The Davey Crockett
Well, I honestly have no justification for the logic behind this one. This is the Davey Crockett, an American designed mortar with a deadly amount of firepower.
It literally uses small nuclear bombs as its ammunition. You know . . . those highly dangerous and destructive explosives that wiped out entire cities . . . the ones that had to be dropped from high altitudes to stop the pilots from getting caught in the blast. I’m sure we could launch some of those only about a mile or two at the most and be perfectly fine. This was the most obvious reason the Davey Crockett was canceled and never used practically, but it was still tested like there was a chance it could be successful.
The result was the predictable one. The mortar they detonated remotely was completely destroyed and harmful radiation spilled into the air. If there had actually been a mortar crew operating it, they certainly would have perished. In all fairness, this was before the warheads were developed to launch nukes over large distances, so I can kind of see what they were going for. But that still doesn’t change the fact that this was possibly the absolute worst and most irresponsible idea for a weapon that has ever come to pass, and that is saying something as you have already read about the ingenious cat bombs.