"Soviet Infantry AT weapons" Topic

Did the Soviets ever introduce AT weapons in to their infantry platoons during the war? I'm thinking of man-packed weapons like bazookas, RPGs, etc.

I'd think they would be cheap and easy to make so a good fit for how the Soviets liked to fight.

bigger than anti-tank rifles?

Anti-tank rifles in infantry divisions were not distributed in the penny packet fashion to infantry platoons, but were instead centralised: infantry battalion would have anti-tank rifle platoon, and infantry regiment anti-tank rifle company.

Motor rifle units were a bit less centralised, having a couple of anti-tank rifles at the company level.

At infantry platoon level you could however expect to find such anti-tank weapons as anti-tank grenades or incendiary bottles. These would need to be thrown at the target, so would be good mainly for very close defense.

I would be curious actually how the few lend-lease bazookas and captured Panzerschreck were deployed.

The Soviets had Piat, as well as Bazooka's that they obtained through lend lease. Haven't seen any numbers on how many they recieved.

Captured Panzerschrecks seem to have been centralized and given to the engineer-sappers, then used in volley-fire against bunkers.

According to this source link
the Russians received some 3,000 M1 & M9 2.36" rocket launchers, aka the "bazooka"

The original M1 Bazooka was provided to the Soviets as quickly (even more quickly?) than it was provided to the US Army.

The Red Army was not at all impressed.

The Bazooka, particularly in it's original M1 model, did not fit in well with their support infrastructure. The Red Army infantry units operated on a minimal and inconsistent logistics tail. The Russians had good reason for driving harsh standardization and simple, robust design. They simply didn't have the 8 men behind for every 1 man in front that the US Army had.

In particular, the battery needed to operate the M1 Bazooka lead to it being un-usable to front line units. US Army units had generators and battery-chargers at the battalion and company HQ levels. This infrastructure fed recharged and ready batteries into their radios, and the bazooka could also feed off of this existing infrastructure. The Red Army units did not have any of this infrastructure. No batteries means the M1 Bazooka was a curiously long, heavy paperweight.

The anti-tank weapon provided to the average frontnovik was the anti-tank hand grenade. Originally just a big HE charge (RPG-40), by mid-war it had been redesigned with a hollow-charge warhead and a drogue tail (RPG-43). This was a weapon that could be issued to soldiers as rounds of ammunition, and thrown at tanks in large numbers when in close action. The RPG-43 was effective enough that it, and it's follow-on RPG-6, remained in service through the 1970s, and some were even used to attack US forces in Iraq in the last decade.

When they did get M9 Bazookas (which did not require batteries due to the magneto-generating trigger), they viewed it as a specialist weapon, similar to how they viewed captured PanzerSchrecks. When they captured some Panzerfausts, they viewed it much more as a round of ammunition for riflemen. They translated and printed user manuals, and conducted front-line unit training in its use. They collected large numbers of captured fausts, and did some limited production in captured facilities, so that fausts were not at all uncommon among Red Army rifle formations in 1945.

Or so I've read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Good stuff Mark, and by the time Soviet infantry got hold of Panzerfausts, they didn't have to worry much about German tanks..because there were rather a lot of good Soviet gun platforms to deal with them…or artillery…or aircraft.

Anti-tank dogs! Poor 'lil guys…well, they got their own back. Since they were mostly trained using Russian tanks as targets, when the Russians tried to use them for real, many times the dogs would run under the closest *Russian* tank, not German tank…Doh!

The penetration of Russian AT grenades.
RPG-40 2.0cm.
RPG-41 2.5cm.
RPG-43 8.0cm.
RPG-6 12cm.

As explained above, the sovs had logistics issues throughout the war. Grenades and atr were what they used.
Wargamers tend to overstate the use of captured weapons imo.
Panzer fausts were collected and issued to specialist assault troops.
Bear in mind this is very late war and for set piece. It took a lot of their resources and a lot of planning to collect anything together. For obvious reasons, most of that effort was already purposed.
Eg assaulting infantry frequently carried shells up to their supporting guns on the way forward.

AFAIK there was no Soviet manufacture of Panzer fausts.

The Soviet lack of infantry AT weapons may indicate how often their infantry encountered German tanks in the later half of the war.
Or maybe Stalin was just mean.

As noted above, for perfectly sensible reasons the Russians preferred to rely on ATRs and AT guns for ranged AT work, and for direct infantry assault, very close range AT weapons (grenades etc).

Postwar they had the luxury of figuring how to integrate ranged HEAT weapons into their forces, but not during WW2.

