Germans Laughed at Britain’s Drainpipe Gun – Until It Started Killing Their Tigers

In the winter of 1944, in the mountains of Italy, a British soldier lay in a ditch and waited for a German tank to come into range. The weapon across his knees did not look like it could stop a tank. It was a steel tube about a meter long with a spring inside and a small trough at the front to hold the bomb.

It weighed 32 lb, more than a machine gun. Its effective range was about 100 yd. And to fire it, he could not stay hidden in the ditch. He had to rise onto one knee in the open and put it on his shoulder. He waited until the tank was well inside 100 yd. Then he rose and fired. The recoil threw him onto his back, but the bomb was already gone.

It struck the tank and the tank stopped. The weapon was called the PIAT. By almost every standard, it was a bad one. It was heavy, it was hard to load, it kicked hard, and it forced the man using it to stand up at close range in front of the thing he was trying to kill. The soldiers who carried it did not like it. And with it, British and Commonwealth soldiers won six Victoria Crosses and destroyed German tanks that nothing else in the infantry’s hands could touch.

This is the story of the PIAT, one of the ugliest and least popular weapons the British Army issued in the Second World War, and one of the few that let a single foot soldier on his own kill a tank. To understand why Britain built something this awkward, you have to understand the problem it was built for. By 1942, the ordinary infantryman had no reliable way to stop a tank at all.

At the start of the war, infantry were given anti-tank rifles. These were long, heavy rifles that fired an oversized bullet meant to punch through armor. Against the thin-skinned tanks of 1939 and 1940, they worked, more or less. Then the armor got thicker and they stopped working. By 1942, an infantryman with an anti-tank rifle was carrying a heavy weapon that could no longer do its job.

Everything else that could kill a tank belonged to someone else. The artillery had anti-tank guns, but they were heavy, towed, and rarely where the infantry needed them. Aircraft could not be counted on to arrive at the right moment. Tanks were dealt with by other tanks. The man in the slit trench with a tank coming toward him had nothing.

And the tank crews knew it. Once the anti-tank rifle had failed, German tanks learned to treat infantry in the open as something to be driven over, not feared. So, the problem was specific. Britain needed a weapon light enough for one or two men to carry, that a single soldier could fire from cover, and that could destroy a modern tank.

Earlier attempts had not worked. What they built instead was strange enough that the men who first saw it were not sure it was serious. The PIAT. The letters stood for Projector Infantry Anti-Tank. It was a steel tube with a padded rest at one end and a trough at the front to hold the bomb. Inside was a large, heavy spring.

And here is the part that is usually explained wrong, including by the men who used it at the time. The spring did not fire the bomb. The bomb was launched by a small charge in its own tail, the way a mortar round is fired. When the trigger was pulled, the spring drove a steel rod, a spigot, forward into the tail of the bomb, set off the charge, and threw the bomb out.

The recoil then pushed the spigot and the spring back and recocked the weapon for the next shot. That was the design. In use, it was harder than it sounds. The recoil was severe. Fired from a poor position, the PIAT could injure the man firing it. The soldier in Italy who was thrown onto his back was not unusual.

Cocking it the first time was worse. That heavy spring had to be compressed by hand, and it took a great deal of force. The usual method was to stand the weapon on its end, put both feet on the shoulder rest, and pull with the whole body until the spring locked. On a training ground, a strong man could do it.

In a slit trench under fire with a tank 100 yd away, a man had to stand up in the open to do it. Some PIAT gunners were killed while cocking their weapons, and the range was short. The bomb carried only about 100 yd, and against a moving tank, a man wanted to be far closer than that. 50 yd, 30, which meant letting a tank come almost on top of him before firing with little chance of a second shot if he missed.

So, it was a difficult, dangerous, short-ranged weapon. But, it had two things nothing else the infantry carried could offer. The bomb was a shaped charge. Instead of relying on speed to smash through armor, it focused a jet of metal through the plate. It could penetrate about 100 mm of armor, and it did not matter how fast the tank was moving.

