Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction House taking a look at some of the guns,
and also anti-tank grenade launchers,
that are coming up for sale in their upcoming September of 2015 Premier auction.
The last time I was here, they happened to have a Panzerbüchse 39,
which was the German anti-tank rifle from the very beginning of World War Two.
At the beginning of that war pretty much every country had an anti-tank rifle.
They'd mostly been developed during the 1930s.
And there was this idea that, at the beginning of the war, tanks were light enough
that it was actually feasible to have a single-man portable rifle
that could penetrate the armour of a typical tank.
Now as World War Two got going, that concept disintegrated very quickly.
Tanks became much more heavily armoured very quickly, and the anti-tank rifle concept became obsolete.
So the Boys anti-tank rifle was obsolete, the Panzerbüchse 39 became obsolete.
The 20mm guns lasted a little bit longer than the .30 and .50 calibre ones,
but even those were not useful for very long, against tanks at least.
So what the Germans did (which is kind of interesting because most of the other countries just
abandoned the guns entirely), well the Germans had a lot of these things in production at this point.
And their solution was to take the existing rifles, which were in an 8x94mm case
(so a huge cartridge, but actually a fairly small bore size),
they cut the barrels down to about 24 inches and they attached grenade launcher cups to them.
The idea was they could develop a very heavy rifle grenade to use against tanks,
something that was frankly too heavy to be effectively used with a 98k Mauser.
But a gun like this was substantial enough and had all the hardware already kind of built into it,
to be a much more effective anti-tank grenade launching rifle.
So specifically the grenades used, they don't fit inside this tube.
They actually have a stem that fits in here for rifling,
and then the head of the grenade is even larger on the outside.
And they use a shaped charge warhead which allows you to actually penetrate a significant amount of armour.
So the original grenades were 40mm, then they also came up with some
46mm and even 61mm grenades by the end of the war.
These were powered by a wooden bullet blank cartridge of this 8x94mm case.
And these actually served with reasonable effectiveness to the end of the war.
So why don't I go ahead and bring the camera back here and
let me take a look at some of the interesting grenade launcher features to this gun.
The changes, beyond just the barrel length and the grenade cup, the changes that were
made when they converted the anti-tank rifles into these anti-tank grenade launchers.
The first thing I should probably show you, for those folks who haven't seen
the video on ... the original version of this gun, is the action.
This is a single-shot falling-block design. And the falling-block is activated by
the pistol grip. So the grip itself pivots forward, in fact you can see
(if I get the sling out of the way), you can see the locking lug here that holds the grip
up in position. When I push the grip forward that locking lug is disengaged.
So what I would do is pull this down, that will engage the ejector, pop out the empty round,
I then drop a live round in it,
pop that up, that lifts up our breech block, seals the gun, and it's ready to fire.
There is a safety right back here, that's safe, that is fire. So pretty simple gun to actually use.
Now the original PzB 39 rifles had an under-folding stock, and you can still see the
mechanics of that here, however when they converted these to grenade launchers
they fixed the stocks in position so that they will no longer fold.
The reason for that is the recoil from firing a rifle grenade is substantially greater than a rifle cartridge,
and I think it was decided that the stock folding mechanism wasn't necessarily strong enough to
withstand a lot of rifle grenade use. And, frankly, it was only moderately helpful in the first place.
By cutting down the barrel to 24 inches ... they've made the gun significantly shorter already,
and made up for some of the compactness that you could get by folding the stock.
Now one of the more minor changes, but it is an interesting one that they made,
was to lengthen the bipod. So these guns still use the same bipod as the PzB,
but they cut them right here and added this U-shaped piece of metal to the bipod legs to give them
about two inches more length. The reason for that was grenades have a lot more drop,
and there is potential when you're shooting to need to fire at higher angles than with a rifle.
And that requires elevating the front of the gun more.
So one of the the really cool, visually interesting changes that was involved in
the grenade launching version of these guns was the sights.
The original PzB 39 had fairly typical rifle style sights,
whereas the Granatbüchse has sights specifically for launching grenades.
A grenade has a ... much steeper trajectory,
and adjusting for range in very short distance increments is important. The point of impact of ...
a 40mm rifle grenade at 50 yards is going to be quite substantially different from, say, 75 or 100 yards.
So what they did on this sight is they have a series of
wires to give you a series of crosshairs.
You can see that they only go out to 150 [metres], that was considered the maximum effective range of the gun.
And we have a rear sight. The rear sight is frankly rifle- like right there. You'd line up the notch in your rear sight
with that centre wire and whichever range wire was appropriate for the particular shot.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
I'm really happy to have been able now to take a close look for you at both the rifle version
and the grenade launcher version of these guns. They're pretty cool. They're fairly rare.
Happily, based on US law, these are not considered destructive devices
because the actual bore diameter is only 8mm, less than .50 calibre,
so these transfer as just standard typical rifles.
If you'd like to transfer this one to yourself you will have the opportunity, if you've got the money for it.
Check the link in the description text below, that will take you to Rock Island's catalogue page.
Of course this is selling in this coming September Premier auction.
You can look at their pictures, and their description, and create an account on-line,
or come down here to the Rock Island Auction House and bid on it in person.
Thanks for watching.