Shot Grable was the ninth nuclear detonation of Operation Upshot-Knothole, fired on 25 May 1953 at the Nevada Test Site — the first and only test of a nuclear artillery shell. The Mk-9 280mm shell was fired from the M65 artillery piece, known as Atomic Annie, and travelled approximately 10 kilometres before detonating 15 kilotons above the designated burst point. The shell used a gun-type fission assembly — the same principle as the Little Boy bomb — making Grable the first controlled test of a gun-type nuclear device. The M65 that fired the test belonged to A Battery, 867th Field Artillery Battalion. The first two M65 cannons of the 868th Field Artillery Battalion arrived in West Germany in October 1953, just five months after the Grable test. By June 1954, five battalions were deployed across West Germany, stationed at Pirmasens, Bad Kreuznach, Baumholder, Kaiserslautern, and Baumholder, assigned to the 7th US Army under NATO command. The Germans nicknamed them Schlanke Bertha — Slender Berthas. The M65 was fielded in West Germany until December 1962 — nearly a decade on the Central European front line.