Word: bazooka
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Right, Benny." Someone rocketed a bazooka shell into the last of the red houses and flames belched upward. One of the tanks poked its nose around the corner and fired shells directly into the flames. A series of crunching explosions sent the tank backward, as the enemy gun beaded on our area again...
British and Canadian troops in Italy have been using an odd-looking, pipelike weapon vaguely reminiscent of the U.S. bazooka, and performing much the same function as a shattering short-range buster of tanks, armored cars or pillboxes...
Last week the gadget came off the secret list. It is the Piat (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) and it fires a 2.75-lb. bomb which explodes on impact with a violence sufficient to penetrate four inches of tempered armor plate. But the Piat does not employ the bazooka's rocket principle. Its projectile, like a mortar shell, is propelled by the explosion of a cartridge in the base. Rear half of the tube houses a powerful steel spring which takes up the recoil, re-cocks itself and operates the firing pin for the next shot. In combat...
Technical details on the rocket artillery were necessarily vague, but it would appear to be an adaptation of the well-publicized Army bazooka, an open tube which uses an electric spark to launch a short-range rocket projectile...
...major secret weapons revealed to civilians in this war have been the magnetic mine, rocket guns (such as the U.S. bazooka and the Russian katusha) and radar. The magnetic mine, sprung by the Germans on Nov. 18, 1939, was neutralized within a month (by equipping ships with degaussing girdles). Rocket guns are now in use both by Axis and Allied armies. Radar is credited with a very large share of British victory in the Battle of Britain. But Germany's radio locator has not enabled the Nazis to avoid defeat in the aerial Battle of Germany...