by Alan Rimmer
Dr Mooney is being disingenuous. Precipitation means rainfall, which means it did rain soon after the Grapple Y explosion as eyewitnesses have testified. Dr Mooney obviously had no intention of addressing that issue for he quickly moved on to say that environmental testing showed no fallout over the island after the blast.
It is interesting to note that Dr Mooney refers to only the Main Camp while making his observations about there being no rain. What he didn’t say was that it was irrelevant whether it rained over Main Camp or not because there were few troops there to be rained upon.
Most of the men were evacuated to various mustering areas miles away as a safety precaution against the possibility of the bomb-carrying Valiant aircraft crashing on takeoff from the airfield, which was next to the Main Camp.
Why has the British government been so afraid of acknowledging that it rained? If there was no resultant radioactive contamination why bother to deny it? Was something being hidden?
Rainout is well known in scientific circles as being a particularly pernicious form of radioactive contamination. It was first observed about 30 minutes after the Hiroshima bomb as a “black rain” which was discoloured by tar and other materials in the wooden buildings set alight by the explosion. Its ability to hold its strength and not be dissipated like dry fallout is well known. A notorious example was observed in the township of Troy in upstate New York in April 1953.
What became known as the “Troy Incident” began at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when a group of students entered a laboratory for their radiochemistry class. They were startled to note that all the Geiger counters used in their studies were registering radiation many times the normal rate.
Their tutor took the students on a tour of the campus and discovered similar high readings. High concentrations were found in the gutters and drains which were overflowing because of the previous night’s heavy rains.
The school contacted the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Health and Safety office in New York City. Further measurements were taken and it was found that gamma radiation on the ground was a hundred times normal; beta ray radiation was even higher and hot spots were found in gutters and puddles.
The explanation was soon forthcoming: there had been an atomic bomb test conducted in the Nevada desert two days earlier. The mushroom cloud had reached 40,000 feet into the atmosphere then drifted 2,300 miles across the United States in a north-easterly direction. It passed over Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania before being caught up in a storm that dropped rain on upstate New York, southern Vermont and parts of Massachusetts.
In recent years the discovery of a leukaemia cluster in the Troy area has been confidently attributed to the incident.
Had a similar but much more localised incident taken place on Christmas Island? The only way this could be answered was by examining the environmental records and meteorological reports for Christmas Island at the time of the Grapple Y blast.
This was impossible during the time Hamilton and Mooney were making their statements because the relevant documents were buried deep in government archives, and not available for public consumption.
But things changed. The Freedom of Information Act which came into force on January 1, 2005 allows a general right of access to information held by public authorities.
It has been used to great affect to winkle out embarrassing information hidden away in government archives. Tony Blair is said to have remarked ruefully that it was one of his biggest mistake to introduce this legislation because of its propensity to reveal what politicians would like to stay hidden.
And so it proved in this case. A series of information requests were sent to the Ministry of Defence. And after a period of stonewalling, a raft of new material finally tumbled out of the archives. It proved to be the tipping point for the veteran’s campaign.
The first tranch of material to be released was the original weather charts relating to conditions over Christmas Island for the 24-hour period covering April 28, 1958. The blizzard of data clearly showed what all the politicians had been dancing around for years: there WAS rainfall in several areas in the hours following the explosion.
The charts reveal it rained between the following times: 2025-2037; 2136-2148; and 2155 to 2230. Bearing in mind the detonation took place at 1905, the charts show that at precisely one hour and 20 minutes after Grapple Y it rained for 12 minutes; 59 minutes later it rained for another 12 minutes, and seven minutes after that it rained for 35 minutes.
Notable on one chart was a comment: “large rainbow over the Port Camp at 2200 hrs.” This is just short of three hours after the shot. The charts are also peppered with the arcane symbols which weathermen use to denote rainfall: an inverted isosceles triangle with dots on the top.
Thousands of men were gathered in the Port Camp area at the times it rained, and this was the clearest evidence yet that there was rainfall over the area after the Grapple Y explosion, despite all the obfuscation by the Ministry of Defence.
But this crucial evidence was just the curtain-raiser. The Meteorological Office in Bracknell, Berkshire later released a report entitled “Weather and Winds During Christmas Island Nuclear Tests.”
This 10-page document was originally sent from the Director General at the Met Office, in response to a request by a senior official (his name is redacted) at Aldermaston. The official had requested meteorological data for Christmas Island for the period of the nuclear weapon tests 1957-58.
The report begins with the observation that the rainfall at the Main Camp on Christmas Island, “occurred only on 8 November 1957, and 22 August 1958 and then only as light showers.” No sign here of rain after Grapple Y, which was 18 April 1958.
But confusingly the report continues: “Although there is always the possibility that heavy showers fell elsewhere.”
