I’ve attached a scan of a WWII photograph that caught my attention today because it raises an interesting historical “what if?” question. It’s the one on the right, showing Winston Churchill inspecting a bazooka during a photo-op with Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, at which the men were photographed firing (or pretenting to fire) various weapons. According to the data attached to this file…
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Churchill_Shooting_M1_Carbine.jpg
…the photo-op was on May 15, 1944; this was three weeks before D-Day, at which Bradley commanded the US First Army.
It’s impossible to tell if the bazooka is loaded or not, but you’ll note that Bradley is standing almost directly behind Churchill – something he presumably would not have been foolish enough to do if the weapon had actually been loaded, unless perhaps Churchill moved suddenly and swung the weapon around in a careless way. If, however, it turns out that the bazooka was actually loaded, and if Churchill had accidentally (or in a burst of boyish enthusiasm) pulled the trigger at that moment, the backblast would have blown off Bradley’s head, or at the very least seriously injured him. The American reporters in the Allied press pool would have had a tough time figuring out a diplomatic way to report that story to their newspapers back in the States, to put it mildly. Churchill and Bradley.png