The captured RPG-7s which Captain James M. Leatherwood, an outspoken young Ordnance officer, showed me in Vietnam were beautifully machined Czechoslovakian copies of the Russian weapon. Their projectiles were carried in moistureproof containers, and the weapons themselves were seldom damaged by water or high humidity. Captain Leatherwood, inventor of the Leatherwood adjustable ranging telescope sight used by snipers, had test fired RPG-7s more often than any other American in Vietnam. He had concluded that the RPG-7 was much better than our LAW, and boldly advocated Ordnance giving highest priority to copying that combat-proven Russian weapon.
Dr. William G. McMillan, Science Advisor to General Westmoreland, was among the well informed Americans in Vietnam who gave his General the facts on the RPG-7. Those facts led Westmoreland to advocate the expedited production of copies of it. Ordnance remained unmoved, neither copying the RPG-7 nor developing an equally effective or superior shoulder-fired rocket launcher.
In 1989 Dr. McMillan, still much concerned with what can be done to improve the Army’s combat capabilities, informed me that after General Westmoreland became Army Chief of Staff he continued to advocate copying the RPG-7. To no avail! “The powerlessness of the powerful” — strategist Herman Kahn’s apt description of the ineffectiveness of generals and appointed high officials who attempt to change established policies of entrenched bureaucracies. No one has succeeded in persuading Army Ordnance to “reverse engineer” the RPG-7, or the more recently produced RPG-16.
After World War II Army Ordnance did not develop and produce a bazooka-like, reloadable rocket launcher firing an improved armor-piercing shaped-charge warhead. Ground-to-ground, wire-guided missiles such as TOW and Dragon are not accurate when fired at ranges shorter than about 100 meters. Their guidance mechanisms need longer flight times to take over effectively than result when ranges are short. Short ranges are especially common in wooded areas and in night fighting. Besides, TOW and Dragon are much heavier than either the RPG-7 or the LAW. The Dragon issued in 1990 and in the Gulf War weighs 73 pounds. For footmobile jungle soldiers, such weights are very disadvantageous.
As proved in combat from Europe to China, our bazooka was one of the best weapons of its time for delivering a shaped charge large enough to penetrate the armor of early World War II tanks, or for breaching the reinforced concrete of most bunkers. Design weaknesses, such as those I noted when trying without success to teach Chinese soldiers to shoot bazookas accurately, could have been overcome — as was done by the Russians who invented and perfected the family of RPG rocket launchers. The bazooka’s rocket went off with a roar, blowing hot gasses and grains of unburned propellant into the firer’s face and hands. Wearing goggles prevented eye injuries, but to shoot a bazooka accurately a man had to discipline himself to keep holding his aim for what seemed seconds after he squeezed the trigger, sending the rocket on its noisy way. Because of having shot rifles since I was a small boy and having practiced shooting bazookas, I was able to impress my inept Chinese students, once by breaking into pieces a sandstone boulder approximately four feet in diameter and about a hundred yards away.
One of my unattained ambitions when serving with OSS in China was to ambush a Japanese train by first blowing up its engine with a bazooka. From all accounts I heard, when a bazooka’s shaped charge hit an engine’s boiler having a full head of steam, the resulting explosion was a most satisfying sight to an American such as I had become. Walking and living in the midst of thousands of suffering and dying victims of the Japanese war machine made me relish ways to destroy its soldiers and other assets, as seeing movies of its atrocities never had motivated me.
In future conflicts, will American and friendly footmobile fighters have lightweight shoulder-fired rocket weapons at least as accurate and effective as RPG-7s for immobilizing modern heavy tanks? Apparently today only Army Materiel Command (AMC) has the power to answer that question in the affirmative.
-Major Cresson Henry Kearny (1914-2003)
The band plays on.
