BOOKS & MORE: Fliegerfaust - the first MANPAD

MANPADs are on everyone's lips today. Hardly a day goes by without impressive images of their use reaching us from Ukraine. But few know that the idea for a portable air defense weapon is much older and now dates back over 70 years. Jonathan Wild, after his successful first work on the reproduction of the Panzerfaust, has now followed up with his new book on the Fliegerfaust. Reason enough to take a closer look at the book.

The structure of the book explicitly follows the volume "Expedient Recoilless Launcher: Panzerfaust" published in Autumn 2020. The author describes, after a historical introduction to the topic of air defense weapons and the concise presentation of some weapons, the challenges posed by an enemy massively superior in the air domain, which led to the development of the Fliegerfaust at the end of WWII on the German side.

However, the truly fascinating part of the book deals with the reproduction of a functional Fliegerfaust and its testing. Jonathan Wild does not intend to provide a guide for reproduction, but rather documents the steps necessary to achieve the most accurate reproduction possible. The author explicitly and in detail discusses exciting aspects such as optics and the trigger mechanism. This reconstruction, however, is not an end in itself. As part of the tradition of experimental archaeology, it can provide insights into the performance of the Fliegerfaust in live-fire tests that are still entirely unknown to this day.

Very little is known about these weapons sent to the front in the final stages of the war, except for a few preserved originals. Therefore, the reproduction of the Fliegerfaust offers, for the first time, the opportunity to study the ballistics of the projectiles and their effects, drawing initial conclusions.

The book "Man Portable Air Defense System: Fliegerfaust" by Jonathan Wild is available in Europe on Amazon. Furthermore, the author's YouTube channel features interesting videos on the testing of the Fliegerfaust and additional background information: HERE is Wild Arms Research and Development on YOUTUBE.

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