Puphen

The “Raketenverfer-43” cannon is the result of the work of German designers who were striving to create a light, mobile and efficient field gun with rocket projectiles. Outwardly, it looked like an ordinary anti-tank gun on two wheels behind an armored shield. It was designed to be able to fire rockets with the same efficiency and safety as conventional projectiles. Recoilless was not, during the shooting was buried in the ground. Missiles effectively pierced the armor of enemy equipment at a distance of 250 m, and the maximum firing range was a little more than 800 m.

These grenade launchers, which look like toy artillery guns (from which their unofficial name came from), appeared in service with the German infantry in 1944. The grenade launcher was based on the active-reactive principle. Shooting from it was carried out 88-mm reactive cumulative mines Pz. Gr. 4312 weighing 2.65 kg. The speed of a mine’s flight was 200 m / s; at a distance of 180–200 meters it punched a steel plate 150–180 mm thick. This reactive mine is similar to the mine of the Ofenror anti-tank gun and differs only in length and in that it is launched not by an electric charge, but by a percussion mechanism that ignites a propellant cap. Structurally, the grenade launcher consists of 6 main parts: a barrel with a breech, a counterweight, an upper machine, a lower machine and wheels. There is also a light shield shield - a sheet of armor steel 3 mm thick with edges curved inwards and with a window for aiming.

The barrel of the grenade launcher is a smooth-walled pipe with a length of 1600 mm and an internal diameter of 88 mm. The barrel is locked by a shutter, which contains safety, shock and locking mechanisms. The gun carriage of the grenade launcher consists of an upper machine on which the barrel is mounted and shield shield is fixed, and a lower machine equipped with a single-bar bed and a wheel travel with two stamped wheels with rubber tires. The carriage made it possible to carry out a grenade launcher with a maximum elevation angle of +25 degrees, a declination angle of 20 degrees, and horizontal shelling in the range of 60 degrees. When installing a grenade launcher on the runners provided circular fire. The aiming of the grenade launcher on the target was made manually, the turning and lifting mechanisms were absent. The front sight and an open sight with a notch from 180 to 700 meters were used as sighting devices.

The 88-mm heavy-duty grenade launcher of the 1943 model is a simple and fairly effective anti-tank weapon used by the German infantry during the final stage of the Second World War. As of March 1, 1945 in the units of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops there were 1,649 grenade launchers of the 1943 model. In total, they were made 3150 units. Several copies are now in museums.

• Smith, Robert C. Tank Killers: Infantry Resurgent . // Infantry . - July-August 1981. - Vol. 71 - No. 4 - ISSN 0019-9532.

• Historical reconstruction: German troops shoot Raketenwerfer on YouTube
• Germany's Rocket and Recoilless Weapons (eng.)

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