The light recoil made it possible to fire them from the shoulder, a tripod, or smaller vehicles such as a jeep. Then click the Search button. One weapon, the M3 Carl Gustav, has brought the recoilless rifle back into the U.S. arsenal as a weapon for Special Operations.

In the U.S. military, the recoilless rifle was first used toward the end of World War II. Rounds provided were HEAT, high explosive plastic-tracer (HEP-T), and antipersonnel-tracer (AP-T) (flechette) rounds.

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The two devices dropped on Japan, the “Little Boy” and the “Fat Man,” were large, cumbersome weapons, each with a weight of over 10,000 pounds and a length of approximately ten feet. Our funding helps to acquire and conserve Army historical art and artifacts, support Army history educational programs, research, and publication of historical materials on the American Soldier, and provide support and counsel to private and governmental organizations committed to the same goals. The smoothbore variants (those devoid of rifling) are termed recoilless guns.

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Find at Amazon:  The development of nuclear weapons during World War II, and their use against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ushered in a new, and potentially cataclysmic, age of warfare. The M67 was used extensively in Vietnam, especially against bunkers and other fortifications. In November 1958, the Ordnance Corps delivered the first prototype Davy Crockett recoilless rifle tube at Picatinny Arsenal.

The recoilless rifle is a light weight artillery weapon carried by infantry for anti-tank fire or to assault fixed positions. Normally used for anti-tank roles, the first effective system of this kind was developed during World War II to provide infantry with a light, cheap and easily deployable weapon that does not require extensive training in gunnery. Only the B-29 Superfortress had the capability of carrying and dropping these bombs, and they had little tactical use on the battlefield. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_recoilless_rifles&oldid=965286567, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 30 June 2020, at 13:24. Its HEAT projectiles were effective against four inches of armor at up to 7000 yards (meters) range, a considerable improvement over the M18 57 mm RR.

While Ordnance officials explored as many as twenty potential delivery systems, including guided missiles, standard artillery, and mortars, the Army settled on a recoilless rifle system, which offered the simplest and lightest option.