PIAT (Anti-Tank Weapon)

The PIAT, short for Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank, is a British man-portable anti-tank weapon of the Second World War, developed in 1942 to give ordinary infantry a way to destroy enemy armor at close range as German tank designs grew increasingly difficult for existing infantry anti-tank weapons to defeat. Rather than firing a rocket like contemporary American and German infantry anti-tank weapons, the PIAT launched its hollow-charge bomb using a powerful spring, which avoided the visible back-blast and smoke signature of a rocket launcher and let a soldier fire it from enclosed spaces such as a building interior. The weapon entered British and Commonwealth service in 1943 and remained in front-line use through the rest of the war, valued for its simplicity and lack of a firing signature even though its heavy recoil and awkward cocking mechanism made it a demanding weapon to operate under combat conditions.