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Citizen SoldiersTheir MG-42 machine guns fired 1,200 rounds a minute, the American counterpart less than half that. The handle on the German "potato masher" hand grenade made it easier to throw further. The Germans had the nebelwerfer, a multibarrelled projector whose bombs were designed to produce a terrifying wail when they flew through the air-sixty or seventy virtually simultaneously. The GIs called them Moaning Minnies. There was no American counterpart. Then there was the panzer faust, which was far superior to the American bazooka. It did not have the range of a bazooka, but that hardly mattered in hedgerow country. It was operated by a single soldier and was so simple that no special training was required, while the bazooka required a trained two-man team. The panzerfausts bomb had greater penetrating power than the bazooka's. In heavy artillery the Americans generally outgunned the Germans in quantity, but long-range gunnery wasn't effective in the close quarters imposed by the hedgerows. The German 88-without doubt the best artillery piece of the war, in the opinion of every GI-was a high-velocity, flat-trajectory weapon that could fire armour-piercing shells down the lanes and roads or be elevated and fire airburst shells against bombers ...» |
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