I had a neighbor who was a Davy Crockett crew member. He was my friend's Dad. He told us that in some configurations the kill radius was larger than the range. So if you fired it, it would kill you. They literally were trained to fire it and then drive away very fast.

Some notes on the doctrine around the use of the Davy Crockett: It was not actually expected to destroy tanks (although it was certainly capable of damaging them). Even with the hundreds of tanks they had, the Soviets were ultimately still limited by personnel: Tanks need fuel, munitions, repairs, and defense against infantry (which are actually more dangerous to tanks than other tanks), so they can't _just_ send tanks; they need to send all the necessary support personnel too. This is where the Davy Crockett comes in: The warhead detonates at a very low altitude, which limits its effective radius, but also causes it to irradiate soil and debris on the ground and toss it up into the air. This fallout is short-lived and doesn't spread very far, but it does make the area immediately around the blast lethally radioactive for 6 or 7 hours. This isn't of too much concern to personnel in a tank, especially one that is fully sealed and has an on-board oxygen supply, but the support personnel cannot safely pass through, which means the tanks should _also_ not pass through because they will run out of fuel or ammunition, and will not be able to get resupplied. The intended use case of the Davy Crockett was, in case of a sudden Soviet advance, to fire all of them more or less at the same time to create a radioactive wall between East and West that would stall the Soviets long enough for NATO to organize a defense and move into position. Nuclear command & control over a platoon-level weapon system did play a big role in its retirement (West German Defense Minister Franz Strauss tried to convince the United States to equip the Bundeswehr with it), especially since having it out there limited the ability to NATO to respond to attacks without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons, but an equal contributor to its removal from service (as well as the removal of nuclear artillery like Atomic Anne and other systems) was the introduction of the Polaris and Minuteman ballistic missiles in 1961. These came into service at the same time the Kennedy administration did, which pivoted away from the previous strategy of Massive Retaliation (which called for the deployment of the full nuclear arsenal at once) in favor of Flexible Response (which called for the deployment of the nuclear arsenal only in response to a incoming nuclear strike, and for non-nuclear arsenals otherwise). Lastly, there were significant advances being made in man-portable and airborne anti-tank weaponry that allowed for effective disablement of enemy tanks without needing to get so close. All of these combined meant there was simply no place in the evolving combat doctrine for the Davy Crockett, so it was retired to free up resources for use by other, more appropriate systems.

atomic annie was test fired once, then filled with lead. Now its at Fort Sill artillery school museum. I went to gunnery school there and atomic annie is baad!

American military mentality.... "Can we shoot this thing from some kind of gun?" .... "Sure, just how BIG of a gun do you want to use?"...."I don't know, something that you have to actually pull the trigger on."......"Okay, and the bullet you want to use?".... "A nuke."..... "Okay, give me a couple of days to arrange the range time to test it."

Can't go wrong either a TFE video🤣100% pure American awesomeness

you should watch Trinity and Beyond The Atom Bomb Movie, the best documentary on the US atom bomb tests

"Remember the Alamo."

How do you get by without speaking the language

He did a video 9n atomic annie.

😂😂 "He killed him a B'ar ( bear) when He was only THREE Davy, Davy Crockett!! 😊😊😊 I couldn't help it.

You shaved your mug again....looks good bro.! You look years younger and considerably less homeless....;))

The problem with TFE is he often exaggerates or oversimplifies things. Like he ended his video with: “America almost nuked the moon because it was losing the Space Race”. But that’s not why. America was winning the Space Race at the time and the nuclear tests on the moon were meant to test the effects of nuclear weapons in space. Not as TFE said “Because America was losing the Space Race”.

Lethality

Nuclear backpacks carried by Special Forces. Terrorists so jealous.

We used to have backpack nuclear weapons that allowed us to adjust the yield from the equivalent of from 10 to 1000 tons of TNT.

Wow we invent crazy crazy things and we are very good at doing it. I love it!

My uncle was a nuclear cannoneer in Germany!

Don’t stop the video too soon.

How are you looking younger and younger everyday! Lookin' good👍

Ahh yes. “the king of the wild frontier” I’m so sad we don’t still have these. and atomic Annie’s, plus the atomic shells for our BB’s like we used too…the atom is the way forward, the future. A better, brighter future.

@the_fat_electrician