In an obituary in 1990 the ANU nuclear physicist Trevor Ophel wrote, ‘While he gained fame as having “pushed the button” to initiate the first atom bomb test at Alamogordo, the consequences of his time at Los Alamos were more profound. It made him a member of an old boys’ network of virtually every leading nuclear physicist, both experimental and theoretical, in the Western world’. He came to the nuclear tests in Australia with existing connections that guaranteed insider status rather than disinterested objectivity.
The AWTSC had two distinct phases, between 1955 and 1957 under chief defence scientist Professor (later Sir) Leslie Martin from Melbourne University and from 1957 to 1973 under Ernest Titterton. Titterton was on the original committee with Martin. The other members were Alan Butement, chief scientist employed by the Department of Supply; Dr Cecil Eddy, director of the Melbourne-based Commonwealth X-Ray and Radium Laboratory; and Professor Phillip Baxter, vice-chancellor of the University of New South Wales and deputy chair of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. Baxter had played a role in the Manhattan Project, as a chemical engineer based at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he had worked on the production of fissile uranium. Martin was a reliable and sensible university and defence man. Titterton was another proposition.
When Titterton became AWTSC chair in 1957, the committee was reduced to three members, narrowing its base to accommodate his larger personality. Alongside Titterton were LJ Dwyer, director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, and Donald Stevens, the new director of the Commonwealth X-Ray and Radium Laboratory (Eddy had died the previous year). Titterton remained AWTSC chair until it was reconstituted as the Australian Ionising Radiation Advisory Council (AIRAC) in 1973, at which point he was not invited to continue.
Titterton came to Australia in 1950 after Professor Mark Oliphant invited him to become foundation chair of nuclear physics at the ANU. Oliphant, who had supervised Titterton’s research at the University of Birmingham in the 1930s, planned tempting new research in nuclear and particle physics at the ANU. Oliphant was a scientific insider in the wartime race to create a nuclear weapon, but he later became an opponent of such weapons when he saw the human toll from the bombs dropped on Japan. He fell out with Titterton and was effectively barred from any involvement in the British tests in Australia. Oliphant was actively excluded not just because of his horror at what was unleashed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because he was outspoken about it. The British explicitly requested that the Australians not allow him to be involved. The Americans, who knew him from Manhattan Project days, also did not consider him to be ‘sound’ – they thought that his views on the open sharing of scientific information made him a security threat. A message to the British High Commission from the British Government, quoted by the Australian journalist Robert Milliken, said in part, ‘Oliphant is unquestionably talkative and would give the impression (whether true or not) that he was in possession of all the secrets. It is therefore in the general interest that he should be “kept away”’. In the early 1950s, the Americans declined to issue him a visa to go to a physics conference in Chicago, a moment of humiliation for him. He had no official voice in the conduct of the tests in Australia. All he would do was speak out about his own disquiet. Oliphant would likely have made an excellent safety committee chair, but he was not allowed anywhere near the safety committee.
Oliphant’s former pupil did not share his qualms about nuclear weaponry. Titterton, described by ARPANSA scientist Geoff William as a ‘creature of the British atomic weapons testing establishment’ had, in addition to his Manhattan Project credentials and expertise in high-speed electronic triggering mechanisms, contributed to the US bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. He had then taken up a position with the UK AERE at Harwell. He did not work directly with William Penney, but the pair operated in the same broad circle. Titterton’s career record shows he was committed to the development of Western nuclear weaponry. According to his ANU colleague Professor John Newton, Titterton,
unlike some of his contemporaries, felt no guilt regarding his part in the development of these weapons… He was of the opinion that it was much better that the Allies first produced them rather than Hitler’s Germany, that their use in Japan had saved many US and Japanese lives, and that fear of their use had kept, and would most probably continue to keep, the peace between the major powers.
In the mid-1980s Titterton strongly defended his role at Maralinga when questioned by the Royal Commission and bristled about accusations that he had denied information to the Australian Government, pointing out he had been subject to US and UK secrecy agreements. He continued defending his actions, even as media stories dissected the British tests in the wake of the Royal Commission and found that his actions had been questionable at best (see chapter 10). The Royal Commission report, a document that displayed uncommon levels of ironic humour and controlled outrage, mentioned Titterton’s ‘special relationship’ with the AWRE in several places. It found Titterton’s role at Maralinga was to be the AWRE man on the ground, and thereby to limit the information provided to the Australian Government. Justice James McClelland later wrote that ‘it would be hard to imagine anyone less suitable than Titterton to be entrusted with a task which called for disinterested concern for the safety of the Australian population from nuclear radiation’.
The report criticised Titterton to such an extent that it led to suspicions that the process was a political witch-hunt. Academic Graeme Turner described the Royal Commission as ‘a spectacle of national revenge’. If this was so, the focus for much of the revenge seemed to be on one of its most prominent participants. An account of Titterton’s career written two years after his death by John Newton told a somewhat more sympathetic story. In disputing the criticism contained in the commission’s report, Newton said, ‘The statement that Titterton was “from first to last, ‘their man’” rejects any other interpretation of his actions. It appears contrary to the attitude that the Commission adopted in other cases’.
ANU colleagues, many of whom knew Titterton well, consistently defended him, while acknowledging his shortcomings. Trevor Ophel observed that ‘rarely has it been more evident that the past is the proper territory of thoughtful historians. Hindsight, conditioned by political and scientific changes evolving over a thirty year period, cannot and should not be used to judge the past’. Ophel noted that Titterton had been ‘accused of near treason’ by the Royal Commission. It is striking to see how far his reputation deteriorated, from respected scientist and confidante of the British nuclear weapons establishment to Australian pariah.
Nevertheless, a certain relish for the battle can be detected in McClelland’s description of Titterton in the witness box ‘as a sort of Dr Strangelove figure. So gung-ho about all things nuclear that he gave me the impression that radiation was nothing to worry about and could almost be considered good for people’. Years after Titterton’s death, McClelland’s assessment of the former head of the safety committee had not softened; he said Titterton was ‘totally obsessed with nuclear physics’.