Exhibit of the Month - Feb. '24

To combat tanks, this missile carried a 6.8 kg shaped charge warhead, with which the tank destroyers were able to penetrate enemy armor made of up to 600 mm of rolled steel at a distance of up to 3000 meters.

The Bundeswehr's tank destroyers have been firing the guided missile from cover and under armor protection since 1961 from the rocket destroyer 1 and from 1967 onwards from the rocket destroyer 2. Due to the long combat distance, our tank destroyers were able to use this weapon to fight enemy battle tanks before they came within range of their on-board guns.

After firing, the guide gunner had to steer the rocket towards the target using a joystick and looking through a periscope. Although two signal lights on the rocket tailplanes made it easier for him to track and steer the rocket to its target, this type of target engagement, which may sound a bit playful here, turned out to be anything but easy. Quite apart from the external influences on the trajectory of the guided missile, such as: B. wind and vegetation, the rocket required a flight time of at least 18 seconds at an average flight speed of 165 m/sec for a target three kilometers away. And so it was a particular challenge for the guided gunner that once a target had been selected with the periscope, it could no longer reach cover during the entire flight time of the rocket.

The Bundeswehr's tank destroyers, who initially had to make do with the American M41 and M47 main battle tank models since the establishment of the new Federal German armed forces, finally had a means of combating tanks in the form of the Rocket Destroyer 1 in 1961, which significantly improved their anti-tank capabilities against the masses of tanks of the Warsaw Pact armies . The German tank destroyers were a feared weapon for the Soviet T-54/T55 main battle tank crews.

In Panzerbrigade 21, the SS 11 anti-tank guided missile was fired by Panzerjägerkompanie 210. After the conversion to the new Jaguar missile tank destroyer, from which the new German-French guided missile HOT (=French: Haut subsonique Optiquement Teleguide / German: high subsonic range optically remotely guided) was fired, the first hit probability increased from 75 to 80% to almost 100 percent .