Cockram replied:
I have been instructed to inform you that full details of all weapon effects and the layout of the site will be given to Professor Martin. The accommodation position, however, necessitates that all persons attending the test should be allotted definite tasks, and the health physics team was suggested as being related to the one in which Professor Martin is interested. This suggestion was not intended to limit in any way the undertaking that Professor Martin would be given full access to the information mentioned above. I have also been asked to state that Mr. Butement’s attendance is understood by the United Kingdom authorities concerned to be on a similar basis.
The Australians seemed unsure of what to do about the limited nature of Australian involvement. The uncertainty led to paralysis. Martin was stationed uneasily away from the centre of the action. Only Titterton was admitted to the inner circle.
Titterton’s involvement was no twist of fate. The British did not wish to leave Australian decision-making to chance. The best way to ensure that Australia was guided to the correct decision was to put a sound man in the middle of the process and make him the obvious choice for the Australian safety committee. The upper echelons of the British establishment felt comfortable with Titterton, who gained access to the tests and, in some cases, the data they produced. This did not extend to others on the Australian side. Martin and Butement did not find favour with the éminence grise of the British tests, Lord Cherwell (chief adviser to Winston Churchill), who actively tried to ensure that they did not receive any significant information. As Milliken stated, ‘Cherwell grudgingly cabled his approval of [Butement’s attendance] only at the last minute, a fortnight before the Hurricane blast, on strict condition that Butement would have no access to vital efficiency data’. Martin’s access to Hurricane was even more disputed and stalled, although in the end he was granted approval largely as a goodwill gesture. Penney wrote to Cherwell, ‘We have not treated the Australians very generously in the way of inviting their scientific help. The invitation of Professor Martin would, I think, give them pleasure and would make them feel that we were not attempting to use their land but at the same time keeping them out’.
In 1956, just as the Maralinga site was about to become functional, Titterton published a book on nuclear power and weaponry, Facing the Atomic Future, intended for a broad audience. The book named him as professor of nuclear physics at the ANU but did not mention his role on the AWTSC or give any indication that he was involved in the British tests. In the book, Titterton, in views that appear to be at odds with his secretive behaviour, put forwards the need for public information about these issues. ‘Insistence on the desirability of informed public opinion on atomic energy matters follows from the basic belief that democracy functions best when the people understand the issues.’
Titterton reinforced his image as a disinterested scientific observer watching the tests from a distance when he participated in some stage-managed media activities ahead of the Mosaic tests at Monte Bello and the Buffalo tests planned for Maralinga. On 15 and 16 May 1956, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald simultaneously ran an identical feature in which he answered questions about the test program. In response to the first question, about the purpose of the forthcoming shots, Titterton answered in part, ‘If we should ever again have to call on our armed services to defend our freedom it is obviously of the greatest importance that they be equipped with weapons at least equivalent to, and preferably better than, those of a possible adversary. It would indeed be morally wrong to ask them to answer such a call unless we were prepared to so equip them’.
He also addressed rising public concerns about the fate of Japanese fishermen whose vessel had ventured too close to an American hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific, resulting in serious illness and the death of one man. Titterton responded:
The accident to the fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru was most unfortunate but it must be remembered that she had strayed well into the restricted danger area and also the weapon exploded on that occasion was of very large yield – one of the biggest ever likely to be tested. The Minister for Supply (Mr. Beale) has stated that no hydrogen bomb will be fired in Australia and it was recently indicated that the weapons tested would be ‘small’ relative to the American one which led to the accident to Fukuryu Maru.
The AWTSC met regularly and considered a set range of matters at nearly every meeting. These included air sampling, water sampling, biological samples, meteorological reports and, in the case of the Monte Bello Islands, various kinds of maritime reports. An ASIO operative attended the committee’s third meeting held at the University of Melbourne on 28 November 1955, but on the attendance list, the name was later physically cut out of the document. A handwritten note said, ‘Name of ASIO official deleted in accordance with S92 of ASIO Act’. This particular meeting dealt with the first ever airdrop of a nuclear device as part of Operation Buffalo at Maralinga in September 1956. The meeting approved this important test ‘subject to agreement on location and form of fall out pattern’.
Even at the time, Titterton’s apparently seamless elevation to the top AWTSC position caused some uneasiness in the prime minister’s office. One member of Menzies’ staff wrote in a memorandum, ‘To my mind Mr. Beale’s proposed committee becomes a one-man band’. Since that one man was known to be a dogmatic pro-nuclear weapons advocate, there was little doubt about the direction of the committee. Nevertheless, Beale signed off on the change. It was a momentous decision.
As long-time AWTSC secretary Moroney recalled, ‘While the AWTSC had no responsibility on-site, it was often consulted by the Government for advice on operational matters at Maralinga because it was the only Australian agency informed on the scientific aspects of the trials and their likely impact’. Moroney gave evidence to the Royal Commission that ‘Sir Ernest Titterton had greater knowledge than anyone in Australia on the major trials and the minor trials’. Officials from the government departments who dealt with Maralinga came to regret ceding so much control to Titterton and ultimately severely curtailed his power, primarily after the debacle when Titterton concealed the extremely dangerous nature of Vixen B.
The Royal Commission report damned the AWTSC again and again: ‘The AWTSC failed to carry out many of its tasks in a proper manner. At times it was deceitful and allowed unsafe firing to occur. It deviated from its charter by assuming responsibilities which properly belonged to the Australian Government’. Beale, however, used the AWTSC as armour in the constant battle to prove the tests were safe. He said in a 1956 media release at the time of Operation Buffalo: ‘There is, and always has been, complete unanimity of opinion between the British scientists under Sir William Penney and Australian scientists under Professor Martin as to standards of safety and conditions under which firing should take place’.
The saga of CSIRO scientist Hedley Marston best exemplified the AWTSC attitude to criticism. Marston was one of the few Australian scientists to raise questions about the British nuclear tests while they were underway. This pitted Titterton and Marston, both strong personalities, against each other. Marston was not a particularly pleasant individual, but his name has gone down honourably as the person who took on the AWTSC. The tale was well told in Roger Cross’ 2001 book Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia. In essence, Titterton attempted to stop Marston publishing results that showed alarming levels of radio-active iodine in livestock. Extrapolating (perhaps too enthusiastically) from his findings, Marston asserted that dangerous radioactive fallout from both the Mosaic tests at Monte Bello and the Buffalo tests at Maralinga was blowing through countryside, towns and cities, entering the food chain via animals and from there reaching millions of unsuspecting people.