Oerlikon is a Swiss anti-aircraft artillery manufacturer made famous by its 20mm autocannons in World War II. Copies and derivatives of these designs were used by the Germans, French, British and Japanese weapon manufacturers.
Oerlikon was established in 1906 in Switzerland in the machine tool industry. In 1923 it acquired a factory in Germany It entered the anti-aircraft defence field in 1924. In 1936 it founded a purely anti-aircraft development company called Contraves (Latin for against birds).
Nowadays the company is known as Oerlikon Contraves and employs 2,100 worldwide with a yearly turnover of 522 million Swiss francs. Oerlikon is now a subsidiary of Rheinmetall-DeTec AG , the big German armament manufacturer.
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