M9A1 2.36" Rocket Launcher (Bazooka)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower is said to have once identified the Bazooka as one of four things that won World War II for the allies. The others were the C-47, Jeep and Atom Bomb. The destructive power of the combat arms -- infantry, armor, and artillery -- greatly increased in World War II. Infantry carried its own antitank weapons in the form of the American 2.36 inch Bazooka rocket launcher or the German Panzerfaust.
There were three recognized progenitors of our modern space age. The first was a Russian, Konstantin Ziolkovsky, whose proposal for spaceships was published in 1903. Dr. Robert H. Goddard followed with the classic, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Then, in 1923, the German, Dr. Hermann Oberth, published his study, The Rocket into Interplanetary s pace. Goddard was the only one to personally put his theory into practice, starting about 1914 when he was a physics instructor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
During World War I, one of Goddard's developments was the prototype of the World War II bazooka. The war ended shortly after he demonstrated the remarkable antitank hand weapon too late for that conflict, but useful in the next. Goddard started working with rockets in 1915 when he tested solid fueled models. In 1917 when the US entered World War I, he worked on perfecting rockets as weapons. One of his designs turned out to be the forerunner of the bazooka, a tube launched, recoilless missile, 18 inches long and one inch in diameter. Goddard developed and demonstrated the basic idea of the "bazooka" two days before the Armistice in 1918 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. At Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, Goddard demonstrated tube-launched, solid-propellant rockets, forerun- ners of the bazooka. His launching platform was a music rack. Dr. Clarence N. Hickman, a young Ph.D. from Clark University, worked with Goddard in 1918 provided continuity to the research that produced the World War II bazooka.
As large-scale combat involving armored vehicles became common on the Eastern Front, weapons to counter this threat were quickly developed. In the urban environments of the USSR, the Soviets began using Molotov cocktails as improvised antitank weapons. Antitank hand grenades were soon developed and fielded to provide some offensive capability against tanks. Though effective, the antitank hand grenades had serious limitations. Their range was limited by the strength of soldier throwing them. They might explode on the target. or bounce off and detonate near it without effect. As the armor on tanks improved, the grenades got larger and larger, out of necessity, and often had a burst radius that out-distanced the range a soldier could throw it. Also, the soldiers had to get close enough to a tank to engage it - not a technique for the faint of heart!
By April 1942, the US Ordnance Department, had developed the 2.36-inch "bazooka," which fired a 3.4lb rocket with a shaped-charge warhead to a range of 400 yards. A reusable metal tube acted as a launcher for a percussion fired, short range antitank warhead. It was named after the humorous musical instrument which entertainer Bob Burns had fashioned from two gas pipes and a funnel in the 1930s. Suggestions that it was named because of the sound it made when fired appear less well established. Topps developed its Bazooka Bubble Gum product in Brooklyn, New York after World War II ended. Bazooka is also famous for the popular series of Bazooka Joe comics, first introduced in 1953 to add extra interest for youngsters.
The Red Army was supplied with this weapon to use on the Eastern Front against the Germans. Later in 1942, the Germans captured an American bazooka from the Soviets, and from it developed the larger and more effective Panzershrek antitank rocket launcher -- the German version fired a 7.3lb rocket around 165 yards. The British PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Antitank) and the German Panzerfaust used the shaped charge propelled by a small conventional charge, similar to that of a grenade launcher. The Panzerfaust could effectively engage armored vehicles at a range of fifty meters, a considerable improvement in stand-off compared to a thrown antitank grenade. The Soviets were quick to use this design in the development of the RPG-1, which was basically a direct copy of the German weapon. and introduced in latter years of the war.
The same type of warhead enabled the Germans and Americans to develop experimental low-velocity recoilless rifles, which were light artillery pieces that eliminated the recoil by a controlled release of propellant blast behind the gun. Although recoilless rifles and rocket launchers lacked the long range and accuracy of conventional artillery, they gave the infantry, and indeed any unit, a much greater firepower and capability for organic short-range anti-tank defense.
General George Patton dictated his reflections shortly before his auto accident on December 9, 1945:
"Pillboxes were attacked by the use of prearranged groups. A satisfactory group consisted of two BARs, a bazooka, a light machine gun, two to four riflemen, and two men with the demolition charge. The best results were obtained by a silent night attack which places the assault groups in position close to their respective pillboxes at dawn. The apertures are immediately taken under fire and silenced. When this is achieved the demolition charge, covered by riflemen and light machine guns, was placed against the door at the rear of the pillbox; the fuse is lit, and the men withdraw around the corner of the building. As soon as the charge is exploded riflemen throw in grenades -- preferably phosphorus. Any enemy emerging were killed or captured according to the frame of mind of the enemy.
"Street fighting is simply a variation of pillbox fighting. A similar group, but reinforced with more riflemen, is effective. The additional riflemen are split on opposite sides of the street so as to take under fire enemy personnel appearing in the upper stories on the side across from them. When a house offers resistance the windows are silenced by fire as in the case of pillboxes, and under cover of this immunity a bazooka crew fires one or two rounds at the corner of the house, about three feet from the ground. When a hole has been made by this means, phosphorus or HE grenades are thrown into the lower floor and cellar to discourage those operating there."
In comparison with the 57mm gun and the self-propelled tank destroyer, the bazooka had performed extremely well. The General Board of the European Theater noted, however, that the primary function of the bazooka had been as an assault weapon and the secondary function had been as an antitank weapon. Although a 3.5-inch bazooka had been introduced toward the end of the war to replace the 2.36-inch weapon, and a recoilless rifle had also been developed during the war, there was no move to designate either of these weapons as a primary antitank weapon.
During World War II, it had become apparent that the bazooka was not effective against the new armored tanks. A new bazooka, the M-20, was on the drawing board to replace it, but defense cuts had stopped production. Besides, many leaders in the US felt that with the atomic bomb, the Air Force, and the Navy, there would be no real need to upgrade US Infantry equipment. Korea was to prove how wrong this assumption was. It was to cost many young men their lives!
With the North Koreans flooding down, Task Force Smith, approximately one half a battalion combat team, was detached from the 21st Infantry Regiment of the 24th Infantry Division and rushed by air to Pusan. It was loaded onto trucks and pushed up near Osan to block the road south of Seoul. They held the road for about seven hours, losing 185 killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Two rifle companies, a battery of 105-mm howitzers, two 4.2-inch mortar platoons, a platoon of 75-mm recoilless rifles, and six attached teams equipped with World War II-type 2.36-inch bazookas.
Task Force Smith totaled about 440 men plus a battalion and headquarters of the 24th ID, and a battery of six 105-mm howitzers. At about 7 am, still in the rain, North Korean tanks could clearly be seen advancing along the road towards the Task Force position. A fire mission was called for from the 105-mm battery, but the T-34 tanks kept coming. When the leading tanks approached to within 700 yards of the Americans, they were engaged by the 75-mm RCLs, but although hits were seen, the tanks did not stop. As they rumbled on, they came under fire from the 2.36-inch bazooka anti-tank launcher teams. These did not stop them either. One officer fired 22 rounds at about 15 yards range against the rear of the tanks where their armor is weakest, but to no effect. The heavy armor plating on the T-34 ranged from 0.79 inches to 3.54 inches. Within an hour, 33 tanks had passed through the Task Force position in two waves.
