Chapter 300: Germany Develops an Anti-Tank Rifle
As part of his time off from actively serving on the front lines, Bruno returned to his various enterprises and checked on their progress.
Whether it was advancements in medicine, material sciences, engineering, or what have you, there were plenty of things being worked on that could fundamentally change the world for the better.
But right now, Bruno’s primary concern was the war effort. And naturally, he knew that despite the fact that his factories were working at peak efficiency to maintain the logistic supply, they simply could not keep up with the demands of the German Army, whose numbers were well over five million men at this time.
And more specifically, they could not build enough tanks and mechanized vehicles to fully convert these infantry units into combined arms units. Because of this, the western front was lacking in armor outside of a few scout cars for the purpose of reconnaissance.
If Bruno’s estimates were correct, by 1916, the British and French should begin fielding armor of their own, which would have been hastily designed, trying to mimic his own panzers.
Sure, they would not be nearly as grand as his own armor, but the fact remained the Forces on the Western Front would be severely lacking in armor to combat those that they would soon be encountering.
Because of this, Bruno was at one of his arms factories where they were contracted by his family’s company to produce small arms for the German Military. But, in addition to this, Bruno also had his engineers design new small arms for the wars that were to come in the future.
And currently Bruno was looking at the final product of what had been years of hard work and development by his employees. The weapon in question was the Granatbüchse Modell 39 (GrB 39). What was the GrB 39? It was a single shot man portable anti-tank rifle, which was modified to fire rifle grenades.
More specifically, high explosive anti-tank grenades. Yes, these grenades were designed to absolutely shred armor of the era they were made to fight, utilizing the same explosive technology within the Panzerfaust series of recoilless rifles.
The weapons were relatively lightweight, at a little over 12 kgs or roughly 27 lbs. And had an effective firing range of 300 meters. With these grenades they had continued to see service until the end of the Second World War, still dealing damage too many of the late war armored vehicles in 1945.
But the unmodified version which fired a high-powered rifle cartridge was more than capable of defeating 25mm of armor at 300m. Which was already effective enough to devastate whatever tanks the Allies would be fielding in this war being fought here and now in 1915.
Because of this, Bruno inspected the weapon with a rather excitable gaze as he knew all too well that if properly maintained, these weapons could continue to see service in future conflicts, proving to be effective against armor more or less until the mid-1940s.