1961 ... M29 Atomic Rifle!


... everybody makes fun of the 'Davey Crockett'. This is the smallest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the US Military. Yes- the silly looking bomb thing at the end is 'the bomb'. With a range of a little over 2 miles the seventy-six pound W54 warhead had a yield equal to a 20 ton pile of TNT. ( Images of The 3-Stooges 'woop-wooping' one of these into firing position comes to mind.) But more than 2,000 were made and deployed in Europe from 1961 to 1971. Obviously NATO never stopped obsessing about the rivers of Soviet armor they expected to come flooding toward them. This mechanism, usually mounted on a jeep, would give a couple of scared GI's a big jump in firepower! 

It's the sort of thing a frustrated John Wayne would pull the tarp off of and yell ' I'm puttin' an end to this bar-fight right here and now!'




... oh boy! Here's an official 'how to' film about zorching 'opposing forces' with a couple Davey Crockett's. What red-blooded American kid could resist?


... History Channel clip.


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