Cooperation with evil - nuclear weapons

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Yeah, it was kind of a misbegotten concept. The idea was that they would fly a nuke into a swarm of Soviet bombers and take them all out with the burst. It was really not practical. The Air Force and Army went through a period where they were building nukes into everything they could think of. The Army had nuclear artillery for a while, another concept that wasn’t all that useful.

The US direction today makes a lot more sense. The emphasis is on accuracy, delivery tailored to the target and the minimum yield required to do the job.
 
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The Navy had nukes to kill enemy submarines.

As you said, nuclear everything.

I think it was Paul Wolfowitz who got anti-submarine and other nuclear weapons taken away from the Navy [except for submarine launched ICBM’s].

en.wikipedia.org

Paul Wolfowitz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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jfz178 said:
Same here, MPat. If you don’t find the information we can share enlightening because we don’t cite a revered source like Wikipedia, I guess you have made the choice to remain ignorant. FYI, you could verify most of this online if you wanted to, but I for one am no ones online research service.
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Yes, I would very much prefer to stay ignorant about anything close to legitimate state secrets on an allied country.

Do you really fail to see how enemy intelligence could find use in someone bragging about knowing state secrets to random strangers on the Internet? And how pointing to (let’s say) Wikipedia instead of personal experience is a security precaution?

Or that you are just as much of a random stranger to me as any editor of Wikipedia, and thus do not outrank them as an authoritative source?
MonteRCMS said:
The real problem is that the word “nuclear” scares the c*ap out of everyone.

Nuclear power qualifies as an item to scare everyone.
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Yes, that is unfortunate.
MonteRCMS said:
Is it permissible to use conventional explosives to destroy underground tunnel complexes?
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Um, why not? Of course, assuming that those “underground tunnel complexes” are legitimate military targets.

For that matter, why that addition “conventional explosives”? Yes, it would be OK to use nuclear weapons there, if they would actually do the job.
MonteRCMS said:
There are criticisms of the use of nuclear weapons on population centers.

But far more people were killed by the use of non-nuclear weapons.
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Yes, the sin and a war crime (and, usually, a stupid strategy) is deliberate targeting of civilians, not use of nuclear weapons.
Seeksadvice said:
Nuclear weaponry is a choice of balances. When we hit Japan in WWII, there was a choice of nuking a couple of cities to get their attention or doing an all-out assault with casualties approaching staggering levels.
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Or of wholehearted support for Nationalist China, leaving organising something like “Strategic Manchurian Offensive Operation” for them instead of USSR.

Or, if all options were so terrible, as they are sometimes painted, of unconditional surrender. 🙂
 
MPat said:
Do you really fail to see how enemy intelligence could find use in someone bragging about knowing state secrets to random strangers on the Internet? And how pointing to (let’s say) Wikipedia instead of personal experience is a security precaution?
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Another training I had in the Navy was extensive OPSEC (Operational Security) school. I know what I can say and what I can’t. I also know how foreign intelligence gets information. None of what I said here violates that. You are speculating based on what? What you think you know through TV and movies? You are way off base.
 
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As a student of history, a few points:

A study was undertaken to determine the effects of dropping nuclear weapons on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The conclusion: It would delay the transport of enemy supplies by two to four weeks.

The mining of the harbor at Haiphong was proposed but not carried out.

A fighter-bomber was fitted with a nuclear bomb. Target: Hanoi. The mission was cancelled.

Recently, the Commander in charge of the Gulf of Tonkin where the alleged “incident” occurred that caused the “war with US advisors” to turn into full-scale US troop deployments was asked what happened. “Absolutely nothing.”

President Johnson pushed The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress but the war in Vietnam was officially undeclared.

The Pentagon had the chance to try out many new toys during the conflict.
 
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You are not including the effects of Agent Orange on civilians and our own troops at the time. Yes, a very small warhead was successfully tested in 1953. The Atomic Cannon was also fielded in 1953 in Europe and South Korea and was not withdrawn until 1963.
 
