The fact that Australia had virtually no background in matters nuclear, other than the largely expatriate contribution to physics research of Mark Oliphant and a few other scientists, was irrelevant. Britain would control the science. What they needed was space, not scientists and technologists. Prime Minister Attlee made the first approach, and Menzies was almost certainly taken by surprise. Nevertheless, when he received Attlee’s top-secret cable on 16 September 1950, followed up by a telephone call, his instinctive eagerness deterred him from consulting colleagues. Australia’s Monte Bello Islands had cropped up because Penney’s interest in observing base surge had led to canvassing island locations. It rose to the top of the list when relations with the US over atomic matters deteriorated with the arrest of Fuchs, and the Canadians went cold on the sub-Arctic site at Churchill. Other Pacific island nations were also considered but discounted. Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria was briefly on the list but not pursued because of its meteorological conditions.
A swift survey to confirm Monte Bello’s suitability for the proposed historic first British test followed. The top-secret Operation Epicure was overseen by Major General AJH Cassels in the UK Services Liaison Staff Office in Melbourne and by Sir Frederick Shedden, the secretary of the Australian Department of Defence. Their cover story was that they were investigating the feasibility of extending the UK rocket testing project. An ASIO officer joined the survey, the first time the new domestic spy service was involved in the push for atomic weapons. The Royal Australian Navy provided HMAS Karangi as the survey ship and sent HMAS Warrego to prepare a detailed chart of the complicated maritime features of the island group, since little information was available at the time. The project used the term Western Islands, rather than Monte Bello, to maintain secrecy. As well as charting the islands, the crew of the Warrego found an immensely rich natural environment, which they outlined in their report. Many of their biological samples eventually found their way to the British Museum in London.
Epicure was swift indeed. Karangi had done her work by 27 November 1950 and steamed back to Fremantle, bearing a trove of information. Data included depth soundings and information on the tides and the winds. The Epicure results were submitted for review to the AWRE and government representatives in London, where they found favour. In February 1951 the British chiefs of staff agreed to a shipborne atomic test at the Monte Bello Islands. Epicure had established that a maritime explosion and base surge could be tested there.
In fact, Epicure was so quick that some people, particularly the slow and steady Shedden, were concerned about making serious decisions with long-term consequences under undue time pressure. The survey confirmed that October 1952 would be the best time for the test – indeed, October was probably the only feasible time of the year. Attlee confirmed the details with Menzies on 27 March 1951. Attlee added, coyly, ‘We can settle later the details of finance and machinery’.
As it happens, these details were never properly settled. The Australians behaved as though agreeing to pay for expensive parts of the test operations in Australia would be something of a bargaining chip to obtain knowledge from the British tests, but did little to actually deploy this supposed advantage. Gowing later wrote, with magnificent understatement, ‘The Australians agreed to this without striking a hard bargain over technical collaboration’. And so an initially secret deal was agreed, well before most members of the Menzies government, let alone the Australian people, knew. The massive operation had less than 18 months to be organised, and the Monte Bello Islands were a world away from the British Isles.
Penney, who ventured forth from his base at Aldermaston to take charge, was in his early 40s when he directed Operation Hurricane at the remote Monte Bello Islands. Born on 24 June 1909 in Gibraltar, he was educated in England and the US and held PhDs from both Imperial College London and Cambridge. His expertise in blast waves from explosions led him to the Manhattan Project, which in turn, he told the Royal Commission, guided his work on the nuclear tests in Australia. He led the Australian atomic test series for all the major trials, although from 1954 he became increasingly involved with the testing of thermonuclear weapons in the Pacific and delegated some Australian tasks to AWRE deputy head William (later Sir William) Cook.
Penney remained director of the AWRE until 1959 and later became chair of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. He was a fine-looking man, tall with broad shoulders and a strong, square face that sported thick-rimmed glasses. He had a smooth, posh accent that often seemed to be on the brink of sophisticated merriment. He was also dignified and likeable. In fact, even royal commissioner Jim McClelland could not despise him in the way he despised Ernest Titterton, though he hated everything that Penney presided over in Australia. In an obituary in 1991, Penney was described as ‘a friendly, undevious and usually humorous man’ and ‘a shrewd administrator and good judge of people’. For his work on developing the British bomb and beyond he was knighted, and later made a life peer, taking the title Baron Penney. To many who knew him, though, he was simply Bill – or indeed Buffalo Bill, after Maralinga’s Buffalo series. When he fronted the Royal Commission in London in February 1985, he had changed physically, with one newspaper describing him as ‘a small round man with round glasses and wispy white hair, wearing crumpled tweed clothes under an equally crumpled coat’.
Another towering figure in this saga, who made the British nuclear tests possible with a stroke of his pen, was the Australian prime minister. Robert Menzies, an unashamed Anglophile, began his second tenure as prime minister in 1949, and it lasted 16 years. In fact, his enthusiastic co-operation with Britain’s nuclear testing program was a defining characteristic of his prime ministership. It fitted in with his overall desire to reinvigorate the relationship between Australia and the UK, which had been bruised in some ways by World War II and the Depression.
His enthusiasm for nuclear testing was not considered strange at the time. Despite the initial shock at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many people in the West saw atomic weaponry and energy as positive and forward-looking developments, a view encouraged by US and British propaganda. Also, if Britain was doing it then that was fine by Australia. As secretary of the AWTSC John Moroney remarked in 1993, the times were different. The ‘closeness and strength of feeling between’ Britain and Australia, said Moroney, ‘was a very tangible thing then, but virtually incomprehensible to many now’. To many Australians, Britain was the ‘Mother Country’, and Australians visiting the UK, even for the first time, talked about ‘returning home’. While some segments of Australian society were resentful that Churchill had tried to stop Australian troops from leaving the Middle East to defend Singapore and Papua New Guinea from the Japanese during the war, the majority of Australians saw loyalty to Great Britain as a natural part of the order of things.
This close relationship helped to secure the original agreement and set in train a long series of events still not completely resolved. The connection between the UK and Australia altered during the nuclear tests saga and its aftermath. The initial Australian willingness to agree to British requests for weapons testing became less ardent over the 11 years they lasted. Even at the beginning, though, Menzies knew that atomic testing could be politically difficult. He asked Attlee to delay finalising the official arrangements for the first British nuclear test until after the Australian election of May 1951 that returned the Menzies government for its second term. Such was not the fate of Clement Attlee, who lost his election in October.