Technically, this is achieved with weapons simultaneously firing the grenade and ejecting a similarly heavy mass at a similar speed opposite the direction of fire (principle of the so-called Davis gun). To ensure that the individual, unprotected soldier can still be equipped with such projectiles, there are so-called portable recoilless anti-tank weapons, in which the muzzle momentum is compensated by an equally large one opposite the shooting direction. The defense against armored vehicles (tanks, armored personnel carrier) requires grenades with a weight of several kilograms due to the large muzzle momentum (mass times speed), it can only be fired from heavy weapons. In both cases, two different causes of death were present: massive blunt violence in the first case versus a jet of hot gases of very high speed and temperature in the second case.

He died as well from his severe injuries, which were located at the chest done by the gas jet and by the very high pressure. At the time the shot was fired, he stood behind the launcher and was hit by the propulsion jet of the rocket motor. The other case took place in Switzerland, where a 24-year-old soldier was seriously injured during an exercise with portable anti-tank rockets. As a peculiarity of the wound morphology, it was found to be a thick-layered, metallic, gray material in the wound cavity, which corresponded to the material of the counter mass that was ejected opposite to the shooting direction. In both cases, the injuries led to the death of two soldiers: A 22-year-old soldier in Germany was struck by the counter mass of a so-called Davis gun which had been fired by a comrade during a firing exercise he died from his severe injuries, especially in the abdominal part of the body. In this casuistry, two accidents from Germany and Switzerland are presented that happened during the shot of recoilless anti-tank weapons.

Dead military in tanks