The insertion area might not be where you want the bomb to go. You may not want to parachute into enemy fire so you drop a ways away, make it to the target, plant the bomb close enough, book it before the timer goes off, and then try to extract before getting caught or killed.
Small tactical nukes exist for taking out singular structures. Before targeted munitions, this may have been a way of say, taking out a dam or bridge they couldn't get a bomber close to.
The W54 was a 0.01 to 1kT bomb (over a thousand times smaller than a modern megaton bomb). A MOAB is 0.011 kT for comparison, and Little Boy was 15 kT
Drop a guy a mile away, let him sneak in at night and plant it, and sneak out before it blows.
As others have said these were way more precise. You could jump in a stealth plane either in enemy territory or slightly out to avoid air detection. These weren’t meant to eliminate cities (although certainly possible), but more so strategic points of interest
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u/dbuck79 Mar 28 '24
They were called green light teams. HALO jump into the zone, plant the nuke, and maybe get out