The 'umble PIAT...

[Harry Faversham]

Much maligned by them as don't know, highly thought of by them as do.
I'm in the middle of adding these hard hitting (in both directions!) little weapons to my new 20mm XXI Independent Parachute Company. A couple of very nice figures are depicted carrying these weapons at the port with a bomb on board, which wasn't a very clever idea. I'm towing as to whether to use them anyway, as one, they look good and two I want my PIAT Bombers based singly... we're going 'Old Skool' with our WW2 rules. Back to the old days of hiding naughtiness under lichen bushes and haystacks to trap unwary Jerry tank commanders.
It says in the PIAT manual that the cardboard bomb carriers were marked with a series of red crosses to denote live rounds, white or yellow stripes for other rounds... smoke, HE or drill I'm presuming? Anybody got any suggestions of a novel way of deploying PIATs from ambush if you were gaming solo, so when one let's fly it comes as a nice surprise to one side and a nasty one to the other!!!???

[zulu`s 1000`s of em]

A very reliable real example would be a MK lV being taken out at point blank range from a roadside ditch , June 6th 1944 Pegasus bridge, it was a nice surprise for the Para`s on the other side of the road who were about to fire they`re Piat at the same tank.

[Harry Faversham]

Sometimes, for the Airborne the PIAT was the only anti-tank weapon handy. Major Cain VCs actions with the weapon at Arnhem are pretty well documented. What's less well known is that during the fighting in the Oosterbeek perimeter, a member of the XXI Independent Parachute Company, also nobbled a Panzer Mk. lV with a PIAT.