“Throughout its service the PIAT gave hard-pressed troops the means of evening the odds against enemy armoured vehicles.”

By Matthew Moss

DESIGNED AT THE height of the Second World War the PIAT, or Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank, was a quintessentially British answer to an urgent problem: how to give the lightly-armed foot soldier a fighting chance against enemy armoured vehicles.

The Boys anti-tank rifle, the British infantry platoon’s standard anti-tank weapon at the start of the war, had been quickly rendered obsolete as tank armour thickness increased. The British soldier needed a new weapon that allowed him to engage enemy armour at a relatively safe distance.

A number of influential and fascinating figures are responsible for the PIAT. It evolved from Colonel L.V.S. Blacker’s designs. Blacker was an inventor and adventurer who in the early 1930s was part of the first expedition to fly over Mt. Everest. A career soldier, he developed a number of weapons but was fascinating by the potential of spigot mortars. His interest would eventually lead to the Blacker Bombard, a low-cost anti-tank weapon rushed into production in anticipation of a German invasion of Great Britain.

Millis Jefferis, a British Army sapper and commander of the clandestine weapons development department, MD1, colloquially known as “Churchill’s Toyshop,” played an equally important role developing his own design from Blacker’s ideas. Prototypes from both Blacker and Jefferis were taken by scientists and engineers at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) who combined features from both and perfected the PIAT into a viable weapon of war.

The PIAT fired 2.5-pound projectile containing a shaped charge capable of penetrating armour up to 100 mm or 4 inches. The most common misconception about the PIAT is that the bomb was propelled by the weapon’s powerful mainspring. In reality, it was launched by a small but potent cartridge located in the base of the projectile using the spigot mortar principal. The spring’s main task was to soak up the formidable recoil of the weapon so that it could be fired from a soldier’s shoulder and to propel the PIAT’s spigot forward to detonate and launch the bomb.

The PIAT entered service in 1943 seeing action for the first time in Tunisia and later in Sicily. Its users had to wait until their target was within the PIAT’s 100-yard effective range before firing. The bravery of these men becomes immediately obvious when reading reports and medal citations for the many actions that led to the award of Victoria Crosses, Military Medals and Distinguished Conduct Medals.

Despite the challenges of using it in action, the PIAT proved itself to be extremely effective against Axis armoured fighting vehicles. Major Robert Cain of the 2nd South Staffords destroyed several German vehicles during the fighting in Oosterbeek during Operation Market Garden. In October 1944, Private Ernest Smith of the Canadian Seaforth Highlanders knocked out a Panther and Rifleman Ganju Lama of the 7th Gurkha Rifles single-handedly defeated several Japanese tanks during the Battle of Imphal. All were awarded Victoria Crosses for their bravery. In total, no fewer than six VCs were bestowed for actions involving the PIAT along with dozens of other medals and mentions in dispatches.

Unsurprisingly, the PIAT enjoyed a divisive reputation among soldiers with some adamant its recoil could break a man’s shoulder. In reality it was no worse than that of the earlier Boys AT Rifle. Indeed, the force of the recoil had been an important factor that was considered during the weapon’s design.

Despite its shortcomings the PIAT was a surprisingly versatile weapon. Its secondary role as a light mortar was found to be extremely useful. John Wilton, an officer of 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers recalled that during fighting in the Po Valley his men were often unable to call in an artillery barrage on nearby enemy positions because they were too close to their own lines. Instead they used their PIATs.

“You shot the bomb up into the air and it came down,” Wilton wrote. “If you were lucky enough to land it on somebody’s dugout you would do considerable damage,”

During urban fighting it could also be used in what the manual described as the “housebreaking” role: blowing holes in the walls of buildings.

Just how effective was the PIAT? One interesting statistic illustrates its usefulness: During the initial weeks of Operation Overlord, the PIAT accounted for an impressive seven per cent of all German tanks destroyed – more even than roving allied air patrols.

Throughout its service, the PIAT gave hard-pressed troops the means of evening the odds against enemy armoured vehicles. During Operation Market Garden, British airborne troops faced much stiffer resistance than expected with 2 PARA besieged at Arnhem bridge. Major Richard Lonsdale, commanding the 11^th Parachute Battalion, wrote in an after-action report that the PIAT “proved of immense value.”

“The tragedy of the operation was the shortage and towards the end the complete lack of them,” he wrote. “Time without number the cry was ‘Give me the PIATs and we’ll stay until Christmas.’”

While the PIAT became increasingly obsolete after the war it continued to see action. During the 1947–49 Arab-Israeli conflict, they represented one of the Jewish Haganah’s few infantry anti-tank weapons. Dutch forces used them in Indonesian War of Independence and some saw action with French troops during the First Indochina War. By the early 1950s, however, the PIAT had largely been replaced by recoilless rifles with better range and the increasingly effective rocket launcher. In 1956, the British Army finally declared the PIAT obsolete.

Perhaps the most fitting epitaph for the quintessentially British anti-tank weapon was provided by Sergeant James Wyndham, who fought in Italy, he recalled after the war that if a man “had the guts to get on his belly and wait for the tank to come… the PIAT was a damn good weapon!”

Matthew Moss is the author of The PIAT – Britain’s Anti-Tank Weapon of WW2. He is the also the publisher of the website HistoricalFirearms.info and he co-founder of The Armourer’s Bench, a new multimedia project which showcases the history of some of the world’s most interesting and important weapons. You can follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/historicfirearm.