"Nuclear mines under West Germany during cold war?" Topic

In Bob Forest Webbs excellent novel "Chieftains" he talks about nuclear mines being placed strategically under West Germany as a trap to destroy soviet forces at likely choke points.

Was this ever put forward as suggestion during the cold war, or did Bob make it up completely?

Not just suggested, but weapons were developed specifically for the purpose, including the infamous chicken bomb…. At least originally the plan was mainly about depriving the Soviets of facilities and practising area denial rather than actually hoping to catch troop formations, but that may have evolved over time.

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I remember it being mentioned in an international relations lecture at university in 1987. The lecturer mentioned it as an aside and claimed the idea had inspired an episode of Star Trek.

Nope, Nuclear Mines are definitely a real thing.

Warsaw Pact was well aware of their existence and made contingency plans to prevent their deployment by destroying storage facilities.

Some of the prepared positions to mount these exist even today (though IŽve never seen one myself) in old infrastructure (bridges) but they have been sealed after the reunification.

YouŽll find a lot of German article about "Kernminen" – though I doubt that will help you much ;)

I seem to remember underground mines formed part of the Labour Parties defence proposals, in the 1992 election, and were fiercely mocked by the Conservative supporting newspapers.

1961 my Dads Engineer unit was scouting places to leave Tac nukes to cause Max damage from tree fall and other damage. They were to use 2 1/2 trucks towing trailers with nukes. My dad laughed saying they were the lowest slowest cruise missles ever.

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@BC1745: That's what the 'stifle' function is for.

As far as the "land mine" idea goes, no, not really. Those were pretty large devices physically speaking, and the two-person-control concept basically prevents the emplacement way ahead of time.

So any unit with access/ordered to use "nuclear land mines" (more properly, Atomic Demolition Munitions in US-speak) would not be emplacing those Earthshaking kabooms weeks/months in advance, but maybe hours before the lead soviet formations arrived at the position. Or they might be setting the ADM in the middle of a firefight.

Yep, also nuke artillery shells as well.

I suspect you'd need to roll for a morale check, before firing one of those though, and hope the wind is blowing in the right direction (not that it will probably matter, since nuke counter-battery fire can probably be expected on one's own position, shortly thereafter).

The Davy Crockett remains my personal favourite for sheer practicality…. :-)

The Davy Crockett always made me think the devolopment Guys had one top many drinks and somebody said "It would be really cool if we put a atomic bomb on a bazooka and put it on a jeep."