The Panzerfaust,The primary German man portable anti-tank weapon of World War II, the Panzerfaust wa

The Panzerfaust,The primary German man portable anti-tank weapon of World War II, the Panzerfaust was a simple weapon that packed a very hard punch.  First introduced in 1943, the Panzerfaust was Germany’s go to rocket anti-tank weapon, a contemporary to the famous American bazooka.  The Panzerfaust was specifically produced to be a cheap and simple weapon, it consisted of a simple metal tube launcher and armor piercing warhead, and unlike other anti tank weapons of its day it was made to a be one time use weapon that was discarded after firing.  They came in five different model, each with a secessively larger warhead.  Depending on model the Panzerfaust could fire a 106-149mm warhead 30-150 yards and penetrate 100 - 350mm of steel armor.  Aiming and firing the Panzerfaust was fairly simple.  The user cradled the weapon in his arms with the exhaust tube under his arm pit.  The weapon featured a folding rear sight incremented at different ranges, which was aligned with the top of the warhead which served as a front sight.  What made the Panzerfaust especially deadly was the shaped charge of its warhead.  If the Panzerfaust fired a simple high explosive warhead it would do little to damage a tank.  However the Panzerfaust fired a shaped charged designed to pierce steel armor.  When the warhead struck a tank, the shaped charge directed the explosion on a very small area of the tanks armor that was no larger than a softball. The explosive force formed a jet of hot plasma which melted away the armor, showering the crew inside with molten metal and thousand degree flames.From 1943 until the end of the war in 1945, over 6 million Panzerfausts of all models were produced.  They were issued not only to the Germany Army but to the Finnish Army as well (Finland was an ally during the war). Several thousand were captured by the 82nd Airborne in Italy, and were later re-issued to the paratroopers due to their superiority to the bazooka. Due to their simplicity, they were especially heavily issued to the Volkssturm, the civilian militias organized near the end of the war recruited from old men and children.  It was not uncommon for whole Volkssturm regiments to be issued with Panzerfausts because they were such a cheap weapon.  Perhaps the heaviest losses inflicted by the Panzerfaust were the Soviets, especially in urban combat zones where tanks are especially vulnerable. In the last year of the war thousands of Soviet tanks were knocked out by the Panzerfaust, often at the hands of special Volkssturm tank hunter crews who were trained specifically how to ambush and destroy tanks. -- source link
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