The RPG-7 Grenade Launcher: Nothing lost in translation
If you have ever watched an action movie set after 1960, you have seen one. Heck, if you have ever been to a sandbox, you have encountered one. Its very abbreviation has become synonymous with an entire class of weapons. It is the humble RPG-7, and it’s simple, effective, and cheap.
The go-to weapon system of World War Two was the main battle tank: these brutal armored war-engines mounted a main cannon and several machine guns were the key to winning battles. Whoever had the largest number of the best tanks—backed up with enough gas and ammo to keep them going—had the edge in 1940s combat.
At the beginning of the war, these caterpillar-tracked machines were small, for instance the 1939-era German PzKpfw I was only 13-feet long, weighed 6-tons, and had armor 1-inch thick. A large anti-tank rifle like the Boys .55 or the Lahti 20mm could penetrate this. By 1945, the German Pz.Kpfw VI Tiger tank, at 21-feet long and 62-tons carried up to 4.7-inches of armor plate. Post war tanks like the US M48 and the British Centurion were even better armored. Tanks this big needed something much larger to bring them down than a big rifle and the Soviets knew it.
What they needed was a dedicated anti-tank weapon.
An Afghan National Army soldier assigned to the Mobile Strike Force Kandak fires an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher during a live-fire exercise
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com