And unlike the American bazooka, the PIAT had no back blast. It threw out no flame and smoke behind it. That mattered more than it sounds. It meant a soldier could fire the PIAT from inside a building, from behind a wall, or from a hedge without a burst of flame giving away his position or injuring the men behind him.

In street fighting and in the close country of Normandy, that was worth a great deal. Which meant that everything depended on the man holding it. And a few of the men who used the PIAT did things with it that are hard to believe. Six times during the war, a soldier using a PIAT was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British decoration for valor.

In Burma in 1944, a Gurkha rifleman named Ganju Lama went out toward a group of Japanese tanks that had pinned down his company. He had a broken left wrist and wounds in his right hand and his leg. He dragged the PIAT to within about 30 yd of the tanks in the open and knocked out two of them before his company could move. He survived and received the Victoria Cross.

At Arnhem, a British officer named Robert Cain hunted German tanks and self-propelled guns through the streets with a PIAT over several days, being knocked down, burned, and deafened, and returning each time to fire again until the ammunition ran out. And in Normandy, in the sunken lanes and hedgerows, PIAT teams lay in cover and let German tanks come to within yards before firing into their sides.

Because that was the other thing about the weapon. It could not penetrate the thick frontal armor of the heaviest German tanks. Head on against a tiger, it would fail. But no tank is armored equally on every side, and in the flank or the rear, the plate was thinner. A man hidden in a hedge did not have to face a tiger from the front.

He waited and took the side. Panzer fours, panthers, tigers caught from the flank, Japanese tanks in the jungle, self-propelled guns in the ruined towns of Italy, the crude British tube knocked out all of them. German tank crews had learned to treat infantry as prey. The PIAT changed that. Now any hedge, any window, any pile of rubble might hold a man who could destroy a tank with a single shot and never show himself.

It did not make the tank helpless, but it took away the crew’s confidence that a man on foot could do nothing to them. Everyone who used the PIAT agreed it was a poor weapon. It was too heavy, it kicked too hard. It was dangerous to load, and it made a man fight a tank at a range where a miss usually meant his death.

The soldiers who carried it counted on something better coming along. What they underestimated was what an ugly, awkward weapon could do in the hands of a man willing to stand up and use it. Being underestimated, as this channel keeps finding, was often the most dangerous thing about a British weapon. It was not the only awkward answer Britain aimed at the German tank.

A few weeks earlier, a general the army had once thrown out sent a whole division of strange machines up the beaches of Normandy. Tanks that swam, cleared minefields, and threw fire. That story is already on this channel.

Germans Laughed at Britain’s Drainpipe Gun – Until It Started Killing Their Tigers

In the winter of 1944, in the mountains of Italy, a British soldier lay in a ditch and waited for a German tank to come into range. The weapon across his knees did not look like it could stop a tank. It was a steel tube about a meter long with a spring inside and a small trough at the front to hold the bomb.

It weighed 32 lb, more than a machine gun. Its effective range was about 100 yd. And to fire it, he could not stay hidden in the ditch. He had to rise onto one knee in the open and put it on his shoulder. He waited until the tank was well inside 100 yd. Then he rose and fired. The recoil threw him onto his back, but the bomb was already gone.

It struck the tank and the tank stopped. The weapon was called the PIAT. By almost every standard, it was a bad one. It was heavy, it was hard to load, it kicked hard, and it forced the man using it to stand up at close range in front of the thing he was trying to kill. The soldiers who carried it did not like it. And with it, British and Commonwealth soldiers won six Victoria Crosses and destroyed German tanks that nothing else in the infantry’s hands could touch.

This is the story of the PIAT, one of the ugliest and least popular weapons the British Army issued in the Second World War, and one of the few that let a single foot soldier on his own kill a tank. To understand why Britain built something this awkward, you have to understand the problem it was built for. By 1942, the ordinary infantryman had no reliable way to stop a tank at all.

