13. It Took the Pentagon a Decade to Realize That Handing Nukes to Three Soldiers in a Jeep Might be a Bad Idea
The maximum range of Davy Crocketts was 1.25 to 2.5 miles. So there was always a risk that the firing team, and other NATO personnel in the vicinity, would get irradiated by their own nuke. The weapon’s greatest danger however was the fact that it was deployed at all and deployed very low down the chain of command at that. The Davy Crockett was effectively placed under the complete control of three soldiers roaming the battlefield in a Jeep. In theory, they would only fire when authorized from high up in the chain of command. In practice, they would have been able to fire a nuclear weapon at their own discretion.
Crazy as it sounds today, it took ten years before the Pentagon decided that it might be unwise to give a lieutenant, a sergeant, and a corporal, the discretion to initiate what might quickly escalate into a global nuclear holocaust. The West Germans were eager to deploy the Davy Crockett with their ground forces. However, the US refused to give them the weapon, because they wanted to incorporate it into their defensive strategy in a manner that would have made its use nearly automatic as soon as the war began. That would have eliminated NATO’s option to fight without nukes, and risked an escalation from tactical nukes on the battlefield to a global nuclear Armageddon.