And the Soviet anti-tank rifles were not too bad by 1941 standards – and once they actually made it to production they were manufactured in huge numbers, with full strenght rifle divisions eventually being able to field 200+ pieces.

Out of the myriad of combatant nations taking place in WWII, very few actually developed man-portable anti-tank rockets.

The bazookas the Soviets initially received were the very first batch made.
These were not great weapons and the initial design of the round was pretty dodgy.
link

Early US experiences in combat were bad. They led to a redesign of the projectile head ( ogive ).
Although this improved matters you still had to strike armour at a near 90 degree angle to have a good chance of the thing going off.

There's a letter of complaint from a US unit which experimented with their bazookas against a panzershrek and found the latter far less picky about angle.

Let's take a look at this gizmo from a Soviet perspective.

There's some weird and wonderful new weapon we just got off the americans.
Yes that's right.
It's NOT INVENTED HERE. The projectors look pretty simple, but the rounds are some sort of fancy rocket. A tiddly little rocket.
We're not convinced these things are going to be able to take out German armour.

Ignition relies on a battery. That's a complication as we'd need to supply some way of charging them.
They seem to have effective range around 30 yards or so.
( Isn't that about the same distance you could throw one of OUR grenades ).
We'd have to train our men. Most of our lads can't read and even those that can are likely to get a bit confused by wires and electrickery.
Test firings showed a fair few seem to be duds or something because they just bounced.
Looks like those americans palmed us off with a second rate experimental weapon.
We're moving over to the offensive and these are intended as a last ditch defensive weapon for infantry being over-run.
Oh
And we'd probably have to limit issue to specialists like scouts because they'd need initiative and guts for the user to work round to a flank without supervision.

Is it really such a surprise they weren't keen?

I never heard much about bazookas in the Russian infantry, I now know why.

Don't forget Molotov Cocktails too.

AT rifles continued in use until the end of the war. Gunners targeted the sights and viewing ports which were vulnerable on even the heaviest tanks.

How prevalent were AT rifles on the Eastern Front? Here is a German AAR:
An example of this occurred On February 10/11 1943 in an attack by Kampfgruppe Sander where Tigers in the lead platoon drew most of the fire of the Russian anti-tank guns whilst on the attack on the collective farm west of Sserernikowo.

In the attack lasting 6 hours the closer, the Tigers got to the objective the heavier the fire became.

After the battlegroup had taken the farm one crew counted 227 hits on their Tiger from an anti-tank rifle, 14 hits from 5.7cm and 4.5cm anti-tank guns and more impressive were the 11 hits from 7.62cm guns.

Wolfhag

Don't forget Molotov Cocktails too.

Only imperialist bourgeois westerners, intent on insulting comrade foreign minister Molotov, use those inefficient weapons.

Proper patriotic communist frontoviks use incendiary bottles, filled with flammable liquid and with ignitors on their side, to defend their Soviet Motherland from the tanks of the fascist invaders. So efficient are these weapons, when properly placed on the engine deck of an enemy tank by a skilled communist, that a single bottle can destroy a whole tank. Za Rodinu!

Well spoken Comarade Griefbringer:

You are clearly at the vanguard of the party and seem prepared to give the fascists a well-deserved drubbing. Let the invaders cook in their tracked, iron ovens! Rodina Mat!

"Red" Rod Robertson.

Oh my goodness this has grown into a bit of a long post. Don't say you weren't warned!

Let's take a look at this gizmo from a Soviet perspective.

There's some weird and wonderful new weapon we just got off the americans.
Yes that's right.
It's NOT INVENTED HERE.

In 1942 the Soviets did not seem to suffer much from NIH. They took, and used, just about anything that was a productive weapon of war. I mean, they took most of the production run of the Tetrarch light tank! Oh fer the love of … if they'd use THAT they'd use anything.

The … rounds are some sort of fancy rocket. A tiddly little rocket.
We're not convinced these things are going to be able to take out German armour.

At this time the Soviets were very enthusiastic about rocket weapons. Let us not forget that the Soviets were pioneers of rocket projectiles in the inter-war period.

The RS-82 rocket (Photo by George Shuklin – Own work, CC BY-SA 1.0, link

The RS-82 was an aerial 3.2" rocket (82mm), while the RS-132 was a similar but larger (132mm) rocket. The RS-82 was first tested in 1929, and both were widely used in WW2 after seeing initial combat use at Khalkhin Gol against the Japanese and in the Winter War against Finland. Thee were anti-tank versions of both (the BRS-82 and -132). Derivatives of these (the M-8 and the M-13) were used for ground-based rocket artillery (in the BM-8 and BM-13 "Katyusha" salvo launchers).

