Panzerfaust

The Panzerfaust is a German man-portable, single-shot anti-tank weapon developed and mass-produced from 1943 onward, consisting of a disposable steel launch tube fired once from the shoulder and discarded, propelling a shaped-charge warhead capable of penetrating the armor of most Allied tanks of the war. Cheap and simple enough to be issued to poorly trained soldiers and even Volkssturm militia with minimal instruction, millions of Panzerfausts were produced across several increasingly powerful models, and the weapon inflicted heavy losses on Soviet armor in the war's final campaigns, most notably during the close-quarters urban fighting of the Battle of Berlin in 1945. Its recoilless, disposable, shaped-charge design directly influenced postwar anti-tank weapons developed by other nations, including the Soviet RPG series.