why is the recoilless rifle a bazooka?

[TamTroll]

honest question.

Picked up a RR for the first time a few missions ago and saw... yeah this is a straight up bazooka, why is it called a "Rifle" then? IDK about you but when i think "Rifle" i think something like an Assault Rifle or a Hunting Rifle, a long-barrel gun made for hitting targets far away accurately. Is a Bazooka technically a Rifle somehow?

From the name alone, i'd expect a "Recoilless rifle" to be some long Auto or semi-auto assault rifle capable of unleashing many shots in rapid succession with no aim penalty due to recoil, to repeatedly hammer down distant targets.

Buuhhht instead it's a single-shot Bazooka... why? What's the point in not having recoil if you can't take a second shot before reloading anyways?

[an entire Roman legion]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von petrichor:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ccdu5000:

I'll take op's clown awards please, thank you.

MODS!!! I got banned for commenting like this a few weeks ago for "BEGGING FOR POINTS", this guy didn't even know that this OP's question was a legitimate question, not everyone knows about gun knowledge like this pretentious guy, this guy simply "BEGGING" for jester by your standards? Right? Don't tell me you guys won't ban him??

steam moderation is not really, .... consistent.

[ah, salmonn]

15 years of steam never heard of firearms, really...

[an entire Roman legion]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Pinguin:

15 years of steam never heard of firearms, really...

wat in the watwat

[Fritösen]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Pinguin:

15 years of steam never heard of firearms, really...

Recoilless rifles aren't really a common subject either way

[Aethrys]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von TamTroll:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Hadradavus:

The Recoilless Rifle is heavily derived from the real-life Carl Gustaf, which you might better know as the MAAWS. The "recoilless" is derived from the open back, which freely allows for the exhaust gases to jut out, creating a counter-force that functionally nullifies the felt recoil of firing such a high-caliber round (the Carl Gustaf is an 84x245mm; that is to say very very chonky for an infantry-based system), that would otherwise be transmitted to the operator to lethal effects (Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). The barrel of the weapon is rifled (to stabilize the round in flight), and it uses a recoilless system, hence Recoilless Rifle (a smoothbore version would be a "recoilless gun").
The difference between it and a Bazooka is the projectile being fired. Both the Bazooka, the RPG-7, and any other tube-based rocket launcher which use a recoilless firing method by allowing for some of the propellant and exhaust gases be shot out of the back, is that those weapons fire a rocket, while the Carl Gustaf fires essentially a giant bullet.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von KaraPenguin:

A very fair observation! The name Recoilless Rifle comes straight from a real life equivalent.

There are two names for the weapon based on traits it has. One is the Recoilless Launcher/Gun and the other is the Recoilless Rifle. The sole difference between the two being that the Rifle has rifling in the barrel (grooves that make the projectile spin, therefore gaining stability).

All versions of the Recoilless Rifle/Launcher/Gun are artillery pieces, meant to launch shells with high velocity with as minimal recoil as possible through varied means. The reason for mitigating recoil is to avoid having the bulky and complex mechanisms that a standard artillery weapon would have, allowing for bigger projectiles in a smaller weapon. Recoilless Rifles are often MUCH lighter and smaller than other comparable-in-power weapons.

Ahh gotcha thanks!

so sounds like Rifle is less "A type of gun" and more of "An effect the barrel produces" or something of the sort i guess?

Yes, what makes a weapon rifled is grooved channels in the barrel, which encourages rounds to spin and stabilize in flight. This was a major advancement in firearms, as it greatly improved the accuracy and effective range that was possible. Earlier guns are "Smooth-bore" muskets because the barrel lacks rifling and is simply a smooth tube of metal.

[Gryregaest]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von TamTroll:

Ahh gotcha thanks!

so sounds like Rifle is less "A type of gun" and more of "An effect the barrel produces" or something of the sort i guess?

I am not a gun nut, the entirety of my knowledge comes from video games, sorry :P

The term rifle comes from the rifling, which is the name for the grooves inside the barrel of most guns that cause the bullets to spin, which stabilizes the projectile and increases accuracy. Back in the day, long guns were called muskets, and usually smoothbore (i.e., no rifling). Rifling has existed since the 1500s, but had to be done by hand, so was expensive and not done for most weapons. To differentiate, muskets that had rifling were called "rifled muskets" and as the process became more commonplace, this was shortened to just "rifles". As a result, rifle usually refers to a long gun, but rifling is actually in most firearms today, pistols included.

Despite looking weird, the recoilless rifle is actually operating much like a normal rifle. Some of the earlier RRs would have looked more like conventional rifles, but the mechanism is basically the same. It comes from this whole arms race of making anti-tank weapons. They started off making big rifles to shoot at tanks when they first appeared in WWI, basically like the game's anti-materiel rifle. But as armor got thicker, the guns got bigger and bigger. To compensate for such powerful rounds, the guns had to be excessively heavy to absorb the recoil and not kill the user. This reached kind of an upper limit of practicality, and they were too heavy to carry around and be used by infantry.

One of the solutions to this was the RR, which is just a gun where the bullet explodes out the back as well as the front, meaning the force goes roughly equal in both directions, and cancels out. For this to work, it has to be vented out the back. This actually wastes half the energy of the cartridge doing this, but because the recoil is no longer an issue, the upper limit on size of a weapon and cartridge is determined by what a person can realistically carry around, hence the gigantic rounds you see in game for the RR.

[St0rmFury]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gryregaest:

That was a good read, have an award.