Britain's First Anti-Tank Weapon - the No.44 Rifle Grenade
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- čas přidán 21. 01. 2022
- The British Army's first dedicated infantry anti-tank weapon was a rifle grenade. Rifle grenades became extremely popular during the First World War and when the tank threat emerged a rifle grenade seemed like the ideal answer.
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To think that there are grenades today that are made to attack the top of a tank's armor in a very similar way, albeit with a parachute and a shaped charge. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.
I found the range test results, for the British number 68 anti-tank grenade, during some research, back in 1986. It could penetrate up to a maximum of 32mm. of RHA. It apparently had a HEAT warhead.
maybe relied on spall off the backside of thick armor?
@@daveybernard1056 The grenades would likely impact either the top hull or turret armor, due to the indirect fire nature of the weapon. Interwar period and ww2 era tanks seldom had armor in those areas exceeding 30mm. Those that did were very late war, if any, and this is hardly a serious enough weapon for attacking such a vehicle anyways. Making a rifle grenade that could eliminate any armored vehicle would be a dubious task, and would result in a very short range, impractically heavy grenade.
The bravery required to deploy these against tanks doesn’t bear thinking about
With one of the other major alternatives for a fellow with no dedicated anti-tank weapons being running or crawling up to the vehicle and throwing a bundle of demolition explosives (or worse just a standard hand grenade) onto or under the vehicle or into the path of the oncoming vehicle I'm not sure what I'd prefer less honestly, I absolutely second that opinion.
Fascinating, thank you.
Thanks for watching Dan!
Great information as always. Keep up the great work.
Thank you, always relieved to hear people are finding this stuff as interesting as I do!
The No68 grenade was the first of its kind using a HEAT warhead. Although the physics of the hollow charge were not fully understood at the time, hence no stand off distance, it could still penetrate two inches of armour. An impressive performance for 1940 and capable of defeating the armour of any contemporary German tank
Yes indeed! I'll have to do a video on them in the future.
Well, the german tnak treat was emerging in 1918. But in true WW1 fashion it was emerging very slowly indeed.
Only 20 A7V produced in a war with the scale of WW1 is nothing.
I wonder if these dedicated anti armour grenades would have been usefull for the Kaisers men and if they maybe had something smiliar.
Certainly seems like something that would have been more useful to German troops! But they definitely went for a more kinetic approach with the 13.7mm rifle and machine gun.
Tactical umbrella
Haha, like it
Tacbrella
What's it there for?
As I mention in the video it stabilises the fairly large grenade in flight according the sources I've read on it.
Outstanding
Thanks Joe!
This looks like it could have had effectively the same action as a HESH round (no shaped charge), even if the principle wasn't yet discovered. Too bad we don't know if the penetration test recorded spalling as well. To move on to pure speculation; perhaps a later, more sophisticated understanding of the #44 led to the HESH.
I tried to track down records of testing but no joy, I'm pretty hopeful I just need to find the right committee minutes. Then I'll do a follow up if I find some data! Certainly might have had a HESH effect. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for another neat TGW trivia and for cool tank footage! At least, No.44 did made into production, leaving AT-rifle(s) only in prototype stage.
P.S. I wonder if that french archive has Char 2C reels.
Thanks for watching! Yes, I will have to have a look through and see what they have on there!
Surprised rifle grenades are not still issued. Even if you give every soldier/marine only one it seems like A great way to initiate A firefight or ambush. A handful of blanks and rifle grenade cant really weigh all that much.
A few countries cling onto them but they aren't as popular as they were. Interesting considering 40mm low velocity UBGL lack some range and capability.
@@TheArmourersBench IIRC A rifle grenade can outrange A standard 40mm and maybe fly A bit flatter trajectory as well. Easily through A window from across A street or into A bunker port for instance.
Absolutely it can indeed! The French still make use of them I believe
Why didn't they shoulder the rifle when they were firing grenade?
Recoil is extreme
I'd imagine they can be fired from the shoulder if you were desperate but as the grenade is much heavier than the bullet of a normal cartridge and the charge in the grenade-launching blank cartridges quite hefty the recoil force would be very stout to say the lesst. There's also the need to elevate the rifle to a significant angle due to the low muzzle velocity of the grenade, all in all it's just more convenient to fire the rifle with the butt against the ground and doing so provides a somewhat more stable platform to fire from.
while rifle grenades are going fairly slow, their heavy mass means that they still generate a lot of recoil force (Newton's 3rd law), sometimes enough to break a rifle (hence Lee Enfields used for grenade launching having wire wrapped stocks or the French never using Berthiers for this use)
while the recoil may not be enough to significantly hurt the soldier, it can still bring a lot of pain and knock you off your feet, there is also the issue that the trigger guards on rifles weren't designed for this, so there was the danger of hurting or even breaking your finger if the rifle was allowed to recoil
firing rifle grenades from the shoulder would only start to really be seen after WWII, especially with the French and Swiss developing equipment around that use
even today firing rifle grenades takes some experience to lay accurate fire while not hurting yourself doing it
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks!