8.8 cm Raketenwerfer 43
88 mm calibre reusable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by the Nazi Germany during World War II
The 8.8 cm Raketenwerfer 43 Puppchen was an 88 mm calibre reusable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Raketenwerfer 43 was given to the infantry to bolster their anti-tank capability. The weapon was fired from a small two-wheeled gun carriage and fired a percussion-primed, rocket-propelled, fin-stabilized grenade - RPzB. Gr. 4312 - with a shaped charge warhead. The grenade had a shorter tailboom of 490 mm (19 in) compared to the 650 mm (26 in) tailboom for the electrically-primed grenade RPzB. Gr. 4322 for the Panzerschreck. antitank rocket launcher Both grenades used identical warhead and fuzing.
Approximately 3,000 units were completed from 1943 to 1945. It was made in much smaller numbers than either the Panzerschreck, which was based on the American bazooka rocket launcher, or the Panzerfaust, which was a disposable anti tank recoilless rifle. This is partly because it was realized that a simple hollow tube with an ignition device was all that was needed to launch the 88 mm rocket, rather than an elaborate miniature artillery piece with carriage and breech. Due to the carriage and better sights, the accuracy was better, and the range more than double that of the Panzerschreck.
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This entry incorporates text from “8.8 cm Raketenwerfer 43” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.