by Joan Smith
This advice was later proved to be quite wrong. The cloud sampling operation, which involved the collection of samples in special canisters attached to the plane, was considered at the Totem tests the following year to be an ‘unexpected radiation hazard’ not only for aircrew but for ground staff dealing with the plane once it had landed. When the sampling canisters were removed from RAAF Lincolns which had flown through the cloud at the first Totem explosion, they were so radioactive that they sent Geiger counters off scale when taken into the laboratory for analysis.
As a result of this incident, Australian aircrew at the later tests were provided with protective clothing and film badges. But at Hurricane and Totem, they had neither; radiation doses received by the crew can only be guessed at by relating them to measurements of the radioactivity in the cloud.
Sampling the cloud was not, of course, the only operation which involved exposure to radiation. Helicopters were used to survey the area close to the explosion; salvage teams were sent on to islands to recover a variety of objects which had been left there to establish the effects of blast; ships sailed into contaminated water for various operations, and radioactive waste was stored on HMS Tracker and HMS Zeebrugge.
Men involved in ‘dirty sorties’ - expeditions into contaminated areas - went through health control on board HMS Tracker when their duties were finished. Torlesse’s report shows that 912 people passed through health control in the twenty-two days after the explosion. Various examples are given in his report of incidents in which men were contaminated.
On the day of the explosion, the only party ‘significantly contaminated’ was a sortie sent out to recover rocket heads from one of the islands after the explosion. Their hands were judged to be ‘dirty’. On two occasions, helicopters were ‘mildly contaminated’. The first was on the evening of the day the test took place, when a helicopter flew through a fire on Trimouille Island which had been caused by the blast. In this incident, ‘the helicopter crew was also slightly contaminated’ and was sent to the health ship for decontamination.
The second occasion happened three weeks after the explosion, when a helicopter was hovering over the sea in the lee of an island and became contaminated by dust blowing off the island. The following day the contamination had to be washed off the aircraft.
Although Torlesse’s report is detailed, there is at least one interesting omission from it. He records a number of occasions on which ships sailed into areas where the water was contaminated - HMS Tracker detected fallout one mile south of Flag island, directly south of Trimouille, on the day of the explosion, for example. But the fact that the ships were still radioactive on their arrival back in Britain is not mentioned.
The Torlesse report is dated 20 March 1953. Thirteen days before, The Times reported an Admiralty announcement that Campania, Narvik, Tracker and Zeebrugge ‘still carry some evidence of their association’ with the atomic explosion at the Monte Bello Islands. ‘Although they were outside the range of the direct effects of the explosion,’ the Admiralty said, ‘it was necessary afterwards for the ships to enter water which had become contaminated by the radioactive products of the explosion. As was expected, this deposited a certain amount of radioactivity in those parts of the ship coming into contact with sea water, such as the ship’s bottom and, inside the ship, saltwater pipe systems and fittings.’
(In fact, a special warning had to be issued to men working in the engine rooms of the ships after intakes were found to have taken in contaminated sea water, the Royal Commission was told by Major-General Alec Walkling in January 1985.)
At the time, the Admiralty went on to say reassuringly that, ‘as contact with radioactivity was premeditated and controlled and several months’ natural decay has occurred since the event, the residual contamination is now so light as to be almost negligible and does not affect the serviceability or habitability of the ships.’
Even so, to avoid potential risk to the health of men required to carry out repairs in future, the royal dockyards had been asked to remove the contamination. ‘Precautions will be taken to obviate health risks to the men doing the work,’ the Admiralty stated.
The Times went on to report the cheerful news that ‘it was pointed out at the Admiralty yesterday that the effect of the contamination has not prevented the ships remaining in commission since the Monte Bello test, and that all have continued to have complements living on board.’
Torlesse’s report does not deal with the implications for the health of the people who lived on the four contaminated ships during the long journey home, or of those servicemen who were still stationed on board at the time of the announcement. If the ships were sufficiently radioactive five months after the explosion to need decontamination, how much more contaminated would they have been in the weeks after the test? Nor does it seem that the Admiralty had a very clear idea of how to deal with the problem, as The Times story goes on to make clear.
