Tanks were a great problem for infantry during the first years of World War II. The thick armor was proof against small arms, and grenades powerful enough to penetrate it had to be placed directly on the tank.
Three Americans addressed this problem by combining a shaped-charge hand grenade with an electrically fired rocket launcher. Dr. Clarence Hickman had worked with Robert Goddard on tube-fired rockets during World War I. Starting in 1940, he helped U.S. Army officers Edward Uhl and Leslie Skinner to develop an electrically fired rocket launcher. When the user pulled the trigger, a battery in the stock sent a charge to ignite the rocket, which then fired through a steel tube. The first fielded version was officially called the M1 Rocket Launcher, but it was soon nicknamed the bazooka because it resembled a musical instrument of the same name.
By the end of 1942 U.S. troops in North Africa were equipped with the bazooka, and early the following year they used it against enemy armor for the first time. Not only was it effective against enemy tanks, it could also damage pillboxes, blast holes in barbed wire, and clear minefields. By the end of World War II the United States had produced almost half a million bazookas and more than fifteen million rockets.
German engineers analyzed bazookas captured in North Africa in early 1943 and developed their own version with a greater range and a larger warhead. The Soviet Union later incorporated features of the bazooka in their design for launchers of rocket- propelled grenades, many of which remain in use across the globe today.
