Mastering the Bazooka Rocket Launcher - 1943

The bazooka is the great grand daddy of all modern man portable anti-armor rocket launchers. Zeno, Zeno’s Warbird Videos (Get this restored video and more on our “The Bulge: The Battle at St Vith“ DVD. ) It was a revolutionary weapon that combined a “stove pipe“ rocket launcher, pioneered by Dr. Robert Godard, with a shaped charge warhead, originally developed by Swiss immigrant Henry Mohaupt for the US War Department in the 1930s. As you’ll see, shaped charges focused a superheated penetrating jet of gas whose effect on armored targets was far out of proportion to it’s relatively small size. The Bazooka put this awesome destructive power in the hands of a single soldier with a range of hundreds of yards. When fired from the battery powered M1 launcher, the original M6 Rocket, introduced in 1940, could penetrate 4’’ of steel armor, making it useful not only against tanks and armored vehicles, but also against