After waving to the cheering crowds, Eisenhower got a firsthand look at what was then considered one of the most devastating pieces of American artillery -- an 85-ton atomic cannon that could fire a shell 20 miles.
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As the story was later told to me, on Christmas Eve my parents — never long-range planners in these matters — had gone out to buy the atomic cannon and, lo and behold, the major Atlanta department store, Rich's, had just gotten in a shipment of Bulldog Tanks.
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Atomic Cannon is an artillery video game similar to the Atari 2600 game Artillery Duel. It was developed by Isotope244 and released in 2005.Official Isotope244 homepage The gameplay is based on the seminal 1976 artillery game Artillery by Mike Forman.
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The M65 atomic cannon, often called "Atomic Annie",Tucker, Todd. Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History. Simon and Schuster, 2009. . p.92 was an artillery piece built by the United States and capable of firing a nuclear device.
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Nixon described him as "not an ordinary Cannon, but an atomic Cannon—the ultimate weapon in the arsenal of Paul Dietzel." He was the second player from the SEC to win the trophy, following Georgia's Frank Sinkwich in 1942. Cannon was also a repeat winner of nearly every award he won the previous season, including unanimous All-America recognition.
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Area 5 held 19 nuclear tests. Five atmospheric tests were detonated, starting on January 27, 1951 at Area 5 as part of Operation Ranger. These were the first nuclear tests at NTS. Further tower detonations were studied at Area 5, and the Grable shot which was fired from a M65 Atomic Cannon located in Area 11 exploded in Area 5\.
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There were also 65 musical units, 350 horses, 3 elephants, an Alaskan dog team, and the 280-millimeter atomic cannon. In 1977, Jimmy Carter became the first president to set out by foot for more than a mile on the route to the White House. The walk has become a tradition that has been matched in ceremony if not in length by the presidents who followed.
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Planning and production were complicated by official assumptions that the war would be over within a short period of time. The Army adopted the 280mm atomic cannon in 1952. Other items introduced under Ford's aegis were the 75mm radar controlled Skysweeper anti aircraft gun, the Nike anti aircraft guided missile, and a new series of battle tanks. At the newly created Redstone Arsenal, a spectacular array of new rockets and guided missiles were under development.
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Operation Upshot–Knothole was a series of eleven nuclear test shots conducted in 1953 at the Nevada Test Site. It followed Operation Ivy and preceded Operation Castle. Over 21,000 soldiers took part in the ground exercise Desert Rock V in conjunction with the Grable shot.Operation UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE Fact Sheet , Defense Threat Reduction Agency Grable was a 280mm Artillery Fired Atomic Projectile (AFAP) shell fired from the "Atomic Cannon" and was viewed by a number of high-ranking military officials.
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Feltman also played an important role in the development of the M65 atomic cannon—nicknamed "Atomic Annie". Robert Schwartz began the design of a small tactical nuclear weapon at the Pentagon in 1949. Eventually, his project was transferred to the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J. Schwartz finished his design, and Feltman took on the important role of selling the project to the Pentagon. In July 1954, the Technical Division Laboratory at the Picatinny Arsenal was renamed the Samuel Feltman Laboratories.
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The Australian babies had all died within a few weeks, suggesting that something may have gone wrong with the xenogenesis process. The Russian town was recently "accidentally" destroyed by the Soviet government, using an "atomic cannon" from a range of 50–60 miles. The Children are aware of the threat against them, and use their power to prevent any aeroplanes from flying over the village. During an interview with a Military Intelligence officer the Children explain that to solve the problem they must be destroyed.
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The traverse was limited by a curved track placed under the rear of the gun. On May 25, 1953 at 8:30 a.m., the atomic cannon was tested at the Nevada Test Site (specifically Frenchman Flat) as part of the Upshot–Knothole series of nuclear tests. The test—codenamed "Grable"—was attended by the Chairman-delegate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur W. Radford and United States Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson; it resulted in the successful detonation of a 15 kiloton shell (W9 warhead) at a range of .
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The W9 is only the second gun-type nuclear weapon known to have been detonated; the first was the Little Boy nuclear weapon used in World War II. The W9 artillery shell was test fired once, fired from the "Atomic Annie" M65 Atomic Cannon, in Upshot-Knothole Grable on May 25, 1953 at the NTS. Yield was the expected 15 kilotons. Subsequently, the W33 nuclear artillery shell was test fired twice (not in a gun) during its development (shots Nougat/Aardvark and Plumbbob/Laplace). These four detonations are the only identified gun-type bomb detonations.
