Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  There was high tension on board and all the men were put on maximum alert. Then as the ship closed to about five miles, the radar contact disappeared. The word was the intruder was a submarine and the sonar team began searching the depths. The ship reached the contact area, but there was no sign of an intruder. An urgent message was sent to Christmas Island and within an hour two Shackleton aircraft arrived on the scene and continued the search. Nothing was found.

  It all added to the extreme anxiety that the crew were now feeling. After more than an hour’s delay they were all ordered up on deck and issued with protective ‘anti-flash’ gear. They were told to sit down with their backs to the blast. Even at a distance of 80 miles the flash was intense. They felt the heat at the same time. One of the crew described it like sunbathing on a cloudy day and the clouds suddenly opening to let the sun through. The heat could be felt through white overalls. Then they heard a double crack of explosion, like a double barrelled shotgun blast.

  But more than anything else the crew were amazed at the size of the fireball that formed on the horizon, and the towering mushroom cloud that began to grow was awe-inspiring. Within minutes everyone on board was looking up at the swirling mass of cloud boiling over their heads.

  Crew member Gerry Wright recalled in his diary: “Silence. Everyone just watched in amazement at the power of energy that had been released before them. Only the cries of blinded frigate birds broke the silence. They would soon die as uncounted casualties of modern science.”

  The danger of fallout from the giant cloud, now stretching a hundred miles from horizon to horizon, was not lost on Pukaki’s captain, Bernie Elliott. In the ship’s log, he noted the size of the cloud and the fact that it had stretched over Pukaki “and far beyond” despite the ship being upwind, adding: “But such was our faith in the scientists ashore that no-one was heard to say, ‘I hope it doesn’t rain.’”

  Meanwhile back at the airfield, the decontamination unit worked on WH980 all day. One of the crew recalled the desperate attempts to bring the radiation count down. In a sworn statement before he died in 2003, Ken Sutton, an Australian aircraftsman, said: “It was the hottest aircraft we had ever handled. No-one was even allowed near it; we just hosed it down from a distance. But the following morning I was taken by two men in white overalls, scientists I believe, who had stop watches. They instructed me to climb into the Canberra to retrieve some calibration equipment they wanted. I was told I had just two minutes to get in…and then get out. I asked, ‘Why only two minutes?’ They just looked at me and one said, ‘Any longer than two minutes and you might as well not bother.’ In overalls and face mask, I climbed into the aircraft and worked faster than I had ever worked in my life. I had the strangest feeling because everything looked so normal, yet I knew it was the most dangerous, lethal place I had ever been in. I got out as fast as I could, handed the instruments to the scientists and dived for the showers. I spent 30 minutes in there scrubbing down.”

  WH980 spent another day ‘cooling down’. Kevin Murphy reckoned it would be several more days before it would be released. But to his surprise the following day, Eric Denson showed up at the airfield once again, driven in a Jeep. He gave Murphy a wave of acknowledgement as he made straight for the aircraft. Murphy was amazed to see the Canberra being cleared for takeoff. “They never took off so soon after coming out of the clouds. The planes were just too dangerous. It would usually take several days, at least a week, for them to be scrubbed clean. I wondered what the hell was going on…”

  The aircraft, with Denson at the controls, took off once again. Murphy scratched his head as it flew into the blue. It was in the air for 1 hr 15 mins, according to Denson’s log book which also revealed the nature of the mission: a routine radar calibration and formation exercise. Murphy saw it return and taxi back to the decontamination unit. He saw Denson’s lean, wiry frame climb out of the cockpit…and he never saw him again.

  “He was abruptly sent home,” said Murphy. “No-one told us why.”

  No reason has ever been given for this second flight which went against all normal procedures. But everything about this bomb was unusual.

  Pukaki, in the gloomy half-light caused by the cloud continued on routine weather balloon runs throughout the day and into the night. On Tuesday morning April 29, it was ordered back to Christmas Island. But instead of taking the usual route via the west side of the island, the ship received orders to take the easterly route which would take the vessel through ground zero.

  As it passed tests were carried out to monitor radioactivity in the seawater. The water was tested after being drawn up through the ship’s water inlet valves in the keel, 12 feet below the waterline. At first all was well with a zero radiation reading, but suddenly a huge spike appeared on the graph recording radiation levels.

  The on-duty Petty Officer sounded the alarm as the graph rocketed to well above danger levels. There was panic as other officers joined the scramble to view the instrument. Finally the captain came down to restore order. It was suggested there had been an error in the vertical axis, but that didn’t convince anyone.

  As soon as the Pukaki sailed into Port London, she was boarded by two stern-looking men in plain clothes; word got around they were from naval intelligence. They examined all the ship’s paperwork over the previous 48 hours and left with most if it secured in a briefcase.

  They also interrogated the radio officers about the ‘disappearing contact’ on the morning of the bomb test. When one of the officers speculated the contact might have been a Russian sub, one of the officials was overheard to say: “Who said they were Russian?” (An unconfirmed report later said that a Royal Navy sub HMS Aurorchs had been present for the Grapple Y drop and in fact had been ordered to surface soon after the blast. It was speculated the sub was used as a spot check method of testing the island’s defensive radar equipment. The allegation came from a former crew member who insisted on anonymity. No official records exist of the incident, although it has been established that Aurorchs was in the general area at the time.)

