Подборка фото.

US military inspect the captured German “Puppchen” rocket launcher

T-60 light tank tows 45mm cannon on Nevskaya Dubrovka

Wehrmacht officers on the background of the captured Pskov-Pechora monastery

POW of the 163rd Infantry Division of the Red Army in the Finnish concentration camp

American M10 tank destroyer on the streets of Saint-Fromon

Panzer III Ausf. J Medium tank moves through the German trench

German Borgward-IV and Panzer III tanks destroyed by Soviet artillery

1944, Birgden area. A Sergeant from 1 Worcestershire (43 “Wessex” Infantry Division)

KV-1, Rostov-on-Don 1942

A T-34 and a Panzer V Panther abandoned, facing each other in Czechoslovakia, 1945.

Panzerwurfmine

German shaped charge hand-thrown anti-tank grenade of WW2, used primarily by Luftwaffe ground personnel as a safer alternative to magnetic anti-tank grenades.

For a shaped charge weapon to be effective, it must hit the armor squarely at a 90° angle so that the high-velocity jet of metal punches through with the least resistance possible, and this design tried to achieve this by deploying stabilizing canvas fins once throw, intended to ensure a correct contact with the enemy tank.

However, this wasn’t as effective as intended, as the nature of a hand throw made for imprecise attacks that failed to achieve the optimal angle of denotation, and that couple with the inherent short range of the weapon gave the result of a design no more effective than the magnetic grenades it was supposed to replace.

Ultimately, the development of cheap, disposable rocket launchers of the Panzerfaust series made this weapon completely obsolete, but nevertheless it was an interesting attempt at giving the everyday infantrymen the capacity to deal with tanks by themselves, and the fact that it was the Luftwaffe whom developed and fielded it, rather than the Heer or the Waffen-SS, makes it even more fascinating.

Members of the camp administration, Mauthausen concentration camp, Aug 1943.

US “Missouri” battleship shoots volleys from the nose guns of the main caliber

Sailors aboard the British battleship HMS Rodney receive a 16 inch shell from an ammunition ship. United Kingdom. 1940.

A member of the Technische Nothilfe (TN- ‘Technical Emergency Help’). A volunteer emergency response unit responsible for technical civil defence.

Danish resistance members during the liberation of Denmark, 1945.

Helmet on a tree trunk in Taipale, Finland. October 1941.