     In the tiny village of Krinkelt, northwest of St. Vith, Lieutenant Jesse Morrow of the 2nd Infantry Division was trying to cope with an impossible situation. All night long the advance guards of the 277th Volksgrenadier Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division had been driving through the fragmentary American lines into the village, where the fighting had been wild and fierce. Now it was morning, and German tanks kept appearing out of nowhere.
     A Tiger with a dozen infantrymen riding came straight at Morrow's position. Morrow cleared off the infantry with a submachine gun, then fired a rifle grenade, which bounced harmlessly off the Tiger's thick armor. The tank roared past Morrow, who gave chase, firing a second rifle grenade. The Tiger crashed into a ditch and tried to back out. Morrow fired a third rifle grenade and got lucky; the tank burst into flames.
     A few hours later, Morrow was in a house when another Tiger rumbled through the street in front. Morrow grabbed a bazooka and fired it into the rear of the Tiger. It crashed into a house, immobilized but still capable of using its weapons. The tank commander popped his head out the turret and Morrow tried to shoot him with his pistol, but missed. Morrow then ducked behind a corner, where he spied a jeep carrying a bazooka. Hoisting it to his shoulder, he readied himself and then jumped out from behind the corner.
     He found himself staring down the muzzle of the Tiger's 88mm cannon. The enemy tank commander, anticipating Morrow's move, was ready for him. Morrow remembered seeing a flash, and then everything went black. Amazingly, he survived. The Tiger missed -- but the shock wave from the passing 88mm round tore open Morrow's neck.
/The bazooka
     In the first years of the war, tanks were invulnerable monsters against which infantry had no defense. But by the Battle of the Bulge, both sides had a weapon that made infantry very dangerous to tanks. The American version was called the bazooka; the German version was the Panzerschreck. They were almost identical.
     The bazooka was not much more than a pipe with a rocket inside. The rocket, 20 inches long and 2 inches in diameter, weighed only about 3 pounds and had a range of 100 yards. How can such a tiny projectile destroy a tank? The answer lies in the design of the warhead on the rocket. Bazooka warheads use "shaped charges". The front end of the explosive is shaped like a reversed funnel. Thus, the nose of the rocket is hollow. When the rocket strikes the armor plating of the tank, the explosive is detonated. Now, remember that an explosive is really just a chemical that burns very quickly. In other words, the explosive turns into hot gas in a fraction of a second. Because the explosive is shaped like a funnel, the hot gases squirt forward rather than bursting out in all directions. Thus, a shaped charge focuses the force of its explosion on a spot directly in front of the nose of the rocket. If that spot happens to be the armor plating of a tank, then the hot gases will burn right through the armor, pushing the molten metal in a violent squirt that bounces around the insides of the tank, killing its occupants.
    Despite its effectiveness, the bazooka required considerable courage to use. With a range of only 100 yards, a bazooka team had to get perilously close to a tank before they could fire their weapon. By contrast, the tank's main gun or machine guns could easily blast them from 1,000 yards distance. This disparity made the bazooka a defensive weapon only./