Did the Russian Army use a bazooka type weapon? I cannot recall seeing any photos of Russian troops with one.

Thanks

The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

"In late 1942, numbers of early-production American M1 bazookas were captured by German troops from Russian forces who had been given quantities of the bazooka under Lend-Lease as well as during the Operation Torch invasions in the North African Campaign."

I believe there has been much debate as to whether this is true because finding hard evidence of Soviets being given Bazookas under lend-lease is difficult. (so I have read) I have also heard that the Soviets did have Bazookas but didn't really like them and preferred captured Panzershreks and Panzerfausts. Were you planning on modeling some Soviet troops with Bazookas?

My understanding is that the Russians preferred the Panzerfaust for its ease of use and ruggedness vs. the more delicate P-schrek or bazooka. This is probably why only the P-faust ended up in serial production with the Soviets.

I could see the Soviets getting the bazooka an dsending it out with the same troops using the M3 Lee or Stuarts...and once they were used up, just forgetting about them.

Russia's own infantry antitank weapon was the antitank rifle, which fired an armor piercing bullet. It could penetrate the 30 mm side armor on the Panzer III and IV. The only hollow charge infantry weapon was an antitank hand grenade. Postwar, the Soviets developed the RPG-2 and it successors, using data from German designers.

Didn't they copy the design of that off a German one, the Panzerwurfmine?

Scott

Hey guys,
IIRC, I saw a film clip of Russian troops crossing a river and I think one guy was carrying what appeared to be a M1 or M9A1 bazooka.
It seems to me that they were dismounting from U.S. Ford GPA "SEEP" amphibious jeeps.
I'm going to do a Google and You Tube search and see what I can find.
Cheers

jjumbo

Hi friends.
This theme is very actual among Russian modellers and there are some discussion about it.
Really,there is only one photo where you can see figure with US bazooka (cross Dniepr river,1943).No more any info about Lend-Lease bazooka and it`s real enigma for all or us.
Russians had no own similar weapon,that`s why used German Pzfaust .Red Army had specail groups for collect captive Pzfausts after battles etc.

Thanks Vlad,
That crossing of the Dnieper river in 1943 was probably the film clip I saw.
Cheers

jjumbo

Perhaps the russians felt they didn't need any bazooka's afterall look at the sheer number of tanks and artillery pieces they churned out from 1942 onwards why waste resoures on small probably in-accurate small arms when they could overwhelm the enemy with t-34's and KV's

The RPG-43 is just as likely to have been a Soviet design as a copy.

http://www.inert-ord.net/russ02i/rpg43/index.html

David

The ww2 soviet "Bazooka" (100% build in Russia) is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTRD and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTRS-41 .

And they never producted Bazooka in ww2.

Only A/T rifles

Cheers Nick

Nick, PTR is a totally different thing than bazooka or RPG.

As far as Russian bazookas, there were experiments in early 1930-s, but project was abandoned.



And these were found in Russia, but I don't know if they are American or German. But judging by the shields on the last photo, most likely - German.

So did some US units. General Gavin (82 ABN DIV commander) wrote that he had truckloads of them stockpiled and passed out to his division because they were so much better than US bazookas.

It`s very complex question why Russians had no similar weapon.
In first half of war,when Russian industry was in terrible conditions (many plants are damaged and under German occupation) and need re-move giant industry from European part of USSR on Ural and Syberia.It was too small time for build new plants on empty territory and start to produce many and many simple and well know weapon and arms.Absolutely had no time for experience with new kind of weapon.
And in second half of war Industry can give for Army many most successfull types of weapon.Enough tanks and guns.Mostly Panzerfaust is weapon of "defence",no "offencive".
Red army has 1943-45 strategy of "offencive" and theoreticaly did n`t need similar weapons.