  The curious sense of gloom and depression noticeable after Grapple X was in evidence again after the Y explosion. A general malaise pervaded. Men didn’t go fishing; no beach games were played and there were no picnics on the beach. The birds had all gone and even the sea seemed sombre and empty. It was as though the very air was dead.

  Huge quantities of alcohol were consumed, and word got round that the officers wanted the men to drink as much alcohol as possible because it warded off the effects of radiation! Joe Pasquini, one of the Canberra pilots said: “There was certainly a feeling that beer could stop you getting a dose of radiation. I had heard the same thing from American pilots who had flown through mushroom clouds. Either way it was a good excuse to get plastered.” (This rumour may have originated in tests carried out on foodstuffs after an American A-bomb test in Nevada codenamed Teapot. It was discovered that while other foodstuffs had been heavily contaminated, crates of beer had measured little radioactivity.)

  To try to boost morale, the officers organised a ‘squadron regatta’, a race between rival landing craft around the harbour. But the event was marred by the appearance of large numbers of seriously injured manta rays and sunfish, gentle creatures prone to basking on the surface of the ocean. The wings on the manta rays, which could stretch to 30 feet, were severely burnt, while the large sunfish were badly seared on their upper sides. The creatures were clearly in great distress, but there was nothing anyone could do to help them.

  Later that afternoon, as was customary, a party of naval officers went ashore for an island tour. They borrowed a Land Rover and headed for the south east point where the bomb had been detonated. Through coconut plantations, many bearing the scars of the blast, the small party headed through low scrub which gradually yielded to a scorched moonscape. The bare land, still smoking in places, was littered with dead birds and mounds of boiled land crabs.

  At a low concrete bunker in one of the forward areas, t
he little group came across hundreds of oil drums strung together at varying distances from the shoreline. These were Penney’s trademark apparatus for measuring the strength of the blast wave. The drums were filled with varying amounts of water; it was a technique which Penney had perfected at the American tests in Bikini.

  With the completion of the test, it was time for Pukaki to return to New Zealand and a farewell party was held attended by senior officers and scientists from the Task Force. For those who went ashore, it was a drunken, boisterous night enlivened by a commotion at the ‘wet bar’ in Port London when scores of servicemen ran amok. A full-scale brawl broke out during which a two-ton lorry was revved up and sent hurtling into the canteen, scattering men in all directions.

  Pukaki crew members were hastily rounded up and returned to their ship. The vessel steamed away from Christmas Island the following morning leaving the smoking debris of the night’s depredations far behind. They, of course, from their vantage point of 80 miles from ground zero, were spared the worst effects of the bomb. The damage caused to their systems by the radiation released would not become apparent for many years.

  But for those on the island and closer to the action, the effects started to manifest themselves within days. It started with a trickle, but soon long queues were forming in the sick bays with men covered in rashes and large blisters. Some had woken in their tents coughing up blood, while others suffered temporary blindness and nausea. These were classic signs of radiation sickness, but if records were kept, they were never made public. And for a very good reason: the military were all too aware of the uproar caused by an earlier American test at Bikini atoll, the piece of paradise in the Marshal Islands named as the US Pacific proving grounds.

  On March 1st, 1954 a huge H-bomb, codenamed Castle Bravo, was exploded on a small uninhabited atoll. The scientists had calculated the bomb would be in the region of five megatons. But someone got their sums wrong and the resulting explosion was at least three times that. The atoll was vaporised leaving a crater 300-feet deep. Trees burst into flames 30 miles away and islanders taken to ‘safety’ were showered with ‘snowflakes’ of radioactive coral. They soon started bringing in natives with hair falling out and skin peeling off. Three hours after the explosion the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon was hit. More than 20 crewmen were contaminated. One died after reaching port. It was an International sensation, and the Americans were finally forced to admit there was heavy fallout on neighbouring islands.

  The US tried to blame the weather. But official records came to light that showed ships were ordered further out to sea, suggesting fore-knowledge of what was going to happen. And nothing was done to warn the islanders or 28 servicemen stationed at an observation post downwind of the explosion. Thousands of square miles were contaminated and dose limits for those caught in the fallout were said to be 100 times higher than normal levels.

  Measurements taken on Christmas Island after Grapple Y were even higher, but this would stay secret for at least 50 years. Meanwhile Britain’s military planners ordered that any hint that the island was contaminated was to be avoided at all costs. So when men reported sick they were told their injuries were caused by coral dust or allergies. When they applied for their medical records years later, many found they had disappeared or been destroyed. Later manifestations of more serious illnesses were dismissed as “coincidence”.

  Bob Bates, the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the bomb subsequently died of leukaemia, as did Squadron Leader Kenneth Charney. They were just two out of scores of servicemen who later contracted blood cancers after witnessing the bomb test. Records show that hundreds of men later suffered cancers, bone disease and a variety of illnesses that can all be linked to radiation exposure. The authorities were not too concerned about these because most emerged through the passage of time and could be explained away.

