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The Weird Nukes of Yesteryear

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The Weird Nukes of Yesteryear The Cold War produced some oddball weapons. Here are three of them. The “Davy Crockett,” shown here mounted on a tripod at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was the smallest nuclear warhead ever developed by the US. The Weird Nukes DOD photo end of a series of thermonuclear bombs initiated in 1950. This followed the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb of Yesteryear in 1949, several years before Western By Norman Polmar and Robert S. Norris intelligence agencies expected such an event. y the time the Cold War reached some concern about whether they could It was the era of “bigger is better.” its height in the late 1960s, the be carried in aircraft, due to size. The The zenith of “big bombs” would be American nuclear arsenal had “Little Boy” dropped on Hiroshima seen on Oct. 30, 1961, when the Soviet grown to more than 31,000 tipped the scales at 9,700 pounds, and Union detonated (at Novaya Zemlya in Bweapons. The Army, Navy, Air Force, the “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki the Arctic) a thermonuclear bomb that and even the Marine Corps worked weighed 10,300 pounds. The immediate produced an explosion equivalent to to acquire weapons for the “nuclear follow-on bombs were about the same 58 megatons—the largest man-made battlefield,” whether in the air, on the size or smaller. explosion ever achieved. Soviet Premier ground, on water, or underwater. However, the development of ther- Nikita Khrushchev would later write Three of the more unusual—and in monuclear or hydrogen bombs led to in his memoirs: “It was colossal, just the end impractical—of these weapons much larger weapons, with the largest incredible! Our experts later explained were the enormous Mk 17 hydrogen US nuclear weapon being the Mk 17 to me that if you took into account the bomb, the Navy’s drone anti-submarine hydrogen bomb. shock wave and radioactive contamina- helicopter equipped with a nuclear depth This thermonuclear weapon had a tion of the air, then the bomb produced charge, and the “Davy Crockett” atomic yield of 13.5 megatons—almost one as much destruction as 100 million mortar-recoilless rifle. thousand times more powerful than the tons of TNT.” When the first US atomic bombs were Hiroshima explosion. The Los Alamos In the US, Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, developed in World War II, there was laboratory developed the Mk 17 at the commander of Strategic Air Command 94 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 2010 from 1948 to 1957 and later Air Force On May 22, 1957, one of the bombs At the other end of the nuclear weapons Chief of Staff, was a key advocate of was being transported to Kirtland AFB, spectrum was the Davy Crockett—a bat- big bombs. According to a SAC his- N.M., in Albuquerque. Approaching talion-level weapon intended to provide tory, LeMay urged development of a Kirtland, the B-36 Peacemaker bomber US Army infantry units with an effective 60-megaton bomb, claiming it would be hit turbulence at 1,700 feet while the Mk weapon against Soviet armored forces. useful to destroy hardened targets, have 17 was being secured for landing. The It was a recoilless rifle that could be a deterrent value of its own because of turbulence caused the 21-ton bomb to fired from a light vehicle or from a tripod large Soviet weapons, and be effective fall, carrying away the bomb bay doors. mount on the ground. The rifle fired a if deterrence failed because one “super” Its parachute did not fully deploy, projectile 30 inches long, 11 inches in bomb could destroy targets that would and the bomb struck the ground in diameter, and weighing 76 pounds. Its require several lower-yield weapons. an open field. The conventional high warhead produced a yield in the 10- to The Lawrence Livermore National explosive within detonated, creating 20-ton range (.01 to .02 KT). This was a Laboratory provided SAC with pro- a crater 25 feet in diameter and 12 smaller yield than predicted for the other posals for 22,000-pound bombs that feet deep. Fortunately, the plutonium applications of the W54 warhead, in the would have yields of 45 MT or 60 capsule—on board the aircraft—had Falcon air-to-air missile or the Special MT. Neither was developed, as critics not been inserted, thus there was no Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM). claimed they had no realistic military nuclear explosion. The mishap was one The weapon was tested twice in 1962, value and could cause widespread of 32 confirmed US nuclear weapons with live nuclear rounds producing esti- nuclear contamination. accidents—“Broken Arrows”—be- mated yields of 22 and 18 tons. The