Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon question

How much armor at maximum range can the pazerfaust penetrate? How much armor can it penetrate at, say, 300 meters?

The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the

The Panzerfaust uses a hollowcharge warhead. If you can get the warhead to strike the target, the distance which it covers to do so is immaterial.

In other words, if you bulk freighted a Panzerfaust on a UFO to the Pleiades and a courier hand delivered it to a target there and fired it at 150m, the target effect would be identical to that of you firing it at pointblank range.

It's hitting the target at ANY range where the complications arise....

The armor penetration of all hollow charge, or in post-war parlance HEAT (High Explosive, Anti-Tank) weapons is range independent. This means that the penetration is the same at 20 and 200 meters. The reason is that HEAT weapons penetrate armor with the chemical energy released in the explosion.

Panzerfausts (except the 'Faustpatrone klein' small model) could penetrate a maximum of 200mm of armor, although that was a rather optimistic 'test-range' figure. Incidentally, the maximum range of the most long range variant of the Panzerfaust (Panzerfaust 150) was 200 meters, albeit the practical range was (as the name implies) about 150 meters.

Tero P. Mustalahti

All flavours of Panzerfaust use a hollow-charge (HEAT) warhead, so penetration does not vary with range.

The usual figures given are 160mm for the Panzerfaust klein and 200mm for the Panzerfaust gross (PF-30, PF-60 or PF-100). I believe the figures as, as is customary, for RHA at 30 degrees.

All the best,

The same as at 50, 100, or 200 meters. Hollowcharge weapons are not all that sensitive to impact velocity. I think the rule of thumb for early hollow charge weapons was penetration of the order of 1-2x diameter of charge.

IBM

The range to the target didn't alter the panzerfaust's penetration ability. As a hollow charge warhead, the penetration stayed the same at all ranges. There are reports that a panzerfaust was seen to penetrate both sides of a Sherman's turret armor.

John Lansford

The unofficial I-26 Construction Webpage:

Mostly, enough to get through anything out there.... but....

There were a number of different panzerfausts. If you do a web search, there's a page which lists the different fausts and has all sorts of info. Panzerfausts were mostly designated by effective range - hence the pz faust 30, pzfaust 60 and pzfaust 100. 30 60 and 100 metres effective range. The original designation was faustpatrone and the first issued were prototypes which were almost as dangerous to user as enemy... There was a pz faust 250 being worked on at wars end but not in usem or at least definitely not in general use. It's possible the late war version - a faust 100 could maybe reach 300 meters, but this would be with a very slim chance of hitting a tank. The low muzzle velocity ( comparisons of which IIRC I previously posted ) meant the projectile followed very much an arc. The hollow charge/monroe effect principle used by pz faust, bazooka, shreck and piat are not reliant on kinetic energy. Hence the range didn't effect penetration.

Tank vets talking of being in combat against late war ( green, almost untrained ) german infantry mention how they'd be prone to firing at beyond effective range and they could see fausts fly up in the air... drop to the ground ahead of their tanks.

Andy O'Neill www.l-25.demon.co.uk/index.htm

As the panzerfaust uses a shaped charge warhead the range to the target is irrelevant as far as penetration is concenerned, armour penetration is dependant on the design of the warhead (just like a modern RPG7).

Penetration was approximately 200mm, although it varied by model. The penetration at 300m range is likely to be zero as it couldn't fire that far!

More data than you would ever wish to know about panzerfausts here:
http://www.adeq.simplenet.com/pzfaust1.htm

Cheers

Since the penetrative capability of a panzerfaust relies on a shaped explosive charge it can penetrate the same amount of armor regardless of the distance to the target. A panzerfaust penetrated up to 200mm of WWII tank armor.

The range did not matter, but Panzerfaust was usable at ranges less than 100 m, more like 50 metres. Panzerschrek was the 'long' range weapon, 100 + metres.

Warhead penetration improved during the war. The latest models had about 200mm penetration, so both Panzerfaust/schreck could penetrate the armour of any enemy tank.

There were in fact four different production models of the Panzerfasut: Faustpatrone klein, Panzerfaust 30, Panzerfaust 60 and Panzerfaust 100. The number is the practical maximum range in meters. The Faustpatrone klein had about the same max range as the Panzerfaust 30 but it penetrated less armor (140mm). In addition there was an experimental Panzerfaust 150 and on a drawing board a Panzerfaust 250. All Panzerfausts (except the FP klein) were rated for 200mm of armor penetration. In field conditions the actual penetration was typically less and varied quite a lot.

Through the sides or rear yes. Frontal penetration was a different matter, even if it was theoretically possible.

Tero P. Mustalahti