Antler was connected to the H-bomb trials in the Pacific and designed to test certain components necessary for thermonuclear weaponry. Penney was not the director this time around. Instead, it was led by Charles Adams, who had been second in command at the Mosaic tests. The tests began at Tadje on 12 September 1957 with a small 1-kilotonne device (known as Pixie) detonated from a 30-metre tower. Round 2 (Indigo Hammer) was held on 21 September at Biak, again detonated from a tower. This device had a yield of 6 kilotonnes. The final weapons test in the Antler series was held on 9 October at Taranaki. The device, a trigger for a thermonuclear weapon, was suspended 300 metres aloft in the desert sky by balloons. With a yield of 25 kilotonnes, the same as Hurricane, this was the biggest device tested at Maralinga. The balloon tests could hoist atomic devices far higher than towers. This was of great interest to the AWRE, and development work had started at Aldermaston about 18 months before the test. Ernest Titterton observed the progress of the balloon systems when he visited the UK in March 1957.
The second Antler shot was observed by a grab bag of about 70 international visitors, including representatives from the Central African Federation, the Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Baghdad Pact (Iraq and Iran) and two South-East Asia Treaty Organisation partners, Thailand and the Philippines. The third and final shot was observed by representatives of the international and Australian media and a range of Australian parliamentarians.
By the end of 1957, Howard Beale, the Australian face of the test program, had apparently fallen out with Menzies, and early the following year he shipped out to a post as ambassador to the US (the posting of choice for fallen Australian Cabinet ministers).
As it turned out, Antler was the last major series. The international situation had changed markedly. Britain was now a signatory to an international moratorium on atomic weapons struck in Geneva. Operation Lighthouse, scheduled for 1958 at Maralinga, never happened. No doubt this was a good thing, since Lighthouse involved more extensive human exposure experiments along the lines of the Indoctrinee Force – hundreds of men wrapped in special blankets were to huddle close to a major explosion.
There were no more major atmospheric tests at Maralinga. The seven nuclear devices tested there had sent radioactive clouds over a large portion of the Australian continent, joining the contamination already contributed by the non-Maralinga tests, particularly Mosaic G2. To this day no-one can say for sure whether this contamination caused harm to the broad Australian population. Almost certainly, though, the people closest to the bomb blasts, the military and scientific personnel at Maralinga and the Indigenous people in the vicinity, were physically affected to varying degrees.
This is not the end of the story. If the British nuclear tests had involved only the mushroom cloud tests, most of the radioactivity would be undetectable now. But there was still much to find out about the innumerable intricate details of nuclear weapons design. Despite the moratorium, the British were not to be denied the knowledge that minor trials could provide. Maralinga continued to help the British understand what the atomic age had unleashed. The minor trials that burgeoned at Maralinga after the major trials ended sometimes strayed into murky legal waters. And while much of what happened at Maralinga beyond the big, showy mushroom clouds was considerably more damaging to Australian territory, it was not uncovered for decades.
5
Vixen B and other ‘minor trials’
I’m sure in 1985 plutonium is in every corner drug store, but in 1955, it’s a little hard to come by!
In view of the known long half-life of plutonium (24 000 years), the Vixen series of minor trials should never have been conducted at Maralinga.
And the more questions we asked, and the deeper we got into the issue, the more it looked like a Pandora’s box.
In the red dust of Central Australia, sweating men in cotton shorts are erecting a scaffold. The 2-metre-high structure is crude but strong – narrow triangles that stand on four legs and reach a point at the apex, where there is room to place some lead bricks. The whole structure weighs about 60 tonnes. It has a hole at the top to accommodate a simulated warhead. The Australian military men work quickly, craning and bolting the prefabricated structure into place, brushing away the flies and drops of sweat from their eyes as they work. Close by, the decontamination team has set up a station. It includes a cattle grid that is used for washing down the vehicles. There is also a steam cleaner and pumps, with associated water storage tanks. The ground is well covered with low scrub and some grass, with the exception of the area inside the perimeter of the Taranaki test site. That area is mainly bare sand. The temperature climbs above 40 degrees Celsius. The red sand swirls endlessly, irritating their eyes. The horizon shimmers far in the distance.
Soon the British Royal Engineers will arrive with the simulated warhead. Inside the warhead, a sphere of silvery metal is held in position by a simple bracket and metallic rods of the same substance. Placed around the silvery metal, like a suicide-bomber’s explosive girdle, is a ring of TNT rods, each with an outer case of distinctive red cardboard. The silvery metal is plutonium, one of the most deadly materials known. This strange and sinister device will be exploded from the top of the metal scaffold. The scaffold is called a feather bed, for reasons that have been forgotten. The delicate mock warhead is placed in position at the apex of the steel structure and tightly secured. All is ready for the experiment.
British scientists and military personnel are in the forward area. The Australian personnel have gone well back from the Taranaki test site, mostly south to Maralinga village. Only the British can be close to the main action. Not far away, eight hydrogen-filled balloons are bobbing around at two different elevations in a circle, around the forward area as well as upwind. Each balloon bristles with measuring equipment. Six form a ring around the forward area and carry instruments to measure the outpouring of radiation from the simulated warhead when it is exploded; these are positioned at a height of just over 100 metres. Two upwind balloons, positioned at just over 300 metres, will measure weather conditions at the time of the tests. The weather determines where the contamination spreads from atmospheric tests, whether radiological or nuclear. The balloons add a surreal feeling to the outback range as they silently wait for data from the coming blast and the wind.
An array of measuring instruments designed to catch the falling radioactive debris is set out at intervals of 1600 metres around the boundary of the forward area, along East Street, 25th Avenue and West Street. A balloon team and a photographic team support the six-man scientific staff, headed by Major JT McLean. Two Holden cars, six Land Rovers and a bus are parked just outside the forward area. The forward area is generally taken to be anywhere north of Roadside, a command post at the point where the road north from Maralinga village branches into two roads. Several Land Rovers inside the forward area will be sacrificed to contamination, one of the costs associated with radioactive testing. One day they will be buried here.