In November 1918, Robert Goddard himself demonstrated to top Army brass at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland a shoulder-held “rocket-powered recoilless weapon” that would enable an individual soldier to blow up a tank or blast through bunker walls. World War I ended days after Goddard’s presentation, so the military shelved his invention. (Twenty-three years later, a talented young engineer named Lieutenant Edward Uhl was tasked by a special ordnance unit to revive the idea. After troops finally got ahold of the M1 rocket launcher, as it was officially called, they nicknamed it “the
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