‘The dockyards have had no previous practical experience of this work,’ the Admiralty statement admits, but then looks on the bright side. These ships, although only ‘lukewarm’, ‘will provide a most valuable training exercise for the organization which must be set up for the handling and decontamination, should the need arise, of the really “hot” ships which must be anticipated in a future war in which atomic weapons may be used. It will also be an opportunity for practical training for the passive defence organizations.’
It is clear from Torlesse’s report that contamination eventually spread from the water around the northern islands in the group southwards for several miles. But this was not the only way in which ships could become contaminated. Torlesse’s report reveals that ‘a certain amount of gear and equipment used by special parties in the contaminated area, together with some contaminated equipment which was salvaged, could not successfully be decontaminated. Such gear was stored in the radioactive waste store in Tracker to await dumping at sea.’
Lightly contaminated protective clothing was kept on board Tracker and brought back to Britain for decontamination at home. Rubber boots, and gloves, were cleaned on board ship, where they responded ‘fairly well’ to treatment to remove radioactivity. ‘Heavily contaminated’ suits and other woven items were taken off by the people wearing them when they arrived at health control on board Tracker.
Heavily contaminated clothing was packed in old cement drums with a sufficient quantity of cement to achieve what Torlesse calls ‘negative buoyancy’ - in other words, to make them heavy enough to sink. Tracker carried twenty tons of cement and twenty tons of aggregate for this purpose. Cementing was done by servicemen on the upper deck under the supervision of health control. The drums were then thrown overboard.
There was also a problem of radioactive waste on board Zeebrugge. Effluent from the laboratories, consisting of fresh water which had been used to wash down contaminated items, had to be disposed of. The drums were thrown over the stern of Zeebrugge. To the dismay of those on board, the partly-filled drums floated. The solution adopted was simple. The drums were riddled with rifle fire until they began to fill with sea-water and sink.
Torlesse reports: ‘The bullet holes permitted the effluent to seep away slowly, after which it would be diluted by the sea, thus ensuring that potentially dangerous concentrations did not remain in the drums for a long period.’ Presumably, the same result of contaminating the sea with radioactive waste could have been achieved by simply pouring it overboard in the first place. Perhaps Torlesse had other things on his mind at the time - the return of empty beer bottles, for instance?
The Rear-Admiral gave considerable thought to the question of the type of beer most suitable for operations of this sort. It is a tribute to the British habit of secrecy that his recommendations on this subject appear in a report which bears the classification ‘restricted’.
‘Canned beer costs one shilling for a 12 OZ can and is not as popular as bottled beer,’ the Rear-Admiral reports. ‘Further, about two per cent of the cans were fou
nd to contain flat beer. Australian beer, costing one shilling and threepence (Australian) for a 26 oz bottle, is cheaper and better. The decision to use British beer was taken because of:-
(a) the convenience of canned beer and
(b) doubt about the availability of sufficient quantities of Australian beer.
It is recommended that in any future operation in this area Australian beer should be used. The return of empties is a disadvantage but presents no insoluble problem.’
The concern about the return of empty bottles is touching. Radioactive waste was considered less of a problem, it seems. But the Rear-Admiral was right about the unpopularity of canned beer. Between August and October, 1,100 men in the Monte Bellos drank only 86,400 cans between them - just under one a day each.
Towards the end of Attlee’s administration in 1951, the British Prime Minister told the Australians that the effect of the Monte Bello test would be to contaminate the north-eastern islands in the group, and that contamination might well spread to other islands as well. The area would not be free of contamination for three years after the explosion, he added. During that period, it would be unsafe for human habitation or even visits from the pearl fishermen who had been its only regular visitors before the test.
