Questions about the PIAT

Some interesting points here;

www.canadiansoldiers.com
http://www.lonesentry.com/blog/firing-the-piat.html

 

In our discussion on sidebar topics we've ignored bigdunc's question. OK, here goes. why is always a tough question that historians dread. Who, what, where and when are much easier. The why is that the PIAT is a type of spigot mortar, a weapons technology the British had been working with since WWI. In essence a spigot mortar is a reduced recoil artillery weapon. A conventional 20th century mortar detonates a propellant charge inside a heavy steel tube, which throws the bomb into a steep ballistic arc, which plunges on the enemy from above -- classic indirect fire. The recoil from that detonation is fed into the earth through the base plate, a heavy gauge steel rectangle about 18 inches by 18 inches by 1/2 inch thick for the 60mm mortar. The whole system is so heavy that it's just barely "man portable." And you've got to set it up. Three guys typically -- one with the base plate, one with the tube and support struts, one with the bombs and the sight. Once you set it up you fight from that position awhile. It's not shoot and scoot. In WW1 the conventional mortar was good for harassment fire and to lay down smoke, but it wasn't quite portable enough to move forward with the infantry to take out strong points and targets of opportunity. The infantry just didn't have anything better than a SMLE bolt-action rifle to fight against strong points, this is why the bloody stalemate persisted for years. What they needed was man-portable firepower. This is why the British experimented with the spigot concept, because it promised to put the firepower of a conventional mortar into the hands of one man who could carry it forward with the riflemen, take out a pillbox or MG nest with one shot, reload, and move on. The idea of the spigot is to use a spring to catapult the bomb almost fully clear of the weapon before the propellant ignites and to dispense with the tube altogether and replace it with a rod. The projectile slides over a rod instead of sliding within a tube This means that much less of the recoil is transfered to the weapon, so the whole system is lighter, cheaper and more mobile than a tube mortar. The Great War ended before the spigot mortar idea produced any mass-produced weapons. But there were prototypes.

These prototypes were still around when in June 1940 the British Army, having left much of its artillery on the sands of Dunkirk, needed a lot of cheap anti-tank weapons in a hurry. An obvious answer to officers who had worked in weapons development in 1917, and were now in charge of weapons procurement in Whitehall, was the spigot mortar, which can be made in a bicycle factory cheaply and quickly. The PIAT evolved directly these post-Dunkirk ersatz anti-tank artillery projects.

The PIAT weapon was effective, at least when it was competently manufactured. Effective enough that the British continued to exploit the spigot mortar concept on other weapons beside the PIAT. One interesting example was the Churchill AVRE, one of Hobbart's Funnies, the specialized armored vehicles developed to help carry off the D-Day invasion. The Churchill Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) was a Churchill tank equipped with a 290mm spigot mortar in place of the high velocity gun on a standard Churchill tank; it was designed to destroy reinforced concrete bunkers and roadblocks at close range.

And about this first round kill or be killed thing... the problem with the PIAT was not in the concept or design, it was in the manufacturing. In WW2 Britain pretty much ran out of high quality industrial capacity. By 1944 the big "hi-tech" companies like Vickers, Bristol, Rolls Royce, etc. were beyond capacity. Consequently, the British Army was forced to accept manufacturing contracts from small-time machine shop firms with no experience in modern weapons manufacture. The bulk of the PIATs deployed to Europe came from these ma & pa bike shop firms, and a lot of them were defective. A lot of the projectiles were defective, too.

 

With US troops most infantry units adopted the M9A1 HEAT rifle grenade as their tank killing weapon. This could be fired to about 100 yards, had no significant signature, required little in the way of extra equipment (just the rifle grenade attachment) and added virtually no weight to one's load. The round could be fired directly or indirectly, from cover or from inside a building. Also since most squads had other rifle grenades toting a few AT rounds along was no big deal.

 

Us Brits may have been the poor relation with our PIATS compaired with the German and American stuff, but spare a thought for the Russians they had only AT-Rifles in there infantry companies right up to 1945.

 

Battery problems in the early bazookas eventually resulted in replacement of the battery-powered ignition system with a magneto sparker system operated through the trigger. A trigger safety was incorporated into the design that isolated the magneto, preventing misfires that could occur when the trigger was released and the stored charge prematurely fired the rocket.

 

I don't think that feature was available until the M9A1 model, which wasn't deployed until spring, 1945. Could be wrong about the dates though. I've often wondered why a hand-cranked magneto (common power source for field telephones, etc.) wasn't part of the original design.

 

My guess is battery cheaper and easier in concept at least.

 

Did the M9A1 require a blank round,or am I thinking of another anti-tank round?

 

Well, they were issued a couple of AT grenades that were marginally effective and did use captured panzerfaust.

 

Yes, you fired it with a blank round.

 

Yes I have seen footage of Russian Troops firing captured panzerfausts, it looked like it was Berlin, and in the same footage a strange flame-thrower thing that spurted flame from one building to another, but it was not back packed it was just on the windowsill, (by the way the Russian who fired the Panzerfaust looked a little worse for ware after the blast had given him a good punch in the face, he staggered back like a boxer and just dropped the empty pole.).