laststandonzombieisland

It happened 80 years ago today.

Official period caption: “A gun crew of the 383rd Infantry Regiment, 96th Infantry Division, loads a shell into the new 57mm recoilless rifle to fire against Japanese pillboxes and caves on Okinawa, 10 June 1945.”

The M18 (T15E3) recoilless rifle seen above was new indeed.

Fielded in 1945, it was light, at “just” 44 pounds, and used the same tripod as the water-cooled Browning M1917 machine gun, or could be bipod-launched to save weight. It could be fired from the shoulder like the much smaller bazooka in a pinch. Later models used the M26 direct-fire sight.

Developed at the U.S. Army’s Infantry Section with cues from loaned British and captured German designs by two engineers, named Kroger and Musser, the gun was initially termed the “Kromuskit” after its daddies.

The Army ultimately fielded seven rounds for the cute little guy:

Three 5.3-pound 57mm shells for the M18 could be carried in the already fielded M6 rocket bag (designed for the 2.36-in bazooka rockets).

For use by airborne troops, it could be dropped in a M10 Paracrate complete with 14 rounds of ammo. The follow-on M12 Paracrate could carry 14 rounds of ammo as well as an M1917 tripod.

This “pocket artillery” was first used in combat in the Pacific in Okinawa, where its HE and WP shells proved particularly adept at handling dug-in pockets of Japanese.

It remained in use in Korea and with U.S. allies (and enemies, such as the unlicensed Communist Chinese Type 36) throughout the Cold War.

The M18 was replaced in American service by the larger and more effective M20 75mm, M67 90mm, and M40 105mm RRs, and those, by the 1980s, by more modern guided anti-tank weapons.