The world was ushered
into a new age when the United States brought the Second World War II to an
abrupt end when it brought Japan to its knees utilizing a new weapon of
warfare. When the two atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
in August of 1945 the world was brought into the nuclear age. The awesome
destructuve power of these weapons could reduce one sprawling metropolises to
desolate sprawls of twisted metal and ash and completely vaporizing the
inhabitants. The United States maintained this nuclear edge until 29 August
1949 when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb designated RDS-1 and
dubbed 'First Lightning'. The bomb was similar in appearance and construction
to the American 'Fat Man' atomic bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan. It
wouldn't be until 1951 however, that the Soviet Union would explode their first
aerially delivered atomic bomb.
As the smoke of the
Second World War began to dissipate in the late 1940s and a growing distrust of
once former allies began to shape the political divisions of the World, the Americans began developing its arsenal
for preparations for a new potential war with the Soviet Union. With Soviet
armies positioned across eastern Europe and across Asia, the clashes of
democracy and communism were inevitable.
In 1949, the United
States Army tasked the military research and manufacturing facility of Picatinny Arsenal located in New Jersey to
develop an artillery piece capable of firing nuclear projectiles. At the time
maximum shell caliber available that Arsenal produced was the 240mm artillery
shell. The new artillery piece was initially drawn up by an engineer named
Robert Schwartz, with design influences coming from the Krupp K5 283mm railway
guns employed by the Nazi Wehrmacht in World War II. Two of these massive
weapons nicknamed 'Anzio Annie' and 'Anzio Express' by allied forces shelled
the allied Anzio beach head during Operation Shingle, the amphibious landings
in Italy. The guns were shipped to Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland where
they were tested and evaluated. It is likely that the name 'Atomic Annie' was
derived from the German gun 'Anzio Annie'.
The gun design was
approved by the Pentagon with the influence of the Chief of the Ballistics
Section of the Army Ordnance Department's Research and Development Division,
Mr. Samuel Feltman. It was during this time frame of the development of the new
weapon was in effect that the Soviets caught the Americans by surprise and
detonated RDS-1 in Semipalatinsk, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. From
the approval of the design by the Pentagon, the weapon entered a three year
development period and progressed well enough that a production model of the
new weapon would be avaibable for the inaugural parade of the 34th President of
the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower of course was a retired
five star General in the United States Army who had been the Supreme Commander
of Allied Forces in Europe and the first Supreme Commander of NATO Forces in
Europe.
The cannon was
designed to be transported by two specially designed tractors each one capable
of independent steering similar to some types of fire engines. The tractors
were capable of utilizing 375 horsepower and when operated in conjunction with
one another could achieve a speed of 35 miles per hour. The gun was designed to
be able to be unloaded and positioned in a span of 15 minutes as well as being
reconfigured for transportation again in a matter of 15 minutes.
The first
demonstration firing of the 'Atomic Annie' occurred on 25 May 1953 in a
hydrographic basin or dry lake bed of the Nevada Desert known as Frenchman Flat
at the Nevada Test Site. The demonstration was part of Operation
Upshot-Knothole, a series of eleven nuclear test shots by varying yield nuclear
artillery in conjunction with 21,000 soldiers conducting the field exercise
Desert Rock V. The first firing of the Atomic Annie designated as 'Grable'
possibly after actress and pin up model Betty Grable was attended by Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur W. Radford and the Secretary of
Defense Charles E. Wilson. The gun was fired successfully launching a 15
kiloton W9 nuclear artillery shell a range of 7 miles. The Grable shot exploded
at a height of 500 feet above the ground and was to be the first and only
nuclear projectile to be fired from a cannon by the United States.
The site of the
detonation had been prepared for the demonstration, with trees being
transplanted into the area, buildings and building serected, vehicles scattered
and other equipment placed at varying distances from the initial point of
impact to study the amount of damage inflicted. Prior to the Grable shot,
seventeen days earlier a similar nuclear projectile known as Encore shot, a 27
kiloton device exploded in the Frenchman Flat area at a height of 2,800 feet.
Although the yield of the Grable shot was half that of the Encore shot, Grable
inflicted much more damage than Encore due to the abnormal destructive waveform
emitted from the round that would come to be known as a 'Precursor'. A
Precursor is a strong dynamic wind caused by an artillery projectile's oblique
angle of approach and high horizontal speed . The nuclear explosion then
essentially inherits the projectile's forward momentum which plows across the landscape
and adds extensive drag damage to the already awesome destruction of the
nuclear envelope. In one example, a jeep that had been untouched by the
powerful Encore shot was nearly completely destroyed by the Grable shot and was
thrown a distance of 500 feet from its initial point of origin.
With the success of
the initial 'Atomic Annie' 280mm gun, the United States Army accepted delivery of 20
of the weapons manufactured at Watervliet Arsenal in New York and Watertown
Arsenal in Massachusetts at a cost of $800,000 per gun. These guns were
deployed to Army forces in Europe and South Korea. One of these units was the
United States Army's 2nd Armored Division in Baumholder, West Germany. The
weapon's ability to fire a conventional or nuclear shell a distance of nearly
twenty miles made it a formidable indirect fire weapon. The weapons were often
continuously relocated from position to position to avoid detection and
targeting from enemy forces. Soon after their employment, the Atomic Annie was
rendered obsolete. The weapon's limited
range, the size of the weapon including it's transportation equipment, the
development of nuclear projectiles capable of being fired from standard field
howitzers and the development of rocket and missile mounted nuclear weapons put
the final nail in the coffin for the service life of the cannon designated M65
in United States Army service.
The weapon
nonetheless remained a symbol of prestige to the United States Army and was not
retired from service until 1963.
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