Door Knocker

Background

 * Randel Oland's primary weapon (he also uses various grenades, as well as an armor cutter) has an unusual history in itself. During the Royal Empire's war with the Republic of Frost, Imperial artillery specialists began formulating what they hoped was to be a troop-deployable weapon to combat the threat the Republic's tanks were having on their soldiers. What they came up with with was a somewhat-compact, single-shot, break-open 13mm hand cannon with ammunition specially designed to penetrate the thickest tank armor.


 * Another perceived advantage of the Door Knocker was the fact that facing something that basically ignores a tank's strongest advantage - the armor - would wreak havoc on enemy troops' morale.


 * However, the project was officially declared a failure before it was completed, because the weapon was impossible to handle for most people due to it's weight and immense recoil. Another point was that - in order for the gun to be effective - the shooter had to be at point blank range, which was deemed inhuman, because the soldier would have to stare his own mortality in the face whenever he was deployed. These soldiers, in a word, would be 'knocking at the door' to any tank they faced. Professor Kortu had a copy of what the Door Knocker looked like as a display at his home, but was only aware of its existence when Dalton, a reporter for the imperial newspaper Die Welt, told him about it.

Real world references

 * Anti-tank firearms did exist in the real world, but these were large and cumbersome weapons, such as the German Panzerbuchse-39, the Soviet PTRD and PTRS or the Polish wz.35 anti-tank rifles. Their caliber ranged from 7,92 to 14,5 mm and they were only effective against light armor.


 * "Door knocker" (germ. Anklopf) was a nickname given by German troops to the 3.7 cm PaK 36 anti-tank gun after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, a.k.a. Operation Barbarossa, but this was due to its inability to pierce the newest Soviet tanks, the medium T-34 tank and the heavy KV-1 tank (according to the German Weirmacht soldiers, they were as good against their thick armor as door knockers).