14 ms·

M65 Atomic Cannon

47 points by devicetray0 7y ago

h2odragon 7y ago
As always, the problem with antiquated arms is: you can't afford the ammunition. What a cool machine, and a goofy concept by modern lights. I'd love to go look at how that's actually built.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  You think that's crazy, you should see some of the other things the Army was working on at around the same time. At least the M65 could lob its atomic payload a respectable distance away from the people operating it. That wasn't as true of the "Davy Crockett" atomic rifle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_devic...), though, which could fire an extremely low-yield (equivalent to 10-20 tons of TNT) atomic warhead a distance of 1-2 miles, tops. That would probably have been far enough to avoid killing the operators of the weapon when it went off, though if the wind was blowing the wrong way they would have had some nasty exposure to radiation. And beyond even that was the so-called "Special Atomic Demolition Munition" (SADM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...), which used the same warhead as used on the Davy Crockett, only this time packed into a backpack (!). The idea was that a soldier would either hump the backpack to the target on foot or be air-dropped in with it, plant the backpack near a strategic target, set a detonation timer on it, and then run like hell. Foreign Policy magazine ran a good article about what it was like to be one of the guys tasked with this mission a few years back (https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/). Spoiler alert, it was kind of a stressful job.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Growing up in Germany it was weird to think if these weapons or similar ones were ever used it would probably mean that Germany and probably parts of Europe would be destroyed. Pretty scary.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I’m fairly sure that if these weapons are used then a lot more than Germany would be destroyed.
  - narag 7y ago
    That was a painful question. If soviet tanks had advanced through Europe, would the USA had responded with limited war or would had trigger the whole MAD thing? The answer wasn't as clear as with a ICBM attack, that was a much more irreversible decision.
    - madengr 7y ago
      FWIW the neutron bomb was developed for use against Soviet tanks.
    - DanCarvajal 7y ago
      The smaller tactical nukes were designed around the idea of being rapidly deploy-able area denial weapons to halt a Soviet land invasion.
    - simplicio 7y ago
      Note these were developed before MAD was really a thing. The Soviet nuclear arsenal in the early 50's was still pretty small, they had few bombers and ICBMs wouldn't be deployed till the end of the decade. On the other hand, they had a gigantic conventional army, and an obvious geographic advantage over the US in a convetional war fought in Europe. So US strategy was build around using their nuclear advantage to stop a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe before it could get out of Germany. Hence the development of tactical nuclear weapons like the M65, which seem bizarre to us today, as we're used to thinking about nuclear war in terms of MAD, but made sense (or at least, more sense) at the time.
  - jdblair 7y ago
    The M65 and the Davy Crocket were designed to stop a Soviet tank invasion through the Fulda Gap[1]. NATO knew the Soviet army had a numbers advantage. Tactical nukes were developed to stop a mechanized invasion with a smaller force. The idea was that a hot war could start and both sides would avoid the use of strategic nukes, since this would be a civilization ending event. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap
NateEag 7y ago
I was personally more astounded when I first discovered the Davy Crockett nuclear warhead recoilless rifle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devic... When I told my dad (who grew up in the Cold War) about the weapon, he said "Oh yeah, I had the toy model version." I'm often astonished any civilizations survived the Cold War.
- api 7y ago
  Even better is the name. What a good old cornpone American name for... just wow. The cold war does make me wonder about quantum immortality. Maybe consciousness just happens to exist here in a timeline where consciousness still exists.
  - sb057 7y ago
    Per Wikipedia: >Howze is credited with starting the convention of naming US Army helicopter types after Native American tribes, because he found the names suggested by the manufacturers too insipid. The Bell H-13, which had already been in service for some years, was renamed "Sioux" at his suggestion and the tradition continues to the present day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_H._Howze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_H._Howze
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  Yeah. No guidance, no nuclear codes for authorization, no way to abort the launch, nothing but a "handle with care" message on the nuke itself. The only reason humanity survived is nobody dared to actually use this stuff. They also made backpack nukes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device The USA also has chemical weapons stockpiles that haven't been fully destroyed to this day. The Honest John rocket could be fitted with sarin warheads: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_cluster_bomb.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_clus...
  - Animats 7y ago
jws 7y ago
If you are driving across Kansas on I-70 you can take a stop in Junction City at Freedom Park. It is right at the exit on the south side. A short climb up the hill past some other artillery gets you to the M65. It’s more or less targeting Salina which is a 20 minute drive down the interstate. You can get right up to it. And it hurled nuclear warheads a 20 minute drive down the interstate. Now that I double check the satellite photos, it isn’t so much aimed at Salina as Hope, which seems fitting.
sb057 7y ago
I found this footage of the first Chinese nuclear test astounding when it was posted on YouTube 13 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoHbBkUGSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoHbBkUGSQ
- jcims 7y ago
  This guy was achieving a peak that few of us will ever experience: https://youtu.be/9xoHbBkUGSQ?t=200 https://youtu.be/9xoHbBkUGSQ?t=200 The music in that video is incredible. I love the whole thing, haha.
- NamTaf 7y ago
  For the record, that's a segment from the documentary movie Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie [1]. It's an incredible documentary and I thoroughly recommend anyone interested in the development of atomic weapons finds a copy of it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond
miohtama 7y ago
Here is some good info about minimum payload (16kg) needed for fission http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-2.html http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-2.html
daveslash 7y ago
Heh, I was just reading up on this yesterday while doing some recreational research into atomic weapons testing in Nevada. Look on Google Maps here to see a thousand craters [0]. Turns out, they even give tours once a month [1]. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1496894,-116.0575635,3767m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1496894,-116.0575635,3767m/d... [1] https://www.nnss.gov/pages/PublicAffairsOutreach/NNSStours.html https://www.nnss.gov/pages/PublicAffairsOutreach/NNSStours.h...

