Nebelwerfer

The Nebelwerfer is a family of German rocket artillery weapons of the Second World War, initially developed for and operated by the German Army's dedicated Nebeltruppen smoke-troop units before evolving into a range of rocket launchers firing rockets between fifteen and thirty-two centimeters in caliber. Because a rocket needs no heavy gun barrel or recoil-absorbing carriage to be launched, the Nebelwerfer's rockets could be built with thinner walls than an equivalent artillery or mortar shell of the same weight, letting each round carry a much larger payload of high explosive, smoke or other fillings than a conventional shell could. The weapon system saw action in every campaign fought by the German Army during the Second World War except the Balkans campaign, and a variant of its heavier twenty-one centimeter rocket was even adapted for air-to-air use, fired from German fighter aircraft against formations of Allied heavy bombers.