XBradTC

In the early 1950s, even as the US Army was working on liquid fueled ballistic missiles as atomic delivery platforms, they were also looking at developing tactical nuclear delivery platforms using solid rocket propellants. The Army’s first tactical nuclear delivery platform, the massive 280mm atomic cannon, simply took far too long to emplace, and had a rather desultory maximum range. A large solid propelled rocket promised to be quicker to emplace and fire, and offered hope of a somewhat longer useful range.

And so, Redstone Arsenal, in cooperation with Douglas Aircraft, developed the Honest John artillery rocket. The Honest John had a maximum diameter of 30 inches, and was designed to hurl a small atomic warhead about 24 kilometers. Importantly, it was quick and easy to emplace and fire.

As the Army shifted its nuclear delivery emphasis to missiles such as the Sergeant, the Field Artillery found itself consistently outranged by Soviet tube and rocket artillery. The long range an improved Honest John began to look very attractive as a general support weapon when equipped with a conventional warhead. Submunition technology was in its infancy, so the Army decided instead to use a unitary warhead with thousands of steel balls for fragmentation effect.

Accuracy of the Honest John out to its eventual maximum range of about 30 miles was surprisingly good, hitting within about 250 meters.

Obviously, such a warhead would have little effect on an armored formation. But against a logistical site, or an artillery battery, it could expect to produce good results.

For all its crudity, the Honest John had a surprisingly long service life, lasting in National Guard artillery battalions well into the 1980s (when it was replaced by MLRS) in in foreign service into the 1990s.