The mining of Haiphong Harbor WAS in fact carried out:

en.wikipedia.org

Operation Pocket Money - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

On 9 May 1972, a Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star made an early morning launch from Da Nang Air Base to support the operation. USS Kitty Hawk launched seventeen aircraft for a diversionary airstrike against the Nam Dinh railroad siding. The Kitty Hawk airstrike found bad weather over the primary target and struck the secondary targets of Thanh at 08:40 and Phu Qui at 08:45.[6]

At daylight on the 9th, a destroyer force struck the Haiphong Harbor air defense batteries with a 30-minute bombardment from their 5-inch (127mm) guns, which preceded the aerial mining. The strike force was commanded by Captain Robert Pace, who succeeded Admiral Robinson, and consisted of the USS Richard S. Edwards, Berkeley, Buchanan, and Myles C. Fox.

The VMA-224 A-6A Intruders left Coral Sea at 08:40 with A-7E Corsairs from VA-22 and VA-94 and a single EKA-3B Skywarrior for electronic countermeasures support.[6] Chicago set general quarters at 08:40, and within minutes launched two Talos missiles at two MiGs in a holding pattern awaiting air control vectors on the approaching bombers. One MiG was destroyed.[3]

Coral Sea bombers began releasing mines at 08:59. Sheets radioed the carrier at 09:01 to verify the mines were in the water. Coral Sea forwarded the message to the White House where President Nixon was speaking. Nixon had been speaking slowly to avoid jeopardizing the mission; but upon receiving the message he stated:

I have ordered the following measures, which are being implemented as I am speaking to you. All entrances to North Vietnamese ports will be mined to prevent access to these ports and North Vietnamese naval operations from these ports. United States forces have been directed to take appropriate measures within the international and claimed territorial waters of North Vietnam to interdict the delivery of supplies. Rail and all communications will be cut off to the maximum extent possible. Air and naval strikes against North Vietnam will continue."[7]

Additional mining missions began on 11 May. By the end of the year Navy and Marine Corps bombers had dropped more than eight thousand mines in North Vietnamese coastal waters and three thousand in inland waterways.[8]
 
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https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m65.htm

excerpt:

A single test shot was fired seven miles at the Nevada Test site at 8:30am, local time, on May 25, 1953. A 15-kiloton test fired from a 280-mm cannon at the Nevada Proving Grounds. Conducted at Frenchman’s Flat, Nevada, the Atomic Cannon test was history’s first atomic artillery shell fired from the Army’s new 280-mm artillery gun. Operation Upshot-Knothole consisted of 11 atmospheric detonations, took place at the Nevada Test Site in 1953. There were three airdrops, seven tower shots and one warhead fired from an atomic cannon. An experiment in this testing was to determine the effects of a nuclear explosion on a B-50 aircraft. About 21,000 military personnel participated in Upshot-Knothole as part of the Desert Rock V exercise.

Views differ on Ike’s nuclear threats in early 1953- for example, Maurice Matloff, in American Military History, who saw a general threat being offered to Moscow and Pyongyang, North Korea; Burton I. Kaufman, in The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command, who saw no direct threat being made to China; and Timothy J. Botti, in Ace in the Hole: Why the United States Did Not Use Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War, 1945 to 1965, who saw increased Chinese flexibility at Panmunjom, North Korea, as being “probably influenced by rumors that the administration had let circulate around the Far East that the U.S. was stationing more atomic bombers in Okinawa.” Others saw the stately and visible progress of an atomic cannon across the Pacific as a crucial influence.
 
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The first atomic cannon went into service in 1952, and was deactivated in 1963. Throughout the 1950s, the Army deployed nuclear cannons to Europe even though they were obsolete as soon as they arrived. Guarded by infantry platoons, these guns were hauled around the forests on trucks to keep the Soviets from guessing their location. Weighing 83 tons, the cannon could not be airlifted and took two tractors to move its road-bound bulk. It was a glamorous weapon to be sure, but it did not fit into the Pentomic structure of the Army, and it siphoned off precious funding that the Army desperately needed for modernization.

In June 1995, a veteran testified at a personal hearing on service connection for hearing loss that he worked for three months on a nuclear or atomic cannon when he was in the service and they fired the cannon for three months, every working day and approximately three to four hours a day at five minute intervals. The veteran indicated that he was never given ear protection during service. He stated that he received medical treatment during service and was told that his hearing loss and tinnitus “would resolve themselves.” The veteran further stated that he has had a “tremendous ringing in both of [his] ears” that “impairs [his] hearing” since service

Twenty were manufactured; eight appear to have survived the Cold War and are on public display today.

