The Bazooka: Hand Held Hollow Charge Anti Tank Weapons (Classic Weapons)

London: Parkgate Books Ltd.. Very Good/Very Good. 1998. Hard Cover. 4to 1902616154 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Numerous photographs. 64 pages clean and tight. The appearance of the first British tanks on the Somme battlefields in late 1916 opened a new chapter in the age old struggle between attack and defen s e. They arrived as the answer to trench warfare that had seen the artillery bombardment and machine guns dominate, and warfare stagnate into massive battles of attrition. While their effects were not felt immediately, the devastating German Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939 and 1940 saw the continent of Europe fall to the Nazis spearheaded by their mobile Panzer divisions. Soon it became apparent that the infantryman needed a weapon to stop the tank, something less unwieldy than anti-tank artillery. That weapon came in the form of the hand-held hollow-charge projector and the importance of its introduction to combat cannot be over-emphasized. The American Bazooka was the forerunner of the modern anti-armor weapons that have brought to an end the reign of supremacy of the tank. No longer did front line soldiers have to rely on defensive weapons, out of their control, whenever armored enemy entered the vicinity. When the Bazooka was introduced, for the first time the means of defeating even the heaviest tank was available to the single infantryman. .