Host: The M388 Battlefield Tactical Nuke nicknamed the "Atomic Watermelon", was launched from the rather ironically named "Davy Crockett" Recoilless Rifle!

It was tactical, but it wasn't precise.

The name I still find ironic that they named it after somebody that was very good with a rifle!

The advent of nuclear weapons near the end of the Second World War changed global politics and warfare forever.

When Fat Man and Little Boy were unleashed over Japan, one war ended, but a new war was ushered in: The Cold War.

The East and West alike ramped up arms production and military strength, which included the development of more powerful atomic weaponry.

In the nuclear world however, bigger was not always better.

Nuclear weapons are highly destructive, and American leaders sought means of minimizing damage while still packing that atomic punch.

I'm your host, Andrew Davis.

For this episode of Curiosity Trek!, We're staying in Columbia, the capital city of South Carolina to take a look at a peculiar piece of military hardware on display at the South Carolina Military Museum: The M28 "Davy Crockett" Recoilless Rifle and its payload: the M388 nuclear bomb.

A big boom in a tiny package!

The South Carolina Military Museum's own Heather McPherson and Saddler Taylor join us to unveil the explosive history behind this Cold War relic.

My name is Heather McPherson.

I'm the Curator of Collections at the SC Military Museum.

My name is Saddler Taylor, and I'm the Executive Director of the SC Military Museum.

Thanks for joining us today, Heather!

Thanks for having us.

Now, who designed or manufactured this "Davy Crockett" weapon system?

So as you can see, it's kind of two different components.

So the warhead itself was created and developed by the Atomic Energy Commission, while the recoilless rifle weapon system was designed by the Army's Ordnance Corps.

The warhead was developed in 1957, while the "Davy Crockett" was kind of a prototype weapon system a year later.

Now, when you combine the two they were in service from 1961 to 1971 so about a decade.

The "Davy Crockett" was exclusively used by the U.S. Army.

It was not used in combat, not used in battle, but it was deployed to a few areas like West Germany, Okinawa, South Korea... and it was never actually live fired except in testing in Nevada.

So only two live warheads actually fired from it.

Host: Despite the deadly effects of this atomic payload, Army personnel humorously dubbed the M388 with the nickname the "Atomic Watermelon"!

Well as you can see it's kind of an oblong projectile, so the nuclear warhead is inside of this but the soldiers thought it looked really funny and kind of like a watermelon.

So they decided to name it the "Atomic Watermelon" because of the shape of the projectile.

Host: That covers the payload, but what about the launcher itself?

Why was the M28 named after the famous American frontiersman?

Heather: Davy Crockett was a tough American frontiersman and there was a kind of an old, tall tale about him wrestling a grizzly bear.

And during the time the "Davy Crockett" was being developed the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a bear and America was Uncle Sam or an eagle.

So they might have named the "Davy Crockett" after him, kind of as that fight against the bear, a.k.a.

the Soviet Union.

Host: Speaking of fighting the bear relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were tense during the Cold War.

The "Davy Crockett" launcher and its M388 warhead was one of many weapon systems developed as a deterrent to the spread of communism.

This "Red Scare" was viewed to be a very real threat.

Saddler Taylor: The "Davy Crockett", the Mike 28 or Mike 29, is a direct result of the arms race and the onset of the Cold War post Korea.

Try to take yourself back to the mid 50s, and the United States was very concerned about Russia essentially taking over Europe.

All signs pointed to Russia doing that.

That was their stated objective was to spread communism throughout Europe and really by proxy world.

But Eisenhower, interestingly, he saw great value in tactical level nuclear capability, really for two reasons:.

one was to counter that Soviet threat, that spread of communism kind of the big picture, and the smaller picture was he saw great value in doing something that was cost effective and more important: tactical in that it would limit the amount of collateral damage.

He wanted the U.S. to have an arsenal that had strategic level nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but he saw great value in tactical level weapons systems, which is what "Davy Crockett" is.

So and that was largely, a way to limit the highly destructive nature of large scale nuclear weapons.

Host: Now that we know why this weapon was created... How did it work?

So they were very mobile, they could be manned by a 3 person crew.

It could be either deployed like this, on a tripod that people would carry around with them, or more commonly, it was put on the back of a Jeep.

It is a fission bomb very similar to the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Much smaller, obviously.

Think of it in the equivalency of TNT: it's about 10 to 20 tons.

The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima was about 16,000 tons equivalent of TNT.

It's considered a tactical nuclear warhead as opposed to a strategic nuclear warhead.

So it typically had the blast radius was about 500 feet.

That would level a building or anything standing within 500ft, it would level it.

Then out at about 1000ft was the radiation dispersion area.

You see all the sight assembly here that was all analogs, no digital technology.

What we would call a Fire Direction Center in an artillery unit, they would get coordinates; has personnel that take that data, do math, there's math involved.

So you would do those calculations and that would give you your sight data.

And then you would enter that sight data into this sight: direction, elevation, quadrant.

That's going to send that projectile generally where it needs to go.

Host: The "Davy Crockett" was only in service around ten years.

What factors led to its retirement?

It's ironic that it was named the "Davy Crockett" because Davy Crockett was known for his marksmanship, right?

He could shoot a squirrel out of a tree at 300 yards.

But this "Davy Crockett" was not accurate.

It was mainly an issue with accuracy as why it was kind of tabled.

We live in an age of digital technology precision weapon systems.

Two things that this was not that largely led to its demise.

So in the grand scheme of things, it had a real small, real short service history.

Knowing what we know about atomic dynamics now, I don't think it's a crew that many people would volunteer for.

Nowadays we think, well, who would want to be on that crew that's shooting a nuclear warhead and the range is only 1.7 kilometers?

Host: Although the "Davy Crockett" and the "Atomic Watermelon" are considered novelties compared to the weapons of today, we hope you had a blast learning about this piece of Cold War weapon tech!

There are still so many things left to see in the Palmetto State!

Join us next time on Curiosity Trek!