So the bazooka should well have found very little resistance among the Soviets … if it had been a useful weapon to them at all. But given the particulars of the first M1 units, it was not.

Out of the myriad of combatant nations taking place in WWII, very few actually developed man-portable anti-tank rockets.

Very true. Perhaps even among the more avid enthusiasts, this factor is often missed.

It was not obvious that rocket propulsion was going to be a productive path to a direct-fire weapon that could be used by an individual soldier. And there were MANY ways to approach infantry AT weapons.

Only the Germans and the Americans completed working models of rocket systems in WW2. And even then, the Germans were pretty much covering all bases, and did not use rocket propulsion for either their early, or their most numerically important, infantry AT weapons.

Infantry AT weapons fall into about 7 broad categories:

1) Hand-placed: Almost all nations had placed charges of some form. These were more commonly available to and used by engineering troops then the common rifleman, but in some armies (Romania, for example) the ubiquitous satchel-charge remained the primary infantry AT weapon. The Germans pioneered and distributed their magnetic AT hand-charge, and assumed their opponents would, but they didn't.

2) Hand-thrown: Several nations toyed with a variety of hand-thrown AT weapons. The British "gammon" bomb (aka: "sticky bomb") was initially intended to be thrown, although it's likelyhood of sticking when thrown was never much accepted. The Germans had a variety of thrown items, including twin charges connected by rope, to be thrown in the hope of looping over/around a tank's main gun barrel before detonation, and some gas grenades (with irritant gasses rather than deadly gasses) to degrade enemy tank crew fighting abilities and even perhaps cause them to bail out of their tanks. The Soviets really pushed this approach to a productive end point with their RPG-43 and RPG-6 contact-fuzed drogue-tailed hollow-charge grenades. They also mass-produced ignition fuzes that could be stuck to the sides of bottles, which allowed the ubiquitous "Molotov's cocktail" to become somewhat more reliable in combat.

3) Rifle-Grenades: Almost all nations had them, but only a few made productive AT rifle grenades. The British and Americans had useful models. But the problem was that firing grenades from a rifle was very hard on both the rifle and the rifleman. Most armies that really liked rifle-grenades, like the French, had a soldier per squad who was trained as the grenadier. His rifle would be just about useless for accurate rifle-fire after any amount of practice with the rifle grenades. And for whatever reasons they (the French) never managed a useful AT rifle grenade. The Germans tried this route and were not too keen on it for their rifles, but seem to have developed their flare-pistols into a sort of man-portable AT launcher, although the usefulness is much to be doubted.

4) Anti-tank rifles: This was actually the first infantry AT concept, dating back to WW1. In early WW2 several nations had them. There were several calibers, ranging from 7.92mm up to 20mm. Most of the 20mm models seem to have slipped beyond the point of being single-soldier man-portable. The Soviets seem to have hit on the balance point with their 14.5mm ATRs … penetration power as good (or better) than many of the 20mm models, but usable by a single soldier (although having a second to tote the ammo made a big difference).

That said, once tank armor advanced past about 30mm, ATRs were of dubious utility. The Russian 14.5s managed to stay relevant a bit longer due to their superior penetration, making them a threat from the flanks to German tanks up through the early Panthers, but for the most part their value came to be harassing fire vs. tanks, and lethal fire on less-than-tank targets such as halftracks, armored cars, and MG emplacements (they penetrate a LOT of sandbag!).

5) Low-pressure guns: Several nations when this route for infantry AT weapons. If you don't rely on velocity for damage at the other end, you don't need to fire your projectile from a big heavy barrel. So it is possible to make a gun that fires something out to a few hundred yards/meters that does not weigh too much for man-packing. Some of these devices might best be categorized as direct-fire mortars. Big, slow projectiles, and a bit of a dubious proposition for hitting anything smaller than a barn at 100m. The British PIAT falls into this category. My own personal favorite is the Russian Ampulomet (more about that later). The Germans, who went every route, were there with a fairly credible device in their Pupchen. But they carried the concept a bit far, giving the gunner a seat and a bit of a shield, and so it became a bit too big to be individually man-portable (sized more like a Russian MG or an Italian 45mm mortar). The warhead, through, was effective enough, and provided the base upon which the Panzerschrek could be built (once the idea of a rocket-propelled projectile was demonstrated to them via the US Bazooka).