47 points by devicetray0 7y ago

As always, the problem with antiquated arms is: you can't afford the ammunition. What a cool machine, and a goofy concept by modern lights. I'd love to go look at how that's actually built.

smacktoward 7y ago
You think that's crazy, you should see some of the other things the Army was working on at around the same time. At least the M65 could lob its atomic payload a respectable distance away from the people operating it. That wasn't as true of the "Davy Crockett" atomic rifle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_devic...), though, which could fire an extremely low-yield (equivalent to 10-20 tons of TNT) atomic warhead a distance of 1-2 miles, tops. That would probably have been far enough to avoid killing the operators of the weapon when it went off, though if the wind was blowing the wrong way they would have had some nasty exposure to radiation. And beyond even that was the so-called "Special Atomic Demolition Munition" (SADM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...), which used the same warhead as used on the Davy Crockett, only this time packed into a backpack (!). The idea was that a soldier would either hump the backpack to the target on foot or be air-dropped in with it, plant the backpack near a strategic target, set a detonation timer on it, and then run like hell. Foreign Policy magazine ran a good article about what it was like to be one of the guys tasked with this mission a few years back (https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/). Spoiler alert, it was kind of a stressful job.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

Growing up in Germany it was weird to think if these weapons or similar ones were ever used it would probably mean that Germany and probably parts of Europe would be destroyed. Pretty scary.