Army Ordnance Museum, Aberdeen, Maryland (still has the two large “prime movers” attached)
Atomic Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Fort Sill Museum, Oklahoma
Freedom Park, Junction City, Kansas
Rock Island Arsenal, Memorial Field, Rock Island, Illinois
Virginia War Memorial Museum, Newport News, Virginia
Watervliet Arsenal, Watervliet, NY – where they were all manufactured.
Yuma Proving Ground, Yuma, Arizona

Weighing 85 tons, it required two tractors to move it and was so unwieldy that it could take an hour of careful maneuvering to get it under a bridge. Its instability and propensity to slide or tip when maneuvered on anything but firm and level ground earned it the nickname the “Widow Maker." To complicate the Army’s problems further, the gun was very unpopular among Europeans. Within 2 years it had been surpassed by other weapons, and was taken out of service within a decade.

There are arguments over the value of the atomic cannon, especially in regard to range, but General Collins believed the threat of its deployment had a role in bringing about the Korean armistice and did not doubt the presence in Europe “of our nuclear guns has contributed greatly as a deterrent to any offensive by the Soviets.”
 
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So where do you stand on historical use, such as Hiroshima, for which the US has not apologised?
 
One anecdote is that the M65 atomic cannon was ordered shipped to Korea by then President Eisenhower to serve as a warning to North Korea.

The orders were transmitted in the clear so that they could be easily intercepted by the Russians and the Chinese.

Accompanying the atomic cannon was a bombardment by USAF B-29 bombers using anti-personnel bombs to harass Chinese troops encamped in the open.

As a result, the cease fire between North Korea and South Korea went into effect.

The Korean Armistice Agreement is the armistice which serves to ensure a complete cessation of hostilities of the Korean War. It was signed by U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Harrison, Jr. representing the United Nations Command (UNC), North Korean General Nam Il representing the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA).[1] The armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
 
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My experience would have no bearing on that. That attack was a surprise and the world had no frame of reference for nukes then, so there was no up front deterrent there. Heck, the US wasn’t even sure if they would work, or if they did, how well they would work. And the flight crews only had a vague idea of how powerful the weapons would be. Also, the Hiroshima bomb was only about 15-20 kt. The ones I handled, and this public knowledge, went up to 9,000 kt. Heck, we recently used a MOAB in Afghanistan that yields 11 kt and it is conventional, not nuke. So it’s a completely different frame of reference.

But my personal opinion is that the use of nukes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was terrible, but appropriate. I don’t believe the US should apologize for it. I believe they saved a lot of American lives, and even probably a lot of Japanese lives, by shortening the war.

I also believe, and this is based on training and experience, is that if nukes had not been used then, the 50 or so years we had of restraint of nuke use, known as Mutually Assured Destruction, would not have been possible. MAD was based on the deterrent provided by the horror of the Japanese bombs. If we hadn’t used nukes when we did, the USSR would have been emboldened to use them at some point. And the early bombs the USSR produced were huge. The Tsar Bomba was the largest nuke ever made, much larger than anything the US has ever made. It’s one test yielded 50,000 kt and reportedly there was an option to boost it to 100,000 kt. That would have been very, very. bad.
 
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Thank you for the additional information. My interest in Vietnam ends at 1970. Troop withdrawals had begun in 1969 and it turns out the mining was meant to coincide with a speech by President Nixon. They were used as a bargaining chip during the Paris Peace Talks. A total of 15 withdrawals were announced, leaving 27,000 US troops in Vietnam by November 1972. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.
 
Thank you for your unique insight. I’ve learned a lot. It’s not often you get to hear from someone so closely involved with the deployment of what is probably man’s worst idea since hydrogen blimps.
 
jfz178 said:
Another training I had in the Navy was extensive OPSEC (Operational Security) school. I know what I can say and what I can’t. I also know how foreign intelligence gets information. None of what I said here violates that. You are speculating based on what? What you think you know through TV and movies? You are way off base.
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No, based on common sense one gets from living in a territory that was controlled by a totalitarian regime not too long ago.

Please, be more careful next time.
 
After 20 years of studying the use of the bombs in 1945, and multi-hundreds of posts on it, on the old board, I can affirm your attitude is correct. Details are multitudinous, but the conclusion is as stated.
 
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