Project Green Light: The Secret Nuclear Paratroopers

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dozen interviews that we've done with Special Forces. But today we bring you this week an interesting story that I read about the Green Berets who parachuted with nuclear bombs strapped to them for US Special Operations personnel conducting high altitude parachute jumps are pretty much par for the course, But what about doing it with a nuclear bomb strapped between your legs. Well, now you're on a different level.

But a US Army Special Forces paratrooper is pictured free falling during a training exercise with a special atomic demolition munition or say DM, a form of automatic demolition munition. Eight ms were man portable nuclear weapons, also known as backpack nukes. These munitions were fitted into specifically or specially designed hard cloth carrying cases for the transportation on the

backs or between the legs with special operators. The sadms weighed in the region of about one hundred and fifty pounds with their warheads, the W fifty four contributing around fifty to fifty five pounds. Saa ems were extremely small, about twenty four inches long and about sixteen inches wide. But why would a special operation personnel train with these? In order to unpack the question, we need to look back about seventy years. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August

of nineteen forty five. Well, it imparted a level of devastation never before seen, and of course, a few years later, the Soviet Union de NATed it his first atomic bomb in nineteen forty nine. While the US military conducted further tests of such weapons into the early part of the Cold War, a broader view emerged the smaller nuclear weapons for limited tactical purposes would likely prove critical for operations

on the ground in future conflicts. Indeed, the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons and a possible conflict involving the Soviet Union became an important component of President Eisenhower's new look. As such, scientists and technicians at Los Alamos nuclear Weapons Laws began shrinking the size of the warheads. The US Army was making news as well to acquire different sorts

of battlefield nuclear weapons. Roy coil less guns which fired nuclear overheads they call it the Davy crocket, which fired nuclear oriheads with a yield of roughly ten to twenty tons of TNT, were part of the purchases. Part of the push towards fielding and broad a range of nukes by the Army included the development of atomic demolition munitions. While we've been talking about the aightms, they were designed to be used on over below the ground surface against

specific targets to block and deny enemy forces. The initial objective of adms was to manage nuclear landscaping, creating great craters or destroying mountain sides that could obstruct enemy forces. The munitions first entered the US Army Arsenal And around nineteen fifty four, with one of the first EIGHTM tests taking place during Operation Teapot, part of a series of

nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site. During said tests, an eight thousand pounds eight AM with a yield of one point two kilo tones was detonated, creating a crater three hundred feet wide and one hundred and twenty feet deep. A whole family of adms was developed, as included the tactical ad Atomic demolition munition sporting a W three W W thirty warhead. The TDM TAADMS weighed around eight hundred pounds, is a complete system and around three hundred produced between

nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty six. Then they eventually got to a much lighter version, man portable ADM. The Army ended up producing around three hundred sadms between sixty four to sixty six. Production on an interim W fifty four Mod zero weapon started in April nineteen sixty three. At the heart of the SADM system was the W

fifty four tactical nuclear warhead. W fifty four was developed in the late fifties by a man named Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory onto early nineteen fifty nine and thereafter by the lowest alamost National lab Compared to the heavier ones, the Army envisioned, these lightweight saadms can more easily be

used tactically for operations behind enemy lines. In this sense, the munitions would be used for frustrate enemy forces by blowing up fortified structures, tunnels, mountain passes, and viaducts along alongside the deployment via land or sea. SAA and ems were also designed to be sent behind enemy lines from the air with two man parachute teams. One individual carrying the disassembled weapon in a big bag made of canvas, will descend to target points before setting up the devices

explosive timer. Owing to the US's nuclear doctrine dictating that no single person ever have the means to employ a nuclear weapon on their own, teams of at least two would accompany the bomb, so the detonation code would be split between two special operators. The idea of using special forces known as green Light units to transport these ad ms behind enemy lines had stretched red roots, stretching back to nineteen fifty six special ops units to harass and

frustrate the enemy with the purpose of their mission. It kind of coordinates with the historical origins of the special forces in the Army in the nineteen fifties. It was envisaged as the elite units would stay behind in rear areas to target enemy forces and even mobilize local resistance. However, the early eighty ms were too large and heavy to be carried by one man or two, and so the

production of savm's moved the concept along quickly. To be selected for the green Lights was a rare and highly secret thing. In a book written by Annie Jacobson's Surprise Kill Vanish The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators and Assassins, green Lights personnels were pulled from Army Special Forces, Navy Seal units in the Marines. Units worked under pseudonyms and were fatigues with no markings signed insignia. Training involved

learning infiltration techniques, including parachute launches and wet deck submarine launches. Overall, the instruction of green Light units took a place over the course of a week, consisting eight to twelve hours a day of training. Parachute missions involving sadms were performed over the sea as well as over land during the sixties and seventies in order to train for their potential detonation overseas. In nineteen seventy two, green Line units parachuting

near the White Mountain National Forests in New Hampshire. The nuclear weapons used was the training dummy. Navy seals also performed underwater training with them. Moreover, drills with the SAMs also occurred outside the US and the Bavarian Alps. Timing was everything. Billy Waugh you probably heard of him, recalls of his time with the green Lights in the book Surprise Killing Vanished. You had to jump quickly. You couldn't

afford to be spread out when you landed on the ground. Indeed, the jumper's rigging was designed in such a way that the nuclear component would fall to the end of the seventeen foot long lowering line once outside of the aircraft. Once the SADM were fixed in place and that nation charges triggered, green Light personnel needed to retreat to a safe location to avoid being caught in the explosion. This would have been a difficult task given that the timers

could not be relied on for complete accuracy. As Army field manuals from the time indicated, it was not possible to state that SADM would fire at a specific time. Furthermore, there was also the fact that green light teams would also have had to make their way out of enemy territory once the munition was detonated. According to Bill Flavin, who commanded a Special Forces SADA team during the Cold War,

there were real issues with the operational wisdom of the program. Sadms, in the long run, were never used in foreign soil during the Cold War, those realities were thankfully never realized.

That the US military was training Special Forces personnel to transport nuclear weapons personally behind enemy lines gained wider traction publicly in nineteen eighty four thanks to an ex Army intelligence officer, William Markt, and colleagues when they presented sketches and descriptions of the mission where off the SADMS really from there, the weapon was slowly phased out and was officially retired in nineteen eighty nine. So was it true

that special forces jumped out with nuclear weapons? Well, yes and no. They were planned to do it. They never did it with an actual nuke, and they never did it on foreign soil. But they were designing it to be that way, and they had created a scenario for them to be able to do it, but it never came through fruition. That's it for now.