The Navy's Input into Atomic Bomb Testing

Written by Godfrey Dykes

©RN Communications Branch Museum/Library

Ask a person today what they know about the navy's input into atomic bomb testing, and they will almost certainly mention nuclear radiation from which men today suffer, nay die from. That is very sad for many of those men were used as guinea pigs, and whilst just about everybody had seen pictures of the total devastation in Japan, few really knew the consequences of fall out.

The first nuclear test was in 1952 and was deemed a great success. It was detonated at the Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia (which is just 50 miles of the Australian mainland) and although subsequently stated to have political overtones, was not contentious as regards the so-called "testers" but was thought to have possibly harmed some of the Australians living quite near by (the political fall out)?

Nuclear tests were widely conducted and all given an OPERATIONS by name. This one was OPERATION HURRICANE. At various times thereafter came tests on the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia called OPERATION BUFFALO in the 50's and 60's at a section of the Range called Maralinga. One, at Wommera will be covered in some detail later!

The weary days of WW2 and the privations our nation suffered, were temporarily brushed aside when London staged the 1951 Festival of Britain on the South Bank. One of the main features and attraction in London was a large warship called HMS Campania. As well as being large, she was the Festival Flagship and quite recently she was shown on television in a Pathe Newsreel Film about the Festival.

This is her and she was an aircraft transporter not an operational carrier.

Just a few months later she was off Western Australia near to the Monte Bello Islands as the Flagship of the British naval atomic bomb testing Task Force. This was very much a naval test because one of the great fears about the Cold War was that a foreign merchant ship could enter one of our ports with a nuclear bomb inside the ship, and there detonate it destroying the port and the city/area it served in one foul swoop. The test bomb would not be dropped from an aircraft, nor would it be detonated from a gantry high above the sea surface, but in one of HM Warships, thereby simulating the foreign ship threat and devastation.

It is always sad to see one of our ship's destroyed by our own navy experimenting with new weapons and procedures, and usually we see the poor old ship suffering, breaking up and slowly slipping away out of sight. On this occasion however, the ship was there one minute and quite literally pulverised the next and just a cloud of white dust left. That was the fate of this ship HMS Plym.

and here, just to dot the i's and cross the t's, a broadside-on picture of a River Class frigate with statistics, namely that of HMS Meon in Grand Harbour Valetta Malta in her war colours dated 1943.

Please do not be confused by the pennant numbers because war/post war numbers changed and confused everybody. For example, my first ship was a Castle Class frigate, 'Tintagel Castle', and by the time I had joined her she had shifted from K399 to F399: the reverse procedure was not uncommon! In the 1953 film 'The Cruel Sea' the main ship used at Portland was HMS Porchester Castle, but Tintagel Castle gets a quick look in with K399 whilst alongside at Inner Coaling Pier (ICP).

Was the test successful? Probably, we don't know, but the men there in 1952 even of the tender age of 20 years, are now aged 79 and what problems might they have as a result of nuclear radiation?

In historical naval terms, enjoy the following file MONTE BELLO

Next a film taken on Monte Bello which best describes the test and its results. However, first a little explanation of the films available. They (many of them) are kept/archived in London in the Imperial War Museum (IWM) a vast organisation with branches in several parts of England. There are many of them (films) but most are under licence to use on web sites and the likes and can be costly to purchase a licence. A handful are available to view free of charge although they are of a lesser resolution that the more viewable licenced images, but they are still worth viewing.

a. 1952 Monte Bello operation known as Operation Hurricane
b. 1953 Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia known as Operation Totem
c. 1957 Operation Grapple X Christmas Island Pacific
d. 1957 Operation Grapple Y Christmas Island Pacific
e. 1958 Operation Grapple Z Christmas Island Pacific

In 1956, more tests were conducted at Monte Bello, but this time, on research and relatively 'small' bangs rather than on big bangs and the sinking of a ship as was the case in 1951. It involved a Task Force (TF 308) of eight RN ships led by Commodore Hugh Colenso Martell R.N., flying his Broad Pennant in the Tank Landing Ship 'Narvik'. It travelled, with the Task Force, to and fro between the Monte Bello Islands and Christmas Island doing this research.