The question of how to keep people off the islands became pressing as the task force prepared to leave. Penney and a number of his AWRE staff left the islands only six days after the explosion, sailing for Onslow on the mainland in HMAS Hawkesbury and then flying to Britain. The process of re-entry to the ‘dirty’ area to retrieve equipment and take samples was held up for four days from 12 October due to bad weather. Several boats were damaged in gale-force winds - a landing craft sank at its moorings, a motor launch went on the rocks carrying the echo-sounder used for surveying the bomb crater, and a 35-foot pinnace broke loose and was never seen again.
By 23 October, the salvage operation was complete. The Royal Engineers were given the job of dismantling any structures left on the islands to prevent future visitors using them without realizing the danger. Finally, on 31 October, HMS Campania led the task force from the Monte Bello Islands to Fremantle.
They left behind the Australian ship, Hawkesbury, and an Australian unit whose tasks were to carry out training in radiological safety and to keep people out of the area. The unit set up camp on South East island, less than a mile to the south of Trimouille, with a Land Rover and a wide range of radiation detection equipment supplied by the British. The unit carried out a week of training exercises on Trimouille in early November. They were joined by eleven ratings from Hawkesbury, who came ashore for lectures and practical work. The unit left the islands on 16 December: radiation records show they were exposed to about one-fifth of the amount of radiation now permitted for workers in the radiation industry.
After the unit’s departure, the security of the islands was left in the hands of the Royal Australian Navy, which made periodic visits and mounted security patrols. In reality, it was impossible for such patrols to prevent the odd landing on the islands, but the security of the area was a pretty low priority for everyone concerned, British and Australians.
Penney was questioned closely on the subject at the Royal Commission hearings in 1985. Whose responsibility was it to keep people out, he was asked? ‘I believe it was the Australians’,’ he replied. ‘The advice I gave was that we must be sure that nobody outside … no outsiders land on that island for two or three months and that we would review the situation as we went along.’
The account he gave of the decisions that were taken had a haphazard air about it, and lacked any consistency about whether or not there was a risk. At some point, he couldn’t remember when exactly, but it might have been three months after the explosion, his chief of staff at AWRE ‘came along waving a bit of paper. He said, “The Australians want to take the guard off. Do you think that’s all right?” I said, “What’s the radiation?”’ A bit later, Penney said, he was told that a search party had been to the islands and he heard what levels of radioactivity they had found. They were ‘all right’, he said, but he insisted that, if the guard was taken away, steps must be taken ‘to stop anybody going near the place. So the undertaking was made to put up notices in words in various languages, Japanese being one … scary kind of words. Just when that was I can’t tell you to the month. It wasn’t ’52. It could have been middle to late ’53. It might have been early ’54.’
In the light of these rather loose arrangements, it is not surprising that when a dead body was found on a beach on one of the islands during the Operation Mosaic tests at Monte Bello in 1956, there was a moment’s panic until it was realized that the corpse was an old one - that of a fisherman - and had probably been there long before any atom bombs were tested in the area. But even after the Mosaic tests, one of which was the big 98 kiloton blast, the only long-term method adopted for keeping people off the islands was the erection of signs.
This arrangement was accepted in spite of the known fact that some parts of Trimouille Island had posed a radiation hazard three years after the first test - and that that hazard was being increased by the addition of contamination from a further two bombs. Nevertheless, the British and Australians decided against any attempt to fence off ‘hot’ areas in the islands, apparently because to do so would involve all the bother of erecting barbed wire on several islands in the group. Once again, the only hope of chance visitors to the islands avoiding contamination was that they would be able to read, and that they happened to speak one of the languages used on the signs.
When a team from Greenpeace, the environmental pressure group, visited the Monte Bellos more than thirty years after the first test, they found that ‘the overwhelming beauty of the islands … lulled us into a false sense of security about the dangers of visiting a radioactively contaminated area’. At Alpha Island, where one of the Operation Mosaic bombs was tested, ‘one would have had to walk on contaminated ground’ to read the warning signs. As a general rule, ‘the radiation hazard signs around the ground zero [the point on the earth nearest the centre of the explosion] sites were too small in size, difficult to read from a distance and too few in number.’