saagarjha 7y ago
I’m fairly sure that if these weapons are used then a lot more than Germany would be destroyed.
- narag 7y ago
  That was a painful question. If soviet tanks had advanced through Europe, would the USA had responded with limited war or would had trigger the whole MAD thing? The answer wasn't as clear as with a ICBM attack, that was a much more irreversible decision.
  - madengr 7y ago
    FWIW the neutron bomb was developed for use against Soviet tanks.
  - DanCarvajal 7y ago
    The smaller tactical nukes were designed around the idea of being rapidly deploy-able area denial weapons to halt a Soviet land invasion.
  - simplicio 7y ago
    Note these were developed before MAD was really a thing. The Soviet nuclear arsenal in the early 50's was still pretty small, they had few bombers and ICBMs wouldn't be deployed till the end of the decade. On the other hand, they had a gigantic conventional army, and an obvious geographic advantage over the US in a convetional war fought in Europe. So US strategy was build around using their nuclear advantage to stop a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe before it could get out of Germany. Hence the development of tactical nuclear weapons like the M65, which seem bizarre to us today, as we're used to thinking about nuclear war in terms of MAD, but made sense (or at least, more sense) at the time.
- jdblair 7y ago
  The M65 and the Davy Crocket were designed to stop a Soviet tank invasion through the Fulda Gap[1]. NATO knew the Soviet army had a numbers advantage. Tactical nukes were developed to stop a mechanized invasion with a smaller force. The idea was that a hot war could start and both sides would avoid the use of strategic nukes, since this would be a civilization ending event. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap

NateEag 7y ago

I was personally more astounded when I first discovered the Davy Crockett nuclear warhead recoilless rifle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devic... When I told my dad (who grew up in the Cold War) about the weapon, he said "Oh yeah, I had the toy model version." I'm often astonished any civilizations survived the Cold War.

api 7y ago
Even better is the name. What a good old cornpone American name for... just wow. The cold war does make me wonder about quantum immortality. Maybe consciousness just happens to exist here in a timeline where consciousness still exists.
- sb057 7y ago
  Per Wikipedia: >Howze is credited with starting the convention of naming US Army helicopter types after Native American tribes, because he found the names suggested by the manufacturers too insipid. The Bell H-13, which had already been in service for some years, was renamed "Sioux" at his suggestion and the tradition continues to the present day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_H._Howze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_H._Howze
matheusmoreira 7y ago
Yeah. No guidance, no nuclear codes for authorization, no way to abort the launch, nothing but a "handle with care" message on the nuke itself. The only reason humanity survived is nobody dared to actually use this stuff. They also made backpack nukes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device The USA also has chemical weapons stockpiles that haven't been fully destroyed to this day. The Honest John rocket could be fitted with sarin warheads: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_cluster_bomb.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_clus...
- Animats 7y ago

jws 7y ago

If you are driving across Kansas on I-70 you can take a stop in Junction City at Freedom Park. It is right at the exit on the south side. A short climb up the hill past some other artillery gets you to the M65. It’s more or less targeting Salina which is a 20 minute drive down the interstate. You can get right up to it. And it hurled nuclear warheads a 20 minute drive down the interstate. Now that I double check the satellite photos, it isn’t so much aimed at Salina as Hope, which seems fitting.

sb057 7y ago

I found this footage of the first Chinese nuclear test astounding when it was posted on YouTube 13 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoHbBkUGSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoHbBkUGSQ

jcims 7y ago
This guy was achieving a peak that few of us will ever experience: https://youtu.be/9xoHbBkUGSQ?t=200 https://youtu.be/9xoHbBkUGSQ?t=200 The music in that video is incredible. I love the whole thing, haha.
NamTaf 7y ago
For the record, that's a segment from the documentary movie Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie [1]. It's an incredible documentary and I thoroughly recommend anyone interested in the development of atomic weapons finds a copy of it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond

miohtama 7y ago

Here is some good info about minimum payload (16kg) needed for fission http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-2.html http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-2.html

daveslash 7y ago

Heh, I was just reading up on this yesterday while doing some recreational research into atomic weapons testing in Nevada. Look on Google Maps here to see a thousand craters [0]. Turns out, they even give tours once a month [1]. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1496894,-116.0575635,3767m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1496894,-116.0575635,3767m/d... [1] https://www.nnss.gov/pages/PublicAffairsOutreach/NNSStours.html https://www.nnss.gov/pages/PublicAffairsOutreach/NNSStours.h...