In March 1949 the army headquarters described the requirements for future AFV’s in a brief memo sent to KAFT. One of the vehicles called for was an unassuming 20-ton vehicle intended for infantry support, armed with a 75 or 105 mm gun. During 1949 and 1950 this vehicle was occasionally discussed, but left on the back burner in favor of the ongoing “tankette” development program. In August 1950 the army headquarters revisited the project and seems to have noticed certain alarming developments abroad; more specifically, tanks were rapidly becoming much bigger and heavier and with much greater protection.

As far as I know this project never led anywhere except to trials of the AMX-13, but it still gives some insight on what the army headquarters were thinking about tanks at the time. The sudden realization in late 1950 that foreign developments were just about immune to current Swedish tanks probably contributed to getting the EMIL project going the following year.

The documents are ordered chronologically.

Archive references: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/16, SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/17 and SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/19

This memo is a report on the activities of the armor committee of 1946, up to October 1st 1948. The committee has consisted of various officers and engineers from the army headquarters, the army ordnance administration and the armor school, and it has taken the form of an open forum where various ideas regarding armor development could be discussed. The report gives pretty good summary of the thoughts behind the Swedish armored vehicle developments of the late 40’s.

Archive reference: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/18

Original title: Anteckningar från orientering för Överingenjör Lundborg den 13/2 1943 i stridsvagnsfrågan

This document contains notes from an orientation (held on 1943-02-13) on the Swedish tank development and tank purchasing thus far. It takes the form of a pretty informal briefing that relates a number of amusing anecdotes; among other things it’s revealed that the reason that there were two different engine options for the strv m/42 was that Volvo (which built a number of tanks) absolutely could not accept installing an engine from their competitor (Scania) and had to be threatened with government sanctions in order to accept a compromise where they’d mount Scania engines in early tanks while developing their own engine option.

Archive reference: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/1 a