Anti-tank grenade
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 Details of HAG concept (US Army)
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Details of Combat Use of HAG (US Army)
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An anti-tank grenade is a specialized explosive device used to defeat heavily armored targets. Although their inherently short range limits the usefulness of grenades, troops can lie in ambush or manoeuvre under cover to exploit the limited outward visibility of the crew in a target vehicle.
The first anti-tank grenades were improvised devices. During World War I the Germans were the first to come up with an improvised anti-tank grenade, taking their regular stick grenade and taping two to three more of the explosive heads without the sticks to create one larger grenade. In combat, after arming, the grenade was thrown on top of the slowly advancing tank where the armor was thin. The destructive properties of the stick grenade relied on its explosive payload, rather than the fragmentation effect, which was advantageous against hard targets.
During World War II, various nations made improvised anti-tank grenades by putting a number of defensive high explosive grenades into a sandbag. Due to their weight, these were normally thrown from very close range or directly placed in vulnerable spots onto an enemy vehicle. Another method used by the British Home Guard in 1940 was to place dynamite or some other high explosive in a thick sock and cover the lower part with axle grease and then place the grease covered part in a suitable size tin can. The sock was pulled out, the fuse lit and the sock thrown against the side of the tank turret in the hope it would stick until the explosion. If successful, it caused internal spalling of the armor plate, killing or injuring the tank crew inside. It is not known if this type of improvised anti-tank grenade was ever successfully employed in combat. By late 1940, the British had brought into production a purpose-built adhesive anti-tank grenade - known as the "Sticky bomb" - that was not very successful in combat.
When tanks overran entrenchments, hand grenades could be, and were, used by infantry as improvised anti-tank mines by placing or throwing them in the path of a tank in the hope of disabling a track. While this method was used in desperation, it usually proved more dangerous to the soldier on the ground than to the crew of the tank.
Chinese troops in the Second Sino-Japanese War used suicide bombing against Japanese tanks. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up. This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank, and at the Battle of Taierzhuang where dynamite and grenades were strapped on by Chinese troops who rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up. During one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers obliterated four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles.
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Wikipedia