We now know from the Met charts already discussed that it did indeed rain elsewhere, especially in the Port Camp area.
Any lingering doubts are finally dispelled when the report makes it clear that not only did it rain, but that the rainfall was actually caused by Grapple Y.
This revelation is repeated twice in the report; the first is in the main text which states that two hours after the blast, “precipitation reached the surface in a shower possibly caused by the bomb.” The second, and even clearer reference, is in Appendix 1 of the report which states: “Precipitation in sight, more than 5 km from station, reaching surface. Cumulonimbus from bomb.”
Cumulonimbus is an extremely dense, vertically developed cloud extending to great heights, usually producing heavy rains, thunderstorms, or hailstorms. Just for the sake of pedantry cumulonimbus is Latin for “rain heaps.”
This is prima facie evidence that Grapple Y created a thunderstorm which deposited rainfall on areas where servicemen were gathered thus exposing them to rainout.
According to the Meteorological Office, rain that originates above a radio-active cloud causes areas of heavy contamination just downwind of a nuclear blast. All the evidence suggests this phenomenon is precisely what occurred after Grapple Y.
The 50-year cover-up was beginning to unravel. But this remarkable document had not yet relinquished all its disturbing secrets. Buried in the text is a passage strongly indicating that servicemen were deliberately exposed to radioactive fallout.
This sinister possibility is revealed in a passage discussing wind directions recorded during the whole period of the Christmas Island tests, 1957-58.
The report, illustrated with charts and graphs, shows the prevailing winds during the bomb tests always blew away from the island, and certainly away from areas where the majority of men were billeted. But then the text takes a sudden startling turn:-
except for the period up to about 9 hours after the test at 1905 GMT on 28 April 1958 when the winds were light, and near to being southeasterly. Since the airfield and the camp were almost due northwest from the explosion, the winds on this occasion were examined in more
detail.
So, Britain’s biggest ever bomb was detonated at the only time during the H-bomb testing programme when the winds were blowing over the island and directly toward the Main Camp where the majority of troops were living.
This immediately gives the lie to the official announcements in Parliament and elsewhere that nuclear bomb tests were only ever carried out when the wind direction ensured fallout was taken away from inhabited areas.
Clearly this was not the case for Grapple Y. But it gets worse. The weathermen then go on to calculate precisely when the fallout would arrive at the main campsite:-
Assuming particles were released at 2.4 km, 22.3 n miles to the south-east of the camp (direction about 142 degrees), it appears that those with fall speeds of about 1/3 m/s could have reached the camp at 2100 GMT (1200 local time). Heavier particles released from the thermonuclear cloud at greater altitudes could have arrived at the camp later.
Remember, this report with all its disturbing implications was compiled in response to a request from an Aldermaston bigwig on November 13, 1985.
This was at the height of the nuclear veteran’s battle for compensation with the Thatcher government. At the time servicemen and their organisations were being ridiculed for daring to suggest that the tests exposed them to radiation. They were criticised for making “unfounded allegations”, lectured about the safety precautions taken for tests, and were chided for suggesting that anyone was in any danger.
Yet all the time the Ministry of Defence was in possession of a this deeply disturbing document suggesting that not only were servicemen contaminated by rainout, but also that they were deliberately put in the path of fallout.
If this report had been released at the time (as it should have been) it would have caused uproar and doubtless would have led to a complete vindication of the veteran’s claims. It would also have focussed attention on Grapple Y, which was something the Ministry of Defence clearly wanted to avoid at all costs.
This last point cannot be emphasised too strongly. In Britain the powerful Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had been formed in January 1958, just three and a half months before the Grapple Y explosion.
The movement, which numbered among its members Bertrand Russell, Canon John Collins, the Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, J.B. Priestley, Kingsley Martin and the author Doris Lessing, was formed as a direct consequence of the Bikini atoll disaster four years earlier when the Bravo bomb had gone so disastrously wrong.
When the new organisation was presented to the public in Central Hall, Westminster, in February 1958, more than 2,000 people turned up. This unexpectedly large turnout encouraged the organisers to stage a 50-mile protest march from London to Aldermaston over the four-day Easter Period in early April. They said that if 60 or 70 people turned up, it would be enough to make the national newspapers.
In the event 5,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday morning, April 4, 1958. They filed through the streets in a two-mile column and proceeded toward Aldermaston.
There was a carnival atmosphere among the throng as they marched down the highway. Students sang folk songs, Jazz bands played, mothers pushed prams; whole families marched together in an infectious spirit of peace and love.
The cause seemed good and brave and it caught the national imagination. On one of the coldest, windiest Easter Sundays in memory, more than 10,000 people shivered in the driving rain outside the barbed wire perimeter of the site, to hear speaker after speaker calling for a ban on nuclear bombs.
