They Said It Was Stupid — Until His Scrap Metal Tube Destroyed a Tank скачать в хорошем качестве

They Said It Was Stupid — Until His Scrap Metal Tube Destroyed a Tank

In May 1942, two Army engineers stood at Aberdeen Proving Ground holding a weapon that shouldn't have worked. Built from scrap metal pulled from a garbage pile. With sights improvised that morning from a bent coat hanger. The Army had ignored their rocket research for eight years. Then they watched it destroy a tank on the first shot. This is the story of Leslie Skinner and Edward Uhl—the two forgotten men who invented the bazooka and gave every American infantryman the power to destroy a tank. For eight years, Colonel Leslie Skinner worked alone on rocket research while the Army told him it was pointless. They exiled him to Hawaii to get him out of the way. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Edward Uhl—a 24-year-old Lehigh University engineering graduate (NOT a dropout, despite the myth)—was assigned to help develop a portable anti-tank weapon. When Uhl spotted a discarded 5-foot steel tube in a scrap pile, he realized it was exactly the right size for Skinner's rocket grenade. That moment of inspiration led to the M1 Bazooka—a weapon that would arm over 400,000 American soldiers and fundamentally change infantry warfare. SOURCES: • National Archives: US Army Signal Corps Records • Baltimore Sun obituary: Edward G. Uhl (May 13, 2010) • Washington Post obituary: Col. Leslie Skinner (Nov 5, 1978) • US Army publication: "Planning Munitions for War" • Aberdeen Proving Ground historical records • Army Magazine: "Rocket Pioneers" (1973) • Technical Manual TM 9-294: Rocket Launcher, 2.36-inch