I Am Not Sure If I Read It,

or heard it from my father, it was the statement,

"the most dangerous combination ever in the Second World War, one that could get you killed, an officer and a map!" well I have a new contender for that dangerous combination, a junior officer and a almost hand held nuclear warhead, I kid you not! the Davy Crockett is a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of being launched from a recoilless rifle by a single man or a tandem team. The warhead itself was an Mk-54 which weighed only 50lbs. This allowed a single dedicated operator, or pair, to setup, aim and fire a nuclear warhead at the tactical level, the Davy Crockett Weapon System was a recoilless gun that was just as likely to kill the user as it was to kill the enemy. A single shot from the Davy Crockett Weapon System also known as the M-28/M-29 was almost guaranteed to lead to dozens of friendly fire casualties, hundreds of enemy casualties and the outbreak of a world ending thermonuclear war, as the enemy retaliated with its own nuclear weapon, above a tripod mounted Davy Crockett (Public domain),

 nuclear equipped Jeep (Credit: Army Historical Foundation), the miniaturization of nuclear weapons shifted their use to people lower and lower on the chain of command. While it would take a world leader plus a handful of high level military officials to launch a nuclear weapon today, in the 1960s it was possible that a field commander or platoon leader could order a nuclear strike via the use of a Davy Crockett. The Davy Crockett Weapons System came in two variations, the M-28 and the M-29. The difference between the two was the effective range at which they fired. The M-29 had an effective range of 2.5 miles while the M-28 had an effective range half that at 1.25 miles, this range is extremely short for the use of nuclear weapons and immediately put the operator and surrounding friendly forces in danger of getting exposed to lethal doses of radiation,

a tandem aiming a Davy Crockett tripod (Credit: Army Historical Foundation), it also did not come with a kill switch or abort function. If the warhead was fired, it would detonate. There was no going back from a mistake and no room for error. The only option the warhead gave to the operator was to choose at which height it exploded at. There was no way to deactivate it mid-flight and no way to fire a round which was not primed to detonate, despite the inherent danger to using such an inaccurate nuclear weapon, the United States manufactured around 2,100 units of the Davy Crockett Weapons System. This was not a weapon system that sat in a warehouse as an item for potential use, NATO forces deployed to the field with these weapons in the 1960s, now it might be me, but when you get down to the level of an individual soldier the risk of error goes up massively. Orders can get misinterpreted, orders can get passed down wrong, orders can be cut off. The confusion and terror of battle could cause someone to fire a nuke without proper authorization. These nukes could be fired by a single person. Nuclear war could have come down to an accident, an itchy trigger finger or poor judgment from a low level officer, still one member of the NATO leadership openly advocated for their use, West Germany Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss claimed deploying the M-28 and M-29 nuclear weapons on the bridges linking West Germany with East Germany would be the ultimate deterrent and would cut down on the need for mass artillery batteries, as I mentioned, what could possibly go wrong? the Davy Crocket, more dangerous than an officer and map or not?