Tactical Nuclear Weapons: It sounds like something from the movie "Starship Troopers", but these things actually existed. During the late 1950's the US Army developed a small tactical nuclear warhead that could be fired from a specially designed recoilless rifle. They named it the "Davy Crockett" after the famous pioneer. The theory went that when the red hoards came streaming across the boarder (either into West Germany or into South Korea), these small infantry teams armed with Davy Crockett weapon systems could "nuke" the first wave of the invasion, slowing the enemy's advance and creating a radioactive "no-mans land" along the boarder. This would have provided the US and NATO (in the case of West Germany) with at least 48 hours to mobilize forces and evacuate families. Not a bad theory, but I'm glad no one ever had to test it out.
The two patches shown here are from the Davy Crockett Company assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment, part of the 24th Infantry Division in West Germany during the 1960's.
