World War II was the first real war of motors in the history of mankind. Back in the 1930s, a wide variety of factory and handicraft equipment was created to combat enemy equipment. From complex cumulative grenades and anti-tank rifles to Molotov cocktails assembled from anything. One of the most interesting types of weapons of that time can be safely considered an ampoule.
The first grenade launchers were not exactly the type of weapon that modern man is used to seeing in front of him. After the outbreak of World War II, the Red Army faced a serious shortage of anti-tank weapons. Both the losses of the summer of 1941 and the ongoing evacuation of large industrial facilities left their negative imprint. In this regard, the USSR began to develop and produce in an accelerated manner a variety of handicraft anti-tank weapons.
Incendiary bottles were the simplest and most affordable means. Even if they did not have high efficiency, but in the difficult conditions of the first months of the war, even they were better than nothing at all. However, an infantryman can throw a bottle with a combustible mixture into a tank only when the vehicle is in close proximity to him. The Soviet physicist Veniamin Zuckerman tried to solve this problem by creating in October 1941 a new rifle grenade launcher for throwing incendiary bottles. The Zuckerman bottle thrower was a type of muzzle-loading mortar and had a caliber of 75 mm. With its help, an infantryman could throw a bottle with a combustible fraction over a distance of 100 meters. Such grenade launchers were produced until the summer of 1942. They abandoned this tool due to the fact that in the end the troops were sufficiently saturated with guns and anti-tank rifles.
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Another notable improvised weapon was Ivan Petrovich Inochkin's easel ampoule gun. A grenade launcher weighing 15 kg and caliber 125 mm threw glass balls filled with a combustible fraction at a distance of 250 meters. It was intended both to destroy equipment and to destroy enemy fortified positions, in particular, firing points. The ampoule fire rate reached 8 rounds per minute. Most of these grenade launchers were made in Gorky. They were produced until 1943, and were used until the victory. True, due to the low efficiency of glass balls with a combustible fraction, at the front, the ampoule gun was mostly used as a weapon for spreading propaganda.
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Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/080122/61788/