Friday, December 6, 2013

A CARTOON STYLE, ANIMATED ARMY TRAINING FILM, BY WALT DISNEY ?....1939-1940 ERA

Stop That Tank! Disney training film on Boys .55 caliber anti-tank rifle


The Walt Disney Company did a number of  training and propaganda films during World War II for Allied forces, including this training film for the Canadian Army on the use of the Boys Anti-Tank Rifle. The Canadians requested the film because Canadian soldiers thought the Boys was a ineffectual, heavy, harsh-recoiling piece of junk… and they were right.
There are few, if any, documented instances of a Boys ever knocking out a German tank, though the Finns are reputed to have had some luck with the rifle against obsolete Russian light tanks in the 1939-40 Winter War.
 
The Boys was replaced by a spring-fired spigot mortar system called the PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) beginning in 1943, which was in turn replaced by U.S. bazookas in the Korean War era.

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