The Greenpeace team was told, on applying for a permit to visit the islands at Port Hedland, on the mainland, that only six other permits had been issued that year. Yet they encountered four other yachts in the islands in the short period they spent there, suggesting that unauthorized visits regularly take place.
Greenpeace claims it will take sixty years for radiation levels at the ground zeros on the islands to decline to limits recommended as safe for the public. They want contaminated areas to be fenced off and marked with prominent signs warning of the dangers. Since this safeguard was considered ‘virtually impossible’ in 1956, when the danger was at its height, the chances of its happening now seem slight.
Chapter Four
‘The big bang– for peace’
Headline over Daily Graphic editorial, October 1952
‘Britain now has what is believed to be the world’s most powerful atomic weapon.’ This is how the now-defunct Daily Graphic greeted - incorrectly - the test at Monte Bello. ‘Scientists who saw yesterday’s palm-shaped explosion off Western Australia speculated whether it was the first hydrogen bomb that was set off.’
In autumn 1952, Britain was actually nearly five years away from being ready to test the hydrogen bomb. Even the US had not managed it so far; they would explode their first successful hydrogen device, which was far from being a usable weapon, on 1 November 1952 at Eniwetok. The notion that Britain might somehow have been able to leapfrog ahead to the hydrogen bomb is in the realms of science-fiction; British scientists had only just succeeded in meeting the deadline imposed on them by politicians for testing the atom bomb, and the effort had been a massive drain on the country’s depleted post-war resources.
The Daily Graphic justified its flight of fancy with reference to the opinions of unnamed ‘scientists’. It cited the shape of the cl
oud and the bomb’s ‘greater and more widespread destructive force on the surface’ as evidence. The first is due, as we have seen, to the turbulence of the winds encountered by the cloud. The second is the result of the explosion taking place eight or nine feet under water.
The story’s origins can be traced to two motivating forces: the understandable desire of the press to report exciting events even when little hard information is available, and a sense of patriotism which had little outlet in the austere post-war years. With little information flowing from official sources - journalists had to wait three weeks for anything more than bald announcements that the test had taken place - reporters scrabbled around among what contacts they had in the scientific community, puzzled over eye-witness accounts, and cobbled together what they could.
Here is Chapman Pincher in the Daily Express of 3 October 1952, reporting ‘the facts known in London’ about the Monte Bello test: ‘The first bomb was almost certainly exploded on the top of a steel tower.’ The Daily Graphic took the same line, but attributed the information to eye-witnesses on the mainland. ‘Reports from Rough Range, North-West Australia, said the weapon appeared to be a bomb exploded from a tower,’ it reported rather more cautiously.
The Empire News, two days after the test, took an even more imaginative line which clearly stemmed from a hint that the bomb had been in some way intended to supply information for civil defence. ‘By the time you read this,’ the paper announced, ‘British atomic scientists at Monte Bello will have a fair idea of your chances of surviving an atomic attack on Britain.’
Not a bad guess, so far. But now Arthur Morley, writing from Sydney, creates a pot-pourri of facts, guesses and fantasy. The scientists’ main reason for coming out to Monte Bello, he goes on, was ‘to explode an atom bomb on top of specially-built new British shelters, mock houses, grounded aircraft, water mains, and electricity cables. The materials landed for ARP testing, I understand, were tactical atomic weapons, atomic shelters, a new British paste or salve to protect the face and hands from flashburn, injections to minimize the effect on the human system of radiations, and new simple protective clothing.’ (My italics.) These are flights of fancy. It had been a race against time to produce the weapon in time for the Monte Bello trial and there certainly were not spare tactical nuclear weapons lying around to use in tests of this sort. Even more startling is the notion of ‘injections in advance of radioactive material in minute doses to attempt to build up immunity’, as Morley later describes them. Far from giving immunity, minute doses of radioactive material will themselves cause cancer - there is no way of building up immunity to radiation in the way that there is to some illnesses.