Davy Crockett Portable Nuke

It's difficult to see how you could make a nuclear bomb any more destructive than it already is. However, some attempt was made to make them more portable, which in turn made them horribly unusable.

The smallest portable nuclear weapon that could be built and yet be able to trigger a fission reaction was the Davy Crockett device. The tiny warhead, which resembled a watermelon with fins on one side, could not be fired from conventional artillery like mortars or other similar weapons. It had to be fired from a recoilless gun instead. To employ it on the battlefield, a group of three men had to be sent out. They were also dangerously near to the location of the warhead's explosion because of their range of less than three miles. Being exposed to radiation carried a very high risk.

The Davy Crockett was found to be so incredibly inaccurate that there was no practical way for it to be employed in battle after it was test fired in Nevada, thus fortunately soldiers never had to experience the risk of radiation exposure.

Country of origin: the United States