The Bohler 47 mm antitank gun was built at the Kapfenberg works in Austria. Developed in the early 30's, it reached prototype stage in 1933, and entered mass-production two years later in 1935. First armies to use it were the Austrian and later the Italian army. Romania bought some of these guns in the late 1930's, initially for the army, but they were later on assigned to the paratrooper unit. It wasn't a very good antitank gun, but it was very useful as an infantry or mountain gun, since it could be easily broken down into several pack loads for transport. Reassembling the gun was also easy because it only took several minutes and a minimum of tools to do it. An armor-piercing round left the barrel at a speed of 670 meters/second and could penetrate up to 43 mm of vertical armor at ranges up to 500 meters.