The research was deemed to be "Operationally Urgent" and was to be completed with proven data before 'Operation Grapple', involving a series of tests on the use of atomic bombs as triggers for their thermo-nuclear descendants which would be carried out at Christmas Island the following year in 1957, however, not the Christmas Island previously mentioned in the Indian Ocean owned by Australia.

These new tests were conducted in central south Pacific Islands, Christmas Isle and Malden Isle thousands of miles away from the the early 1950 tests and it is these tests conducted in the 1957/8 period in a landmass owned by the Republic of Kiribati (see map below) which were the main cause of severe illness to witnessing royal sailors of the RAN, RNZN and the RN shortly afterwards which led to painful and lingering deaths, birth defects in the families of these men and to this very day in the 21st century, are highly contentious for blighting the lives of many, leading to an existence of pain, worry, and inability to pursue a normal adult life, and with that came/comes the inability to earn a living and financial problems many of them insurmountable. These affected warships, some just as observers whilst others with operational duties, were sailed into the area from various ports in New Zealand, Australia and indirectly from the UK but specifically from ships stationed in the Far East (Hong Kong and Singapore), into the unknown, with no real idea of what to expect and the extent of nuclear pollution which drenched the area with nuclear posion.

This map illuminates the test area in the Pacific (Kiribati), showing the nearness of the target area to both Australia and New Zealand,

and this map shows the outline of the Republic of Kiriabti in detail. Note the asymmetrical shape of the territory formed by many islands some inhabited others not, and your eye should lock onto the fact that that the area covers all four hemisphere's, the only land mass on the planet to do so - i.e. North and South of the Equator and East and West of the International Date Line (IDL). Note that the area called "LINE ISLANDS", and also the multiplicity of Island ownerships, two in particular, Cook and Tokelau Island groups being owned by New Zealand. In this Line area, note that Christmas Isle is in the North (the first bomb dropped) and Malden more or less half way down the defined area: these two areas were the target of the tests. No other areas were affected by bomb drops.

Research was also needed into wind patterns and upper atmospheric behaviour, making sure that the Australian/New Zealand mainlands were not illuminated with fallout or any other damage. There were three bombs all dropped by Valiant Bombers, the first being, "Hotshot", dropped on the 16th May and detonated at 18,000 feet with 15 kilotons, more powerful than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki explosions, and on June 19th, the last bomb, "Flashlight", vastly more powerful at 98 kilotons. All seemed to have gone well; the scientists were satisfied, and Martell was appointed CBE. However, many years later in 1985, the Australians set up a Royal Commission in London on the Monte Bello Tests, which alleged that because of a change of wind the British (and therefore directly Admiral Martell) had allowed the Australian mainland to become contaminated. The Admiral stood his ground with irrefutable evidence and sent the Australians packing. This officer was quite a character in other ways and was so well known for many reasons, one being that he had fourteen children. More of this in this story below.

Christmas Island saw the UK's first hydrogen bomb dropped on it releasing enormous yields. Whether the tests of over 60 years ago proved satisfactory and were a contributory factor of design in our nuclear weapons of today is for history, but what is known is that many of the innocent sailors and their families have led a life of misery since those events.

Had it been known of the devastating effects of the thermal nuclear explosions, then provision might have been possible to protect the men in their ships, but since it was not, the whole episode was total folly, and being so close to the Japanese explosions in 1945, should never have been attempted. The sailors were used as fodder, but from all accounts they are still not adequately compensated, if death and an appalling existence can be compensated? - poor souls!

Operation Grapple was a set of four British nuclear weapons test series of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean (modern Kiribati) as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions were initiated, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons and the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the United States with the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement.

HMS Belfast with a very different crew