"Owe Jessen" wrote in message
...
Am Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:15:43 GMT, schrieb Fred J. McCall
:

Owe Jessen wrote:

:Could you give in some applications for the SADM? ISTR from childhood
80s) that there were plans to destroy a lot of bridges and so on with
:atomic bombs. Why was it thought necessary to use those instead of
:conventional explosives? Aside from the fact that using nuclear
:weopons just for the fun in a friendly country might not be overly
opular there.

Because wiring a modern bridge with sufficient explosives to bring it
down is not a quick job. Failure to manage this cost the Germans
dearly in WWII.

Either we wire them up and leave them that way in peacetime (not real
safe) or you take them down fast with nukes in wartime.

I guess the folks living next to the bridges were thrilled. Or was the
plan to use it only, if nuclear weapons were allready being used?

Bridges were not a very common target for SADM. In point of fact, the
earlier poster almost had it right when he mentioned the "already wired up"
bit in reference to bridges. Most of the bridges and large overpasses in
West Germany were "prechambered" for demolition; that meant that there were
cavities incorporated into the structure (usually with manhole access).
Nearby would be a reinforced concrete magazine/bunker where the charges were
stored--usually "cheese charges", the name coming from the fact that they
resembled large wheels of cheese. Conduits were included, with pull-through
lead lines used for pulling the det cord initiations system to the chamber.
In the event of war, these reserve demolition targets would be prepared by
German personnel from the WBK (a quasi-military structured German civil
service organization, IIRC). These same folks also were responsible for
other obstacle systems; they had some really neat steel I-beam
anti-vehicular obstacles that featured pre-installed receptacles in the
roadway. Remove the cover, slide the beam down, and a pin locked it into
place such that you'd have to use explosives (or spend a lot of time with a
cutting torch) to remove it.

SADM would have been used by two different organizations--the regular US
Army engineer atomic demolition munitions (ADM) companies, usually supported
by a corps level combat engineer battalion, or the Special Forces, who also
had some ADM capabilities and (reportedly) targets. You used it when you had
to take out a target that was just too cumbersome to use conventional
explosives on. Things like dropping a big chunk of highway constructed in a
side-hill cut, or against your own airfields before they were overrun as a
denial measure, or possibly even a dam. The only bridges that would have
been likely SADM reserve targets would have been something like very large
suspension bridges (large suspension bridges are a real bear to try and
destroy with conventional demo). As a nuclear weapon, use of SADM could only
occur after weapons release was granted from the NCA--it had a PAL device to
prevent unauthorized use. No code for the PAL, and the weapon would crunch
itself so that it would not be usable.

The folks who lived next to ADM targets likely never knew it. The engineers
who served in the few ADM companies we had in Europe actually received a
civilian clothing allowance so that they could recon and update their target
folders without being too obvious. I had an E-5 who reclassified from ADM
(MOS 12E) to straight combat engineer (12B) back when they were drawing down
the ADM companies in the mid-eighties and was assigned to my platoon--his
biggest bitch was that he had lost his civilian clothing allowance!

Brooks


Owe
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