The Establishment was rocked to the core and it was hardly surprising that when Grapple Y went wrong it was covered up. And the cover-up continues to this day, as further documents that came to light proved.
THE TRUTH OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND
The Meteorological Office reports had established a credible pathway for the radioactive contamination of troops on Christmas Island.
But although the new information was a momentous advance for the veterans, the Ministry of Defence still had a “get out of jail” card in that there was still no direct evidence that contamination actually occurred.
The mantra by successive defence ministers had never varied. Defence minister Hamilton confirmed it in his speech to the Commons:
Shortly after the test, extensive environmental monitoring did not measure any deposition of radioactive materials from the detonation.
And Dr Mooney reiterated it in his April 2003 letter to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, when he stated that
environmental recordings were below the level of detection for contamination.
So despite the rain, and the fact it was caused by the bomb, and that the wind blew it over the island, there was, apparently no evidence of contamination.
It didn’t make sense, so further Freedom of Information requests were made, this time for the environmental records, for Christmas Island at the time of Grapple Y.
Thus far the only environmental records released by the government covered the whole Pacific, obviously a huge area encompassing thousands of islands in the general area of both British and American bomb tests.
The islands in the British sphere of influence were so far away from Christmas Island that it was hardly surprising there was little increase in radioactivity recorded.
What the British had conspicuously left out were fallout records on Christmas Island itself. This was apparently for the simple reason the bomb tests were supposed to have been detonated too high in the air to cause localised fallout.
Nevertheless, the FoI requests specifically asked for this data. After some resistance, Aldermaston reluctantly released a hefty 42-page report: “Environmental Monitoring at Christmas Island 1957-1958.” Written by four officials from Atomic Weapons Establishment Safety Directorate it was written specifically to reassure politicians about safety aspects on Christmas Island. It began with a warning.
This document and the information it contains is the property of the Ministry of Defence. It is provided in confidence for the personal information of, and use by, recipients and holders. It must not be communicated either directly or indirectly to, or discuss with, the press or other media, or any other person not authorised by, or on behalf of, Director Safety AWE to receive it.
What didn’t they want us to know? Maybe the reason is that the report is a master-class of obfuscation and evasion clearly designed to reassure, yet failing dismally. Even the opening sentence is a falsehood.
Detonations were permitted only when it had been reliably concluded that the meteorological conditions, in particular wind directions, were such that fall-out would be carried away from inhabited areas (emphasis added).
We now know of course that this isn’t true: the Meteorological Office report clearly states the winds for Grapple Y explosion were blowing toward areas where servicemen were gathered. So, based on the MoD’s own stringent requirements, the shot should not have been fired. The authors of the report were clearly not conversant with the weather reports.
And what are we to make of the next statement?
Environmental measurements were usually below the limit of detection. On the few occasions when radioactivity above this limit was detected the levels were low, decayed or dispersed rapidly, and did not constitute a hazard or danger to test participants, visitors or inhabitants of the island.
What they are clearly trying not to say is that after all the denials and assurances by ministers to the contrary there was radioactive contamination on Christmas Island even if it was “low or decayed.” But the next statement contradicts even that slippery assurance when it concedes there was
a single enhanced measurement of 2.8 microcurie per square metre” found at Main Camp 32 hours after one of the detonations. This was slightly above the recommended limit of 1 microcuries per square metre.
It was in fact nearly three times the recommended limit, which some would argue was a lot more than “slightly above.” But this important distinction pales into insignificance when considered alongside the ne
xt staggering announcement
A few very high values (up to 300 microcuries per square metre after extrapolation back to one hour after detonation) were recorded from the uninhabited southern parts of the island, none of which was nearer than 8 km from the nearest inhabited area.
In the space of a few short paragraphs we have moved from the definitive “below the limit of detection” on to “slightly above the recommended limit” to arrive at “a few very high values of 300 microcuries per square metre!
Let us be clear: this measurement was 300 times the recommended safe limit which was just 1 microcuries per square metre…by any standards a very serious contamination.
Remember: the Christmas Island bombs were all supposed to have been “clean” because they were exploded too high in the air to cause any fallout. This astonishing document makes a nonsense of all that.
To find such high concentrations of radiation just a few miles from inhabited areas is a very grave situation.
Radioactive contamination does not recognise borders, and if it had already travelled 20 km from the point of detonation there is no reason to suppose it would just stop dead in its tracks when it reached 8 km from the camps, as the authors of the report imply.
But there was more: Further in the text, Grapple Y makes a sudden startling appearance, leaping out of page 7:-
During Operation Grapple Y, the greatest and only significant measured value (of 150 microcuries per square metre) was obtained at the uninhabited site at Vaskess Bay. However, records indicate that subsequent surveys using hand-held instruments did not confirm this high figure.