Fired as part of Operation Upshot–Knothole and codenamed Shot GRABLE, a 280 mm (11 inch) shell with a gun-type fission warhead was fired 10,000 m (6.2 miles) and detonated 160 m (525 ft) above the ground with an estimated yield of 15 kilotons.
Original Caption:
Frenchman’s Flat, Nevada - Atomic Cannon Test - History’s first atomic artillery shell fired from the Army’s new 280-mm artillery gun. Hundreds of high ranking Armed Forces officers and members of Congress are present. The fireball ascending.
Thought this was interesting, not small arms related, but we don’t normally think of nuclear weapons outside of the nuclear triad.
It was such crazy time of “We’ve got this thing, how do we use it?” Cave Johnson is the picture that pops into my head when I think 1950s American science.
Also look up the wikipage for ‘Pentomic army’ if you want to see how the army thought things would go.
I’m a chemist and right now I’m doing somewhat spicy chemistry. Tucked away we have some pretty spicy legacy materials from the cold war on our site. I regularly think about chemists back then and how they essentially had carte Blanche, a lot of chemistry was new, budgets were plentiful, safety concerns were an afterthought and environmental protections were nonexistent. Must’ve been so fun.