle . . . and Simo Hayha took advantage of it.

So I’m not sure if Lahti outdid Browning as a designer – but the two men deserve to be mentioned on the same page.