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war was unlikely to break out with absolutely no warning, and they could be stationed at the border if tensions rose I have recalled where I first heard about
by bdunbar 15y ago
war was unlikely to break out with absolutely no warning, and they could be stationed at the border if tensions rose
I have recalled where I first heard about the Davy Crockett a - from Hackworth's memoir 'About Face'. Looked it up in google books to verify.
Per Hackworth, while the Crockett platoon leader in his battlegroup did not know where to obtain live rounds, they would have been procured in about two hours. (pg 413).
This seems like an amazingly short time to issue anything, even with Russian tanks coming over the border. But perhaps they expected to move a little faster in West Germany in the 60s.
- mikeash 15y agoI wonder if "did not know where to obtain live rounds" might have been a convenient fiction to placate people, like how the launch codes on ICBMs were set to 00000000 for decades so there wouldn't be any chance of them getting in the way of nuking the Russkies. Something like, "The live rounds for your weapons are definitely NOT housed in room 404 of the local armory, wink wink nudge nudge."
- bdunbar 15y agoTo me, re-reading that chapter, it's clear that the neither the platoon leader nor his immediate chain of command knew how to obtain atomic warheads at the time. Years later, the author met a key responsible for implementing the weapon who assured him of the two-hour metric. Of course ... the author is biased, it's a memoir, and at time a very selective one. Take it with a grain of salt. Hackworth was a lot of things but one thing he was above all else was very opinionated and sure of himself.