Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1150145
of up to 50 mm. Even though it was necessary to fix it manually to the tank, it was a really effective weapon, capable to fight any armor. There were al- most 554,000 Haft-H3s manufactured. Next on the list (Spring 1943) is the not very successful shaped- charge hand-thrown grenade called PWM(L) – with about 200,000 of them being manufactured at the time. What actually really did reinforce Hitler's anti-tank defense was the introduction of the Pan- zerschreck and the Panzerfaust. The former was developed as a 'creative replica' of the American bazooka captured in November 1942. The US pro- totype managed to pierce through only 90 mm of armor (when hitting the target at right angles), but the German Panzerschreck could pierce through up to 220 mm of steel in the same conditions, and it was possible to hit a target moving at a speed of 30 km/h from a distance of 150 meters. Although the Panzerschreck was a pain to handle and prone to damage, it was still used on a mass scale. There were almost 290,000 Panzershrecks and over 2.2 million rounds manufactured. It was also cheap to make (70 Reichsmark) and quick to assemble (10 manhours). Thanks to its decent effective firing range and quite effective shaped-charge- based grenades, it played a significant part in the defense system of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. It was used mainly in combat in the south and west of Europe, where the landscape made it possible to compensate for the weapon's drawbacks. The most important shaped-charge-based weapon of WWII, however, was the German Panzerfaust. Al- though it was a predecessor of shoulder-fired an- ti-tank grenade launchers, the way it was operated makes it possible to categorize it as a recoilless gun because its shaped-charge grenade was not rocket-launched (like in the case of the Bazooka or the Panzerschreck) but by powder charge in a card- board tube, which also launched a factory-sealed cardboard cap from the tube-launcher. As a result, at the moment of firing, the supercaliber and dis- posable Panzerfaust balanced the forces exerted on the launcher's tube and the gunner acting like a recoilless gun – including the impressive trail of fire behind the launcher and a danger zone of up to 10 m. The new weapon, manufactured since 1943, had been constantly evolving. The initial versions (Faustpatrone, Panzerfaust Klein; Panzerfaust 30) were able to get through up to 150 and 200 mm of steel respectively, but offered an effective range of merely 30–40 m. Later versions – Panzerfaust 60 and 100 – could get through as much as 200 mm of steel, and their maximum ranges when fir- ing at immobile/mobile targets were 60/100 m and 80/150 m respectively (but the effective ranges were almost two times lower). Most importantly, Panzerfausts were mass-produced – by the fall of the Third Reich there were 8.5 million (!) versions of the weapon, and it was exactly this weapon that improved German infantry's defenses against Sovi- et tank substantially, especially in the final year of the war, when anti-tank guns, tank destroyers, and tanks alone were scarce in numbers. It is true that the Panzerfaust's rate of effectiveness was in the range of 3.5 to 7% of the damage of Allied armor – it wasn't high, but after deducting the losses caused by anti-tank guns and tanks, it turned out that even half of tanks destroyed were victims of Panzerfausts. It was therefore a truly mass weapon that was inexpensive and... sufficiently effective, but the conclusions drawn from its performance in combat practice "cured" Germans of considering it a "Wunderwaffe" once and for all. Although the warhead was able pierce virtually any tank armor, its real firing range was quite low – ranging from 30 to 40 m, reaching 50 m at most. As a result, the weapon was effective only when enemy tanks were not protected by infantry units. And indeed – where no infantry was around, Panzerfausts did a great job against T-34s. But the Allied troops supporting Shermans or the Russian troops lowered the effec- tiveness of Panzerfausts to almost nothing. The case was similar with artillery fire. Soviets would even go as far as to target their own tanks as part of friendly fire. Much depended therefore on the tactical prowess of the enemy and on the adopted defense strategy, which was to isolate tanks from the support of infantry. After all, the origin of the German "armor fists" dates back to 1942, when the infantry units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen- SS were able to hold their ground, but Soviet tanks "made it through" to the center of the defended formation and had to be destroyed effectively by improvised units of "tank destroyers" within Germa- ny's own defenses. The situation in the 1944–1945 was way different, though – which meant also a much higher tactical prowess of the Soviet forces. Still, the Panzerfaust as an idea and type of weapon performed well – no wonder that the regenerating Bundeswehr used this class of weapon as part of its equipment. LAND FORCES