Originally posted by mad scientist
Originally posted by taibunsuu
Pretty dangerous to fire, too, like the Bazooka.
Kind of a fire-and-forget the gunner weapon.
It had about as much danger as any other weapon. Do you know what you're talking about 
Yeah. I don't think you do, though.
Though it's somewhat an obscure area of knowledge, firing any shoulder-mounted rocket from the bazooka to the panzerfaust to the RPG carries
considerable risk to soldiers that's much higher than using a rifle or a machine gun.
For example, there's backblast. The compression from firing any of these weapons is so extreme that you cannot safely fire them from an enclosed
area, such as a room. The concussion will severely injure or kill people in the room. These weapons are self-propelled, meaning that an explosive
force equal to the force of the rocket leaving the tube at hundreds of feet per second has to exit the rear of the firing tube. Otherwise the
soldier's shoulder would be ripped off during firing.
The panzerfaust and bazooka had very primitive mechanisms for the self-propellant charge and the rocket charge, and also arming of the warhead. As I
guess you didn't know, what happens is that the self-propellant goes off, and soon after the rocket motor ignites. What happened in a lot of cases
was that the rocket motor would ignite prematurely, burning the soldier. My great uncle was burned badly in WW2 from firing a bazooka in the Pacific,
and still has the scars today. Soon after it was deployed, the bazooka recieved a guard similiar to the panzerfausts that helped protect the gunner
from the rocket exhaust.
Like all military toys, they are killers. They can kill you or the enemy, the don't care which, so you have some danger in using them and even when
using them properly they can still be dangerous. These were very primitive, very powerful weapons and carried considerable risk in wielding.
