Grenade Launcher

The mortar solved a problem that neither artillery nor the rifle could: how to drop high-explosive ordnance nearly straight down into a trench. Simple, cheap, and portable, the mortar could be carried by two men, set up in minutes, and lofted bombs over terrain features that flat-trajectory guns could never reach. British Stokes mortars, German Minenwerfer, and their descendants saturated the killing grounds of the Western Front and later every theater of the Second World War. A trained crew could achieve a rate of fire that pinned entire companies in place, each round arriving with almost no warning sound. On the battlefield the mortar team is the infantry commander's indirect fire asset — capable of suppressing machine gun nests, clearing trenches, and breaking up counterattacks without requiring line of sight. It remains fragile in close combat and must be protected by supporting infantry.