At the start of the war, infantry were given anti-tank rifles. These were long, heavy rifles that fired an oversized bullet meant to punch through armor. Against the thin-skinned tanks of 1939 and 1940, they worked, more or less. Then the armor got thicker and they stopped working. By 1942, an infantryman with an anti-tank rifle was carrying a heavy weapon that could no longer do its job.

Everything else that could kill a tank belonged to someone else. The artillery had anti-tank guns, but they were heavy, towed, and rarely where the infantry needed them. Aircraft could not be counted on to arrive at the right moment. Tanks were dealt with by other tanks. The man in the slit trench with a tank coming toward him had nothing.

And the tank crews knew it. Once the anti-tank rifle had failed, German tanks learned to treat infantry in the open as something to be driven over, not feared. So, the problem was specific. Britain needed a weapon light enough for one or two men to carry, that a single soldier could fire from cover, and that could destroy a modern tank.

Earlier attempts had not worked. What they built instead was strange enough that the men who first saw it were not sure it was serious. The PIAT. The letters stood for Projector Infantry Anti-Tank. It was a steel tube with a padded rest at one end and a trough at the front to hold the bomb. Inside was a large, heavy spring.

And here is the part that is usually explained wrong, including by the men who used it at the time. The spring did not fire the bomb. The bomb was launched by a small charge in its own tail, the way a mortar round is fired. When the trigger was pulled, the spring drove a steel rod, a spigot, forward into the tail of the bomb, set off the charge, and threw the bomb out.

The recoil then pushed the spigot and the spring back and recocked the weapon for the next shot. That was the design. In use, it was harder than it sounds. The recoil was severe. Fired from a poor position, the PIAT could injure the man firing it. The soldier in Italy who was thrown onto his back was not unusual.

Cocking it the first time was worse. That heavy spring had to be compressed by hand, and it took a great deal of force. The usual method was to stand the weapon on its end, put both feet on the shoulder rest, and pull with the whole body until the spring locked. On a training ground, a strong man could do it.

In a slit trench under fire with a tank 100 yd away, a man had to stand up in the open to do it. Some PIAT gunners were killed while cocking their weapons, and the range was short. The bomb carried only about 100 yd, and against a moving tank, a man wanted to be far closer than that. 50 yd, 30, which meant letting a tank come almost on top of him before firing with little chance of a second shot if he missed.

So, it was a difficult, dangerous, short-ranged weapon. But, it had two things nothing else the infantry carried could offer. The bomb was a shaped charge. Instead of relying on speed to smash through armor, it focused a jet of metal through the plate. It could penetrate about 100 mm of armor, and it did not matter how fast the tank was moving.

And unlike the American bazooka, the PIAT had no back blast. It threw out no flame and smoke behind it. That mattered more than it sounds. It meant a soldier could fire the PIAT from inside a building, from behind a wall, or from a hedge without a burst of flame giving away his position or injuring the men behind him.

In street fighting and in the close country of Normandy, that was worth a great deal. Which meant that everything depended on the man holding it. And a few of the men who used the PIAT did things with it that are hard to believe. Six times during the war, a soldier using a PIAT was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British decoration for valor.

In Burma in 1944, a Gurkha rifleman named Ganju Lama went out toward a group of Japanese tanks that had pinned down his company. He had a broken left wrist and wounds in his right hand and his leg. He dragged the PIAT to within about 30 yd of the tanks in the open and knocked out two of them before his company could move. He survived and received the Victoria Cross.

At Arnhem, a British officer named Robert Cain hunted German tanks and self-propelled guns through the streets with a PIAT over several days, being knocked down, burned, and deafened, and returning each time to fire again until the ammunition ran out. And in Normandy, in the sunken lanes and hedgerows, PIAT teams lay in cover and let German tanks come to within yards before firing into their sides.

