October 17th, 2009, 09:49 AM
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WW2F Veteran
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 1,135
Salute!: 252
Saluted 130 Times in 98 Posts
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Re: Panzerfaust
My favorite comment on weapons of this type is quoted as the following.
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The difficult terrain on which the winter campaign was fought, the prevalence of pitched battles at night and in fog, the tactical failure of the American 57-mm. antitank gun, and the paucity of German assault guns and self-propelled tank destroyers brought the bazooka into a place of prominence on both sides of the line. Admittedly the bazooka was a suicide weapon, but there were always brave men-mostly platoon and squad leaders-to risk its use against an enemy tank. In the autumn of 1944 the German Army recognized that it was too late for building tank destroyers in the numbers required and that in any case fuel was lacking for their transport into battle. Therefore the decision was made to build hand rocket weapons and rely on the courage of the "single fighter"-a decision like that made in 1917-1918 when the Kaiser's army turned to armor-piercing rifles in the hands of the single fighter to stop Allied tanks. In December 1944 both sides learned that infantry companies armed with bazookas could not do the work of tank destroyers.
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