Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
Speaker 1: death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that
Speaker 1: made them possible. Now let's get started.
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Speaker 2: or paperback on Amazon. We look at an interesting story today.
Speaker 2: Upcoming weeks we're going to have over a half a
Speaker 2: dozen interviews that we've done with Special Forces. But today
Speaker 2: we bring you this week an interesting story that I
Speaker 2: read about the Green Berets who parachuted with nuclear bombs
Speaker 2: strapped to them for US Special operations personnel connecting high
Speaker 2: altitude parachute jumps are pretty much par for the course,
Speaker 2: But what about doing it with a nuclear bomb strapped
Speaker 2: between your legs. Well, now you're on a different level.
Speaker 2: But a US Army Special Forces paratrooper is pictured free
Speaker 2: falling during a training exercise with a special atomic demolition
Speaker 2: munition or say DM, a form of automatic demolition munition.
Speaker 2: Eight ms were man portable nuclear weapons, also known as
Speaker 2: backpack nukes. These munitions were fitted into specifically or especially
Speaker 2: designed hard cloth carrying cases for the transportation on the
Speaker 2: backs or between the legs with special operators. The sadms
Speaker 2: weighed in the region of about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: pounds with their warheads, the W fifty four contributing around
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty five pounds. Saad ems were extremely small,
Speaker 2: about twenty four inches long and about sixteen inches wide.
Speaker 2: But why would a special operation personnel train with these?
Speaker 2: In order to unpack the question, we need to look
Speaker 2: back about seventy years. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty five, well imparted a level of devastation
Speaker 2: never before seen, and of course, a few years later,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union Dead named it his first atomic bomb
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty nine. While the US military conducted further
Speaker 2: tests of such weapons into the early part of the
Speaker 2: Cold War, a broader view emerged the smaller nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: for limited tactical purposes would likely prove critical for operations
Speaker 2: on the ground in future conflicts. Indeed, the idea of
Speaker 2: using tactical nuclear weapons and a possible conflict involving the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union became an important component of President Eisenhower's new look.
Speaker 2: As such, scientists and technicians at Los Alamos nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: Laws began shrinking the size of the warheads. The US
Speaker 2: Army was making news as well to acquire different sorts
Speaker 2: of battlefield nuclear weapons. Roy coil less guns which fired
Speaker 2: nuclear oreheads they call it the davy crocket which fired
Speaker 2: nuclear oriheads with a yield of roughly ten to twenty
Speaker 2: tons of TNT, were part of the purchases. Part of
Speaker 2: the push towards fielding and broad a range of nukes
Speaker 2: by the Army included the development of atomic demolition munitions.
Speaker 2: While we've been talking about the eight MS, they were
Speaker 2: designed to be used on overlow the ground surface against
Speaker 2: specific targets to block and deny enemy forces. The initial
Speaker 2: objective of adms was to manage nuclear landscaping, creating great
Speaker 2: craters or destroying mountain sides that could obstruct enemy forces.
Speaker 2: The munitions first entered the US Army arsenal And around
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four, with one of the first EIGHTM tests
Speaker 2: taking place during Operation Teapot, part of a series of
Speaker 2: nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site. During said tests,
Speaker 2: an eight thousand pound eight AM with a yield of
Speaker 2: one point two kilotones was detonated, creating a crater three
Speaker 2: hundred feet wide and one hundred and twenty feet deep.
Speaker 2: A whole family of adms was developed, as included the
Speaker 2: tactical ad atomic demolition munition sporting a W three W
Speaker 2: W thirty warhead. The TDM TAADMS, weighed around eight hundred pounds,
Speaker 2: is a complete system and around three hundred produced between
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty six. Then they eventually
Speaker 2: got to a much lighter version, man portable ADM. The
Speaker 2: Army ended up producing around three hundred sadms between sixty
Speaker 2: four to sixty six. Production on an interim W fifty
Speaker 2: four Mod zero weapon started in April nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: At the heart of the SADM system was the W
Speaker 2: fifty four tactical nuclear warhead with W fifty four was
Speaker 2: developed in the late fifties by a man named Lawrence
Speaker 2: Livermore National Laboratory onto early nineteen fifty nine and thereafter
Speaker 2: by the Los Alamos National Lab. Compared to the heavier ones,
Speaker 2: the Army envisioned these lightweight saadms could more easily be
Speaker 2: used tactically for operations behind enemy lines. In this sense,
Speaker 2: the munitions would be used to frustrate enemy forces by
Speaker 2: blowing up fortified structures, tunnels, mountain passes, and viaducts. Along
Speaker 2: alongside the deployment via land or sea, sadms were also
Speaker 2: designed to be sent behind enemy lines from the air
Speaker 2: with two man parachute teams. One individual carrying of the
Speaker 2: disassembled weapon in a big bag made of canvas, will
Speaker 2: descend the target points before setting up the device's explosive timer.