Because that was the other thing about the weapon. It could not penetrate the thick frontal armor of the heaviest German tanks. Head on against a tiger, it would fail. But no tank is armored equally on every side, and in the flank or the rear, the plate was thinner. A man hidden in a hedge did not have to face a tiger from the front.

He waited and took the side. Panzer fours, panthers, tigers caught from the flank, Japanese tanks in the jungle, self-propelled guns in the ruined towns of Italy, the crude British tube knocked out all of them. German tank crews had learned to treat infantry as prey. The PIAT changed that. Now any hedge, any window, any pile of rubble might hold a man who could destroy a tank with a single shot and never show himself.

It did not make the tank helpless, but it took away the crew’s confidence that a man on foot could do nothing to them. Everyone who used the PIAT agreed it was a poor weapon. It was too heavy, it kicked too hard. It was dangerous to load, and it made a man fight a tank at a range where a miss usually meant his death.

The soldiers who carried it counted on something better coming along. What they underestimated was what an ugly, awkward weapon could do in the hands of a man willing to stand up and use it. Being underestimated, as this channel keeps finding, was often the most dangerous thing about a British weapon. It was not the only awkward answer Britain aimed at the German tank.

A few weeks earlier, a general the army had once thrown out sent a whole division of strange machines up the beaches of Normandy. Tanks that swam, cleared minefields, and threw fire. That story is already on this channel.

Germans Laughed at Britain’s Drainpipe Gun – Until It Started Killing Their Tigers

In the winter of 1944, in the mountains of Italy, a British soldier lay in a ditch and waited for a German tank to come into range. The weapon across his knees did not look like it could stop a tank. It was a steel tube about a meter long with a spring inside and a small trough at the front to hold the bomb.

It weighed 32 lb, more than a machine gun. Its effective range was about 100 yd. And to fire it, he could not stay hidden in the ditch. He had to rise onto one knee in the open and put it on his shoulder. He waited until the tank was well inside 100 yd. Then he rose and fired. The recoil threw him onto his back, but the bomb was already gone.

It struck the tank and the tank stopped. The weapon was called the PIAT. By almost every standard, it was a bad one. It was heavy, it was hard to load, it kicked hard, and it forced the man using it to stand up at close range in front of the thing he was trying to kill. The soldiers who carried it did not like it. And with it, British and Commonwealth soldiers won six Victoria Crosses and destroyed German tanks that nothing else in the infantry’s hands could touch.

This is the story of the PIAT, one of the ugliest and least popular weapons the British Army issued in the Second World War, and one of the few that let a single foot soldier on his own kill a tank. To understand why Britain built something this awkward, you have to understand the problem it was built for. By 1942, the ordinary infantryman had no reliable way to stop a tank at all.

At the start of the war, infantry were given anti-tank rifles. These were long, heavy rifles that fired an oversized bullet meant to punch through armor. Against the thin-skinned tanks of 1939 and 1940, they worked, more or less. Then the armor got thicker and they stopped working. By 1942, an infantryman with an anti-tank rifle was carrying a heavy weapon that could no longer do its job.

Everything else that could kill a tank belonged to someone else. The artillery had anti-tank guns, but they were heavy, towed, and rarely where the infantry needed them. Aircraft could not be counted on to arrive at the right moment. Tanks were dealt with by other tanks. The man in the slit trench with a tank coming toward him had nothing.

And the tank crews knew it. Once the anti-tank rifle had failed, German tanks learned to treat infantry in the open as something to be driven over, not feared. So, the problem was specific. Britain needed a weapon light enough for one or two men to carry, that a single soldier could fire from cover, and that could destroy a modern tank.

Earlier attempts had not worked. What they built instead was strange enough that the men who first saw it were not sure it was serious. The PIAT. The letters stood for Projector Infantry Anti-Tank. It was a steel tube with a padded rest at one end and a trough at the front to hold the bomb. Inside was a large, heavy spring.