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At the time, budget constraints and successive nuclear war fighting strategies had left the armed forces in a state of flux. Each of the armed forces had gradually jettisoned realistic appraisals of future conflicts in favor of developing its own separate nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities. At the height of this struggle, the U.S. Army had even reorganized its combat divisions to fight land wars on irradiated nuclear battlefields, developing short-range atomic cannon and mortars in order to win appropriations. The United States Navy in turn proposed delivering strategic nuclear weapons from supercarriers intended to sail into range of the Soviet air defense forces.
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In periods of peace, the arsenal made important contributions to progress in the areas of radar, pyrotechnics, missiles, time fuzes, and nuclear munitions (including the M65 atomic cannon 280mm howitzer known as "Atomic Annie"). When war broke out again, it gave troops in Vietnam a complete family of 40 mm ammunition for grenade launchers and helicopter gunships. In 1977, the army recognized Picatinny's leadership in weapons and munitions development by headquartering its Armament Research and Development Command (ARRADCOM) at the arsenal and giving it responsibility for developing small caliber weapons and munitions. In 1983, the army disestablished the Armament Research and Development Command and Picatinny became the home of the Armament Research and Development Center (ARDC).
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Big Battel sticker on Houston in New York City Kaiju Big Battel began as a video project by Rand Borden when he was a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The first character created was Midori no Kaiju (Japanese for "Big Green Monster"), which Borden assembled from upholstery foam coated with latex. While the video project never came to fruition, another student suggested that more characters be created to fight Midori no Kaiju at live competitions, or, Big Battels. The first Battel occurred on Halloween night in 1996 at the Revolving Museum in Boston and featured Midori No Kaiju, as well as Atomic Cannon, Powa Ranjuru, Force Trooper Robo, Taro "The Mouth" Fuji's commentary, and Anthony Salbino's construction.
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The dry lake of Frenchman Flat Frenchman Flat is a hydrographic basin in the Nevada National Security Site south of Yucca Flat and north of Mercury, Nevada. The flat was used as an American nuclear test site and has a dry lake bed (Frenchman Lake) that was used as a 1950s airstrip before it was chosen after the start of the Korean War for the Nevada Proving Grounds. Nellis Air Force Base land was transferred to the Atomic Energy Commission on which Site Mercury was constructed on the flat for supporting American nuclear explosive tests. The 1951 Operation Ranger "Able" test (ground zero at UTM Coordinates 923758 on the flat) was the first continental US nuclear detonation after the 1945 Trinity test, and Frenchman Flat also had the only detonation of an American artillery-fired nuclear projectile in the 1953 Upshot-Knothole Grable test using the M65 Atomic Cannon.
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Grable mushroom cloud with the atomic cannon in the foreground Upshot–Knothole Grable test (film) Picatinny Arsenal was tasked to create a nuclear capable artillery piece in 1949. Robert Schwartz, the engineer who created the preliminary designs, essentially scaled up the 240 mm shell (then the maximum in the arsenal) to 280 mm and used the similarly-sized German K5 railroad gun as a point of departure for the carriage. (The name "Atomic Annie" likely derives from the nickname "Anzio Annie" given to a pair of German K5 guns which were employed against the American landings in Italy.) The design was approved by the Pentagon, largely through the intervention of Samuel Feltman, chief of the ballistics section of the ordnance department's research and development division. A three-year developmental effort followed. The project proceeded quickly enough to produce a demonstration model to participate in Dwight D. Eisenhower's inaugural parade in January 1953. The gun was initially designated T131 and the carriage was T72.
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Controversy has emerged over whether, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Okinawa-based 873d Tactical Missile Squadron received orders to launch against Sino-Soviet targets. 32 Mace Missiles were kept on constant nuclear alert in hardened hangars at four of the island's launch sites. The 280mm M65 Atomic Cannon nicknamed "Atomic Annie" and the projectiles it fired were also based here. Okinawa at one point hosted as many as 1,200 nuclear warheads. At the time, nuclear storage locations existed at Kadena AFB in Chibana and the hardened MGM-13 MACE missile launch sites; Naha AFB, Henoko [Camp Henoko (Ordnance Ammunition Depot) at Camp Schwab], and the Nike Hercules units on Okinawa. MIM-14 Nike-H missile at Okinawa, June 1967 In June or July 1959, a MIM-14 Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missile was accidentally fired from the Nike site 8 battery at Naha Air Base on Okinawa which according to some witnesses, was complete with a nuclear warhead.
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