Speaker 2: Owing to the US's nuclear doctrine dictating that no single
Speaker 2: person ever have the means to employ a nuclear weapon
Speaker 2: on their own, teams of at least two would accompany
Speaker 2: the bomb, so the detonation code would be split between
Speaker 2: two special operators. The idea of using special forces known
Speaker 2: as green Light units to transport these ad ms behind
Speaker 2: enemy lines had stretched red roots, stretching back to nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six special ops units to harass and frustrate the
Speaker 2: enemy with the purpose of their mission. It kind of
Speaker 2: coordinates with the historical origins of the special forces in
Speaker 2: the Army in the nineteen fifties. It was envisaged as
Speaker 2: the elite units would stay behind in rear areas to
Speaker 2: target enemy forces and even mobilize local resistance. However, the
Speaker 2: early eighty ms were too large and heavy to be
Speaker 2: carried by one man or two, and so the production
Speaker 2: of savms moved the concept along quickly. To be selected
Speaker 2: for the green Lights was a rare and highly secret thing.
Speaker 2: In a book written by Annie Jacobson's Surprise Kill Vanish
Speaker 2: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators and Assassins,
Speaker 2: green Lights personnels were pulled from Army Special Forces, Navy
Speaker 2: Seal units. In the Marines. Units worked under pseudonyms and
Speaker 2: were fatigues with no markings exigned. Insignia training involved learning
Speaker 2: infiltration techniques including parachute launches and wet deck submarine launches. Overall,
Speaker 2: the instruction of green Light units took a place over
Speaker 2: the course of a week, consisting eight to twelve hours
Speaker 2: a day of training. Parachute missions involving sadms were performed
Speaker 2: over the sea as well as over land during the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies in order to train for their potential
Speaker 2: detonation overseas. In nineteen seventy two, green Line units parachuting
Speaker 2: near the White Mountain National Forests in New Hampshire. The
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons used was the training dummy. Navy seals also
Speaker 2: performed underwater training with them. Moreover, drills with the sad
Speaker 2: ms also occurred outside the US and the Bavarian Alps.
Speaker 2: Timing was everything. Billy Waugh, you probably heard of him,
Speaker 2: recalls of his time with the green Lights and the
Speaker 2: book Surprise Killing Vanished. You had to jump quickly. You
Speaker 2: couldn't afford to be spread out when you landed on
Speaker 2: the ground. Indeed, the jumper's rigging was designed in such
Speaker 2: a way that the nuclear component would fall to the
Speaker 2: end of the seventeen foot long lowering line once outside
Speaker 2: of the aircraft. Once the SADM were fixed in place,
Speaker 2: and that nation charges triggered, green Light personnel needed to
Speaker 2: retreat to a safe location to avoid being caught in
Speaker 2: the explosion. This would have been a difficult task given
Speaker 2: that the timers could not be relied on for complete accuracy.
Speaker 2: As Army field manuals from the time indicated, it was
Speaker 2: not possible to state that SADM would fire at a
Speaker 2: specific time. Furthermore, there was also the fact that green
Speaker 2: light teams would also have had to make their way
Speaker 2: out of enemy territory once the munition was detonated. According
Speaker 2: to Bill Flavin, who commanded a Special Forces SADA team
Speaker 2: during the Cold War, there were real issues with the
Speaker 2: operational wisdom of the program. Sadms, in the long run,
Speaker 2: were never used in foreign soil during the Cold War.
Speaker 2: Those realities were thankfully never realized. That the US military
Speaker 2: was training Special Forces personnel to transport nuclear weapons personally
Speaker 2: behind enemy lines gained wider traction publicly in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four thanks to an ex Army intelligence officer, William Markt,
Speaker 2: and colleagues when they presented sketches and descriptions of the
Speaker 2: mission or of the sabms. Really From there, the weapon
Speaker 2: was slowly phased out and was officially retired in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine. So was it true that special forces jumped
Speaker 2: out with nuclear weapons? Well, yes and no. They were
Speaker 2: planned to do it. They never did it with an
Speaker 2: actual nuke, and they never did it on foreign soil.
Speaker 2: But they were designing it to be that way, and
Speaker 2: they had created a scenario for them to be able
Speaker 2: to do it, but it never came through fruition.
Speaker 1: That's it for now.