And here is the part that is usually explained wrong, including by the men who used it at the time. The spring did not fire the bomb. The bomb was launched by a small charge in its own tail, the way a mortar round is fired. When the trigger was pulled, the spring drove a steel rod, a spigot, forward into the tail of the bomb, set off the charge, and threw the bomb out.

The recoil then pushed the spigot and the spring back and recocked the weapon for the next shot. That was the design. In use, it was harder than it sounds. The recoil was severe. Fired from a poor position, the PIAT could injure the man firing it. The soldier in Italy who was thrown onto his back was not unusual.

Cocking it the first time was worse. That heavy spring had to be compressed by hand, and it took a great deal of force. The usual method was to stand the weapon on its end, put both feet on the shoulder rest, and pull with the whole body until the spring locked. On a training ground, a strong man could do it.

In a slit trench under fire with a tank 100 yd away, a man had to stand up in the open to do it. Some PIAT gunners were killed while cocking their weapons, and the range was short. The bomb carried only about 100 yd, and against a moving tank, a man wanted to be far closer than that. 50 yd, 30, which meant letting a tank come almost on top of him before firing with little chance of a second shot if he missed.

So, it was a difficult, dangerous, short-ranged weapon. But, it had two things nothing else the infantry carried could offer. The bomb was a shaped charge. Instead of relying on speed to smash through armor, it focused a jet of metal through the plate. It could penetrate about 100 mm of armor, and it did not matter how fast the tank was moving.

And unlike the American bazooka, the PIAT had no back blast. It threw out no flame and smoke behind it. That mattered more than it sounds. It meant a soldier could fire the PIAT from inside a building, from behind a wall, or from a hedge without a burst of flame giving away his position or injuring the men behind him.

In street fighting and in the close country of Normandy, that was worth a great deal. Which meant that everything depended on the man holding it. And a few of the men who used the PIAT did things with it that are hard to believe. Six times during the war, a soldier using a PIAT was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British decoration for valor.

In Burma in 1944, a Gurkha rifleman named Ganju Lama went out toward a group of Japanese tanks that had pinned down his company. He had a broken left wrist and wounds in his right hand and his leg. He dragged the PIAT to within about 30 yd of the tanks in the open and knocked out two of them before his company could move. He survived and received the Victoria Cross.

At Arnhem, a British officer named Robert Cain hunted German tanks and self-propelled guns through the streets with a PIAT over several days, being knocked down, burned, and deafened, and returning each time to fire again until the ammunition ran out. And in Normandy, in the sunken lanes and hedgerows, PIAT teams lay in cover and let German tanks come to within yards before firing into their sides.

Because that was the other thing about the weapon. It could not penetrate the thick frontal armor of the heaviest German tanks. Head on against a tiger, it would fail. But no tank is armored equally on every side, and in the flank or the rear, the plate was thinner. A man hidden in a hedge did not have to face a tiger from the front.

He waited and took the side. Panzer fours, panthers, tigers caught from the flank, Japanese tanks in the jungle, self-propelled guns in the ruined towns of Italy, the crude British tube knocked out all of them. German tank crews had learned to treat infantry as prey. The PIAT changed that. Now any hedge, any window, any pile of rubble might hold a man who could destroy a tank with a single shot and never show himself.

It did not make the tank helpless, but it took away the crew’s confidence that a man on foot could do nothing to them. Everyone who used the PIAT agreed it was a poor weapon. It was too heavy, it kicked too hard. It was dangerous to load, and it made a man fight a tank at a range where a miss usually meant his death.

The soldiers who carried it counted on something better coming along. What they underestimated was what an ugly, awkward weapon could do in the hands of a man willing to stand up and use it. Being underestimated, as this channel keeps finding, was often the most dangerous thing about a British weapon. It was not the only awkward answer Britain aimed at the German tank.

A few weeks earlier, a general the army had once thrown out sent a whole division of strange machines up the beaches of Normandy. Tanks that swam, cleared minefields, and threw fire. That story is already on this channel.