6) Rocket projector: There are really only TWO in the WW2 timeframe: the bazooka and the panzershreck. It's hard to do. You want it fired by a soldier from his shoulder. The tube stabilizes the rocket until it is up to a useful speed to be aerodynamically stabilized. But too long of a tube can be awkward and heavy. If you put in too little propellant, you won't get a useful payload out to a useful range. But you can't put in too much propellant. If a rocket motor is still in full burn when the rocket leaves the launch tube, you will fry the hapless gunner. If it burns too fast, it will explode rather than propel. And then there is the question of how you ignite the engine … percussion is not a likely mechanism, if for no other reason than that any mechanical striking mechanism requires a more heavily built system than you might want in your rocket launcher (given the length of the tube). It takes a precise balance and very tight manufacturing quality control to make a consistently useful shoulder-fired rocket system.

7) Recoilless launcher: This, or some hybrid of this, was the most popular approach in the post-war period. The Panzerfaust led the way for one branch, but several nations (including the Germans) went the other path of shoulder-fired RCLs with barrels. Make the tube strong enough to be a gun (rather than a rocket launcher). If you want it to be man-portable, make the tube narrow enough that the weight is not such a big problem. If you can accept shorter range and less accuracy, make an out-sized warhead at the end of the tube … the faster acceleration from a gun-shot (vs. a rocket) does not require the projectile to be stabilized in a long tube as it accelerates. If you want longer range and more accuracy, make a rifled barrel for a smaller projectile.

Proper patriotic communist frontoviks use incendiary bottles, filled with flammable liquid and with ignitors on their side, to defend their Soviet Motherland from the tanks of the fascist invaders.

Not only thus, comrade polkovenic! Let us not forget the magnificent self-igniting ampules of the ampulomet!

Ampulomet team in action in Stalingrad, 1942.
(From Bob Mackenzie's collection)

A Russian original, much like the famed "Bates Bottle-Thrower" of 1940 British fame. This 127mm projector used a 12-gauge shotgun blank to launch a 125mm glass "ampule" out to a distance of 400m, although it's ability to hit the ocean from a boat is much in question. The ampule would break upon striking a hard target (so don't miss, Ivan!). The contents were a chemical liquid with a significant quantity of white phosphorous, which would ignite on exposure to the air and burn at up to 1,000 degrees C.

This was put into service in 1941, and served as a principal infantry AT weapon in some numbers through 1942, when it was withdrawn from service for being somewhat less than fully useful. I mean, who wouldn't want to face down the most highly-trained and efficient tank force in the world with a weapon where you load from BOTH the muzzle (projectile) and breach (cartridge), which fires a fragile bowling ball at your target with about as much accuracy as a 14th century siege gun … if it doesn't create a firestorm in your face when you fire it, that is.

You see, it may be clear what the good ideas were in retrospect, but there were LOTS of ideas tried to get there.

The Gammon bomb and Sticky bomb are different things.

The Gammon bomb was a bag with a detonator attached that would be filled by the user with an amount of plastic explosive and then thrown or placed. It was used by airborne forces that needed a multipurpose weapon that could be used for engineering as well as AT.

The Sticky bomb was a sphere filled with liquid explosive and covered with a very sticky mixture. It had a handle and a cover so it could be carried but generally wouldn't stick to anything unless placed by hand.

The Soviets had Piat, as well as Bazooka's that they obtained through lend lease. Haven't seen any numbers on how many they recieved.

As for PIATs, Zaloga gives 1000 as a number, though does not mention anything about their usage. According to him the Brits also sent a number of their anti-tank rifles.

Let us not forget the magnificent self-igniting ampules of the ampulomet!

Truely a weapon worthy of a real Hero of the Soviet Union (that is, if you manage to actually destroy an enemy tank with one of these, you probably deserve to be decorated as a one).

For those interested in their employment, organisationally they were centralised as a platoon of their own on the regimental level, with around seven launchers per platoon.

Also in their burning fury to rid the Motherland of the tanks of the fascist invaders, brave comrades were sometimes organised into anti-tank flamethrower units (with man-packed flamethrowers)…

Another Soviet AT weapon:

My dad actually trained with sticky bombs. Briefly.
The glass sphere had nitro in it, so a fair old bang. And a timed fuse.
They immediately loathed the things because it was so easy to stick to anything around you. Including yourself.
They didn't even complete training before the idea of using them was ditched.

They hated the boys atr as well. Really bad kick, very heavy and a reputation as being almost useless Vs jerry tanks.
They "lost" theirs and the replacements (2 iirc).

The rifle grenade was not used at all by his company at least. They didn't feel they were a great weapon anyhow, but the chance of damaging a rifle was the clincher.
Oddly, I've read people saying the Chindits liked rifle grenades for jungle fighting.
Dad was in the Chindits.