One of the things I like to do now and then is hit the random article feature on Wikipedia.  Today I came across this article.  I knew that we had deployed some smaller nuclear weapons, but I didn’t know that much about the history.

One of the smallest nuclear weapons ever wielded, the Davy Crockett was developed in the late 1950s for use against Soviet troops in West Germany. Small teams of the Atomic Battle Group (charged with operating the device) would be stationed every few kilometers to guard against Soviet attack, using the power of their nuclear artillery shells to kill or incapacitate advancing troop formations and irradiate the area so that it was uninhabitable for up to 48 hours, long enough to mobilize NATO-Forces.

The M-388 round used a version of the W54 warhead, a very small sub-kiloton fission device. The Mk-54 weighed about 51 lb (23 kg), with a selectable yield of 10 or 20 tons (very close to the minimum practical size and yield for a fission warhead). The complete round weighed 76 lb (34.5 kg). It was 31 in. (78.7 cm) long with a diameter of 11 in. (28 cm) at its widest point; a subcaliber piston at the back of the shell was actually inserted into the launcher’s barrel for firing. [1]

A common myth is that with no shielding or protection from either blast or radiation, a Davy Crockett crew would have been unlikely to survive any engagement, also claiming that the blast area of the warhead was greater than the range of the weapon. In fact, though the device could be fired to a dangerously short range by an inept crew, the maximum range of both versions is far longer than the distance at which dangerous direct radiation, thermal, shockwave/blast, or debris are likely to endanger the crew. At a range of as little as half of the maximum range for the 120mm version (1 kilometer) no immediate ill effects are likely.

Production of the Davy Crockett began in 1956. 2,100 were produced. The weapon was deployed with U.S. Army forces from 1961 to 1971.

Glad those days are behind us (and hopefully they stay that way).