Fábrica de Braço de Prata
defunct Portuguese weapons manufacturer
Fábrica de Braço de Prata (Portuguese for "Silver Arm Factory"), (Braço de Prata Factory), originally Fábrica de Material de Guerra de Braço de Prata (Braço de Prata War Material Factory) was a small arms, light artillery, ammunition and ordnance factory owned by the Portuguese Government. It also designed and developed its own armament and ammunition in addition to the licensed production of foreign weapons, including a Portuguese version of the Heckler & Koch G3 (Espingarda m/961) widely used during the Portuguese Colonial War.
History
The military industry of Braço de Prata has its origins in a number of ammunition depots, pyrotechny workshops and armament repair facilities established between 1850 and 1887 and belonging to the Portuguese Army's arsenal (Portuguese: Arsenal do Exército). The Fábrica de Braço de Prata itself dates back to a royal decree of 1902, which mentioned the creation of a new factory at the region with the same name, in Marvila, Lisbon, to replace the Fundição de Canhões and Fábrica de Armas in the production of artillery and small arms. Construction began in 1904 and it was inaugurated with the name Fábrica de Projécteis de Artilharia (Artillery Shell Factory) on 12 October 1907, beginning production of 75mm ammunition for Schneider‑Canet guns on July 15, 1908.
In 1911, with a new reorganization of the military industry, the factory changed its name to Fábrica de Material de Guerra (War Material Factory) and the next year received small arms manufacturing and repairing machinery from Fábrica de Armas, of Santa Clara, Lisbon. During this time, the factory also started producing 81 mm mortars and Bergmann submachine guns. In 1929, the factory began manufacturing Vickers machine guns in small quantities for the Armed Forces and the production of the MP 28 submachine gun to equip the Army and the Polícia de Segurança Pública.
With another reorganization in 1927, the name of the factory changed to Fábrica de Munições de Artilharia, Armamento e Viaturas (Artillery Ammunition, Armament and Vehicle Factory) and the Arsenal do Exército was extinguished and all armament factories taken over by the War Ministry. Braço de Prata's facilities then received major overhauls and was modernized.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fábrica de Braço de Prata” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.