Speaker 1: Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators podcast. Listen to
Speaker 1: some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet
Speaker 1: share their stories. Sit back and enjoy.
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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 conducting 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 specially
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. Saa 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, it imparted a level of
Speaker 2: devastation never before seen, and of course, a few years later,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union de NATed 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 overheads 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 aightms, they were designed
Speaker 2: to be used on over below 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 pounds eight AM with a yield of
Speaker 2: one point two kilo tones was detonated, creating a crater
Speaker 2: three 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. W fifty four was developed
Speaker 2: in the late fifties by a man named Lawrence Livermore
Speaker 2: National Laboratory onto early nineteen fifty nine and thereafter by
Speaker 2: the lowest alamost National lab Compared to the heavier ones,
Speaker 2: the Army envisioned, these lightweight saadms can more easily be
Speaker 2: used tactically for operations behind enemy lines. In this sense,
Speaker 2: the munitions would be used for 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. SAA and ems
Speaker 2: were also designed to be sent behind enemy lines from
Speaker 2: the air with two man parachute teams. One individual carrying
Speaker 2: the disassembled weapon in a big bag made of canvas,
Speaker 2: will descend to target points before setting up the devices
Speaker 2: explosive timer. Owing to the US's nuclear doctrine dictating that
Speaker 2: no single person ever have the means to employ a
Speaker 2: nuclear weapon on their own, teams of at least two
Speaker 2: would accompany the bomb, so the detonation code would be
Speaker 2: split between two special operators. The idea of using special
Speaker 2: forces known as green Light units to transport these ad
Speaker 2: ms behind enemy lines had stretched red roots, stretching back
Speaker 2: to nineteen fifty six special ops units to harass and
Speaker 2: frustrate the enemy with the purpose of their mission. It
Speaker 2: kind of coordinates with the historical origins of the special
Speaker 2: forces in the Army in the nineteen fifties. It was
Speaker 2: envisaged as the elite units would stay behind in rear
Speaker 2: areas to target enemy forces and even mobilize local resistance. However,
Speaker 2: the early eighty ms were too large and heavy to
Speaker 2: be carried by one man or two, and so the
Speaker 2: production of savm's moved the concept along quickly. To be
Speaker 2: selected for the green Lights was a rare and highly
Speaker 2: secret thing. In a book written by Annie Jacobson's Surprise
Speaker 2: Kill Vanish The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators
Speaker 2: and Assassins, green Lights personnels were pulled from Army Special Forces,
Speaker 2: Navy Seal units in the Marines. Units worked under pseudonyms
Speaker 2: and were fatigues with no markings signed insignia. Training involved
Speaker 2: learning 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 SAMs
Speaker 2: also occurred outside the US and the Bavarian Alps. Timing
Speaker 2: was everything. Billy Waugh you probably heard of him, recalls
Speaker 2: of his time with the green Lights in the book
Speaker 2: Surprise Killing Vanished. You had to jump quickly. You couldn't
Speaker 2: afford to be spread out when you landed on the ground. Indeed,
Speaker 2: the jumper's rigging was designed in such a way that
Speaker 2: the nuclear component would fall to the end of the
Speaker 2: seventeen foot long lowering line once outside of the aircraft.
Speaker 2: Once the SADM were fixed in place and that nation
Speaker 2: charges triggered, green Light personnel needed to retreat to a
Speaker 2: safe location to avoid being caught in the explosion. This
Speaker 2: would have been a difficult task given that the timers
Speaker 2: could not be relied on for complete accuracy. As Army
Speaker 2: field manuals from the time indicated, it was not possible
Speaker 2: to state that SADM would fire at a specific time. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: there was also the fact that green light teams would
Speaker 2: also have had to make their way out of enemy
Speaker 2: territory once the munition was detonated. According to Bill Flavin,
Speaker 2: who commanded a Special Forces SADA team during the Cold War,
Speaker 2: there were real issues with the operational wisdom of the program. Sadms,
Speaker 2: in the long run, were never used in foreign soil
Speaker 2: during the Cold War, those realities were thankfully never realized.
Speaker 2: That the US military was training Special Forces personnel to
Speaker 2: transport nuclear weapons personally behind enemy lines gained wider traction
Speaker 2: publicly in nineteen eighty four thanks to an ex Army
Speaker 2: intelligence officer, William Markt, and colleagues when they presented sketches
Speaker 2: and descriptions of the mission where off the SADMS really
Speaker 2: from there, the weapon was slowly phased out and was
Speaker 2: officially retired in nineteen eighty nine. So was it true
Speaker 2: that special forces jumped out with nuclear weapons? Well, yes
Speaker 2: and no. They were planned to do it. They never
Speaker 2: did it with an actual nuke, and they never did
Speaker 2: it on foreign soil. But they were designing it to
Speaker 2: be that way, and they had created a scenario for
Speaker 2: them to be able to do it, but it never
Speaker 2: came through fruition. That's it for now.