second However, the Los Alamos National tween 1950 and 1980. test, on July 17, 1962, was witnessed by Laboratory’s proposed Mk 17 hydrogen The Mk 17 and B24 were in service Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and bomb with a 15-MT yield was consid- for brief periods, until 1957 and 1956, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, then a White ered a practical weapon. respectively. Their size restricted them House advisor and subsequent Chairman The Mk 17 was 24 feet, eight inches to being carried only by the giant of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It proved to long and five feet, 10 inches in diam- B-36 Peacemaker. By the mid-1950s, be the last atmospheric nuclear test at eter. It was the second most powerful the B-36 was being phased out of the the Nevada Test Site. nuclear weapon to be developed and nuclear strike role in favor of the B-52 Two versions of the recoilless rifle deployed by the United States. The Stratofortress and B-47 Stratojet, while could fire the nuclear warhead: a 120 Mk 17 design was successfully tested smaller, more efficient nuclear weapons mm weapon with a range of 6,650 feet, on May 4, 1954, during the Operation were being produced for those aircraft and a 155 mm weapon with a range of Castle series of nuclear tests at Bikini and for fighter and attack aircraft. 13,125 feet. These ranges (less than three miles in all cases)—coupled with the lengthy process for obtaining release authority for nuclear weapons, USAF photo especially in a combat environment where radio communications could be interrupted or denied—raised ques- tions about the practicality of the Davy Crockett. Still, with the massive proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Army persevered, and 400 nuclear rounds were produced for the system. It entered the inventory in 1961, and beginning in 1962, it was deployed with the US Seventh Army in West Germany and subsequently with Army units in Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, and South Korea. Atoll in the South Pacific. Its estimated yield was 13.5 MT. The bomb entered the US inventory in May 1954 with about 200 weapons produced. It was followed into the inventory a few months later by the similar B24 thermonuclear bomb, with a similar predicted yield of 10 to 15 MT. The B24 was never tested, but a total of 105 bombs were produced. Although never dropped in combat, a Mk 17 was once dropped inadvertently B-36s, such as the one shown at top, were tasked with carrying the massive 21-ton in New Mexico. Mk 17 nuclear bomb (above), which was nearly six feet in diameter. AIR FORCE Magazine / September 2010 95 off-the-shelf RON-1 design, An improved QH-50D variant entered capable of carrying two Mk service in 1966. 44 anti-submarine, acoustic In all, the Navy built or modified homing torpedoes, one Mk 46 more than 200 destroyer-type ships torpedo, or a B57 depth bomb. and frigates to operate DASH. The The helicopter had a range procurement numbers were impres- of some 35 miles, based on the sive—12 prototypes were followed range of a ship’s radar, needed by 732 QH-50C/D aircraft. Photo courtesy gyrodynehelicopters.com for drone control. For a DASH While DASH was deployed with mission, the drone was “piloted” anti-submarine torpedoes, no ships during takeoff and landing by are known to have carried the planned an officer at a console adja- nuclear depth charges. DASH was in cent to the ship’s flight deck. operational service with the Navy for During the mission, the drone less than a decade: from November was controlled by an officer in 1962 to January 1971. More than the ship’s combat information 400 DASH helicopters were lost in center who would “fly” the this period. helicopter to the target area and The large number of DASH casual- A remotely operated DASH comes in release the weapon. No sensors were ties was due in large part to the Navy’s for a landing on the deck of a US Navy carried by DASH, and its endurance operational policies. To conserve the destroyer. Plans called for DASH to was just over two hours. aircraft, destroyers that operated with deliver a nuclear depth charge. Gyrodyne was awarded a contract aircraft carriers would not fly their for the first unmanned DSN-1 heli- helicopters en route to overseas areas. The withdrawal from service of the copter on Dec. 31, 1958, but the first And because of problems with electronic Davy Crockett began in July 1967, af- unmanned landing did not occur aboard interference, they could not fly their ter six years in the inventory. The last drones while the carriers were weapons were retired in 1971. Its decade operating in forward areas. of service turned out to be much longer Thus, during a typical than the Mk 17 and B24 hydrogen bombs.
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