The Atomic Bazooka Was a Bad Idea
The Davy Crockett nuclear launcher would've blown up the bad guys—and the good guys, too
by STEVE WEINTZ with art by BLUE DELLIQUANTI
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It’s important to remember that in this era, even the economic superiority of the US was in doubt. The Soviet Union was repressive, everyone knew that. China was backwards (though with massive manpower). Yet it wasn’t clear (privately, anyway) that the Soviet Union wouldn’t be able to outcompete a still recovering Europe and a US half the world away, and getting more deeply entrenched in Vietnam. By the mid-late 1970’s the US advantage in tech (microchip, transistor, and computer gaps, for example) was starting to become more apparent to anyone in the know. But prior to that era, the Army was still staffed by generals who had seen the technologically inferior Chinese overwhelm US positions in Korea, despite massive air and naval bombardment. It seemed like a good bet that last ditch, highly destructive weapons were better than nothing. When the Western military advantage became clear in ensuing decades, then effective but suicidal weapons seemed more likely to do harm than good.
IIRC, the instructions to the troops included something to the effect that they needed to dig a foxhole or trench to hide in immediately after firing the launcher so they could have *some* degree of survivability.