The Germans began the war with a lead in this category of weapon, and their 150-millimetre and 210-millimetre bombardment rockets were highly effective. These were fired from a variety of towed and vehicle-mounted multitube launchers, from launching rails on the sides of armoured personnel carriers, and, for massive bombardments, even from their packing crates. Mobile German rocket batteries were able to lay down heavy and unexpected concentrations of fire on Allied positions.

A development of the U.S. Army was the Calliope, a 60-tube launching projector for 4.5-inch rockets mounted on a Sherman tank. The launcher was mounted on the tank's gun turret, and both azimuth (horizontal direction) and elevation were controllable. Rockets were fired in rapid succession (ripple-fired) to keep the rockets from interfering with one another as they would in salvo firing.

Beginning in mid-1940, Clarence N. Hickman, who had worked with Robert Goddard during World War I, supervised the development of a refined design of the hand-launched rocket. The new rocket, about 20 inches (50 centimetres) long, 2.36 inches in diameter, and weighing 3.5 pounds, was fired from a steel tube that became popularly known as the bazooka. Designed chiefly for use against tanks and fortified positions at short ranges (up to 600 yards), the bazooka surprised the Germans when it was first used in the North African landings of 1942. Although the rocket travelled slowly, it carried a potent shaped-charge warhead that gave infantrymen the striking power of light artillery. The German counterpart of the bazooka was a light 88 millimetre rocket launcher known as Panzerschreck ("Tank Terror") or Ofenrohr ("Stovepipe").