  But the early victims were a different matter; they could not so easily be ignored and had to be hidden at all costs. Flt Lt Denson was sent packing as soon as it became clear he had ‘exceeded the recommended safe dose’ for radiation exposure. He was told not to talk to any of the other men, but to return to his home base at Bassingbourn at the earliest possible moment.

  Joe Pasquini remembers seeing Denson in the decontamination centre. He said: “Eric was a quiet sort of guy, but he was always sociable and at his ease. When I saw him he was being violently sick in the washroom. I pretended not to see him in case I embarrassed him. He was obviously not a well man.” Pasquini resolved to have a drink with him later, but he never saw him again. “He just took off with hardly a word to anyone,” he said. “We were a pretty close-knit little unit, and it was unusual. But we knew not to ask questions. I’m sorry now that I never spoke to him.”

  Denson took off alone in a borrowed Canberra. His route took him through Nandi airport in Fiji where he felt so ill he decided to spend the night in a hotel. He ended up staying in Fiji for two nights. Denson, in typical “stiff upper-lip” fashion, never spoke much about it. No official record exists of this short sojourn, but Denson’s illness was a clear sign that all had not gone well with Grapple Y. Officially, however, things couldn’t have gone better. Grandy’s jubilant telegram to London stated: “The RAF delivered the weapon to the right place, it exploded at the correct height and the measurements taken were gratifying.”

  One thing he didn’t mention was that the weather deteriorated rapidly after the blast. Even official historian Lorna Arnold admitted the weather was so bad that “had there been any further delay the operation could not have taken place during the rest of that week. As it was, cloud conditions reduced the number and quality of the photographs obtained.”

  Official accounts give no hint of what really happened after Grapple Y. They talk only of it being “a clean bomb” that precluded water or dust being drawn up from the surface which may have given possible radioactive fallout

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  THE COVER UPS

  In June 1958, Mrs Kathleen Jones, a Red Cross blood donor who worked in a London bank, got a priority summons to attend the Masonic hospital where her blood, a rare type, was urgently needed. She was told it was a matter of life and death. Mrs Jones dropped everything and rushed to the hospital. Not knowing the area she arrived hot and flustered ten minutes late. The doctor told her not to worry as she was the sixth person they’d summoned to give the patient blood. She was shown to a waiting room which was near a small private ward. She was intrigued to see the ward was guarded by two military policemen, and asked the doctor who the occupant of the ward was.

  Her curiosity was piqued further when the doctor refused to answer; he hooked her up to the drip without saying a word. As soon as the doctor left she asked one of the nurses what it was all about. The nurse whispered it was because the patient was a young soldier who had been sent home from Christmas Island suffering from blood cancer. Mrs Jones was shocked: “There was quite a fuss about it, but everyone had been told not to say anything. It was all very hush-hush and mysterious. I gave my blood and went back to work, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  Later, while on her way home, she decided to return to the hospital to find out what had happened to the soldier. The young nurse she had spoken to earlier was coming out of the door. Her eyes were red and she had obviously been crying. She didn’t need to tell Mrs Jones that the young soldier was dead. “How old was he?” She asked. Just 20 was the reply. But all the staff had been warned not to say a word. Mrs Jones never forgot the incident. In an interview she told of her “total conviction” that the authorities were covering up the young soldier’s illness because he had been on Christmas Island.

  He wasn’t the only one: William Brian Morris, a 20-yr-old soldier in the Royal Engineers, was another who died within six months of returning home from Christmas Island. In scenes eerily reminiscent he, too, was heavily guarded as he lay on his death bed. Even his close family was not allowed to visit leading to distressing scenes
outside the hospital ward.

  Private Morris’s inquest was told he died from leukaemia and that he had an amount of radioactive Strontium 90 in his body. His father told the inquest that his son had been in perfect health up to the time of witnessing the Grapple test. He began to feel ill soon after returning home. Against the wishes of their son, who remained loyal to his country right up to the end, his parents demanded an inquiry. Researchers at Harwell examined the deceased soldier’s right femur and found 15 strontium units in the bone structure. And the inquest was told there was a definite connection between leukaemia and radiation.

  On the face of it this seemed a clear-cut case of a servicemen dying because he was irradiated by a nuclear bomb. Not according to the coroner, a certain doctor O.G. Williams, director of Swansea Hospital where Private Morris died. He astounded the inquest by declaring that in his opinion there was absolutely no connection between the soldier’s death and the atomic bomb. A verdict of death by natural causes was subsequently recorded.

  This was just one of many puzzling decisions handed down by coroners on nuclear veterans in the 1950s and 60s. Veterans are convinced some coroners took it upon themselves to hand down ‘safe’ verdicts. Coroners were doubtless aware that any verdict blaming the bomb tests would have been hugely controversial and it is possible many simply did not want the aggravation.

  But a charge often made is that the coroners could have been following secret government guidelines for dealing with cases involving nuclear veterans. (If this sounds far-fetched, you only have to consider the case of a atomic veteran Ken McGinley, of whom more later. He managed to get his health records from the department of Health after a long wrangle. Clearly marked on one document were the words, “politically sensitive case.”)