That time the Navy escorted one of the deadliest convoys of the Cold War

Operation Steel Box/Golden Python kicked off some 36 years ago this month, on 26 July 1990. It was about as joint as can be, and for good reason. It had to move legacy stockpiles of 100,000 Sarin (GB) and VX (nerve agent) filled chemical munitions, specifically M121 155mm and M426 8-inch unitary chemical projectiles, from their igloos in West Germany, some 13,000 miles around the globe, to remote Johnston Atoll in the Pacific for destruction. It was believed there was enough agent to easily kill millions of people if deployed, only limited by the density of the local population. The thing is, the shells were increasingly unstable and occasionally leaked or broke, many having been filled in the 1950s and subjected to 25 years of winter freezes in Germany. A pallet of M121/A 155mm chemical artillery shells sits in its shipping crate before being unloaded during Operation Steel Box. SSGT. Val Gempis/330-CFD-DF-ST-92-02497 The Army leg of it (it was their gas after all) saw 15 bunkers at…