Do recoilless rifles have recoil?
- Thread starter gringojosh
- Start date
You are correct that the rifle does not recoil significantly. However, that was only half the question. The rest of the question was:
"However, it's hard for me to imagine something similar to a rocket launcher that didn't recoil."
That is what I was attempting to address with my comments. There is recoil as there must be due to conservation of momentum. It is just that in this case the recoil is not applied to the rifle, it is applied to the projectile instead.
And that's EXACTLY how a recoilless rifle works. Just as the rocket is propelled by recoil, the projectile in a recoilless rifle is propelled by recoil.
And just as the mounting gantry of a rocket does not recoil to any signficant extent, neither does the recoilless rifle. In both cases there IS recoil and conservation of momentum is preserved, but in both cases the actual firing apparatus is not significantly coupled into that recoil.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
I shot a 3.5" bazooka in Basic. No recoil. Fun toy! Dummy warhead. Old dead tank shell as a target at 300 yards. (We measured in American, back then.) I thought it was an easy hit.
For all practical purposes that is correct. In my first post on this thread I said: "The recoilless rifle doesn't get into the act because it's just an aiming tube. So there's very little felt recoil. "
I was trying to explain that there was recoil in the system and what it was doing since it didn't significantly affect the rifle.