This is a murky statement. In the first sentence we have Dr Mooney stating quite clearly that there was “no rainfall.” In the second sentence he states “measurable rainfall” was recorded four days after the blast. Then in the third sentence he blurs the issue further by stating there was “precipitation” two hours after the detonation.
Dr Mooney is being disingenuous. Precipitation means rainfall, which means it did rain soon after the Grapple Y explosion as eyewitnesses have testified. Dr Mooney obviously had no intention of addressing that issue for he quickly moved on to say that environmental testing showed no fallout over the island after the blast.
It is interesting to note that Dr Mooney refers to only the Main Camp while making his observations about there being no rain. What he didn’t say was that it was irrelevant whether it rained over Main Camp or not because there were few troops there to be rained upon.
Most of the men were evacuated to various mustering areas miles away as a safety precaution against the possibility of the bomb-carrying Valiant aircraft crashing on takeoff from the airfield, which was next to the Main Camp.
Why has the British government been so afraid of acknowledging that it rained? If there was no resultant radioactive contamination why bother to deny it? Was something being hidden?
Rainout is well known in scientific circles as being a particularly pernicious form of radioactive contamination. It was first observed about 30 minutes after the Hiroshima bomb as a “black rain” which was discoloured by tar and other materials in the wooden buildings set alight by the explosion. Its ability to hold its strength and not be dissipated like dry fallout is well known. A notorious example was observed in the township of Troy in upstate New York in April 1953.
What became known as the “Troy Incident” began at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when a group of students entered a laboratory for their radiochemistry class. They were startled to note that all the Geiger counters used in their studies were registering radiation many times the normal rate.
Their tutor took the students on a tour of the campus and discovered similar high readings. High concentrations were found in the gutters and drains which were overflowing because of the previous night’s heavy rains.
The school contacted the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Health and Safety office in New York City. Further measurements were taken and it was found that gamma radiation on the ground was a hundred times normal; beta ray radiation was even higher and hot spots were found in gutters and puddles.
The explanation was soon forthcoming: there had been an atomic bomb test conducted in the Nevada desert two days earlier. The mushroom cloud had reached 40,000 feet into the atmosphere then drifted 2,300 miles across the United States in a north-easterly direction. It passed over Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania before being caught up in a storm that dropped rain on upstate New York, southern Vermont and parts of Massachusetts.
In recent years the discovery of a leukaemia cluster in the Troy area has been confidently attributed to the incident.
Had a similar but much more localised incident taken place on Christmas Island? The only way this could be answered was by examining the environmental records and meteorological reports for Christmas Island at the time of the Grapple Y blast.
This was impossible during the time Hamilton and Mooney were making their statements because the relevant documents were buried deep in government archives, and not available for public consumption.
But things changed. The Freedom of Information Act which came into force on January 1, 2005 allows a general right of access to information held by public authorities.
It has been used to great affect to winkle out embarrassing information hidden away in government archives. Tony Blair is said to have remarked ruefully that it was one of his biggest mistake to introduce this legislation because of its propensity to reveal what politicians would like to stay hidden.
And so it proved in this case. A series of information requests were sent to the Ministry of Defence. And after a period of stonewalling, a raft of new material finally tumbled out of the archives. It proved to be the tipping point for the veteran’s campaign.
The first tranch of material to be released was the original weather charts relating to conditions over Christmas Island for the 24-hour period covering April 28, 1958. The blizzard of data clearly showed what all the politicians had been dancing around for years: there WAS rainfall in several areas in the hours following the explosion.
The charts reveal it rained between the following times: 2025-2037; 2136-2148; and 2155 to 2230. Bearing in mind the detonation took place at 1905, the charts show that at precisely one hour and 20 minutes after Grapple Y it rained for 12 minutes; 59 minutes later it rained for another 12 minutes, and seven minutes after that it rained for 35 minutes.
Notable on one chart was a comment: “large rainbow over the Port Camp at 2200 hrs.” This is just short of three hours after the shot. The charts are also peppered with the arcane symbols which weathermen use to denote rainfalclass="underline" an inverted isosceles triangle with dots on the top.
Thousands of men were gathered in the Port Camp area at the times it rained, and this was the clearest evidence yet that there was rainfall over the area after the Grapple Y explosion, despite all the obfuscation by the Ministry of Defence.
But this crucial evidence was just the curtain-raiser. The Meteorological Office in Bracknell, Berkshire later released a report entitled “Weather and Winds During Christmas Island Nuclear Tests.”
This 10-page document was originally sent from the Director General at the Met Office, in response to a request by a senior official (his name is redacted) at Aldermaston. The official had requested meteorological data for Christmas Island for the period of the nuclear weapon tests 1957-58.
The report begins with the observation that the rainfall at the Main Camp on Christmas Island, “occurred only on 8 November 1957, and 22 August 1958 and then only as light showers.” No sign here of rain after Grapple Y, which was 18 April 1958.
But confusingly the report continues: “Although there is always the possibility that heavy showers fell elsewhere.”
We now know from the Met charts already discussed that it did indeed rain elsewhere, especially in the Port Camp area.
Any lingering doubts are finally dispelled when the report makes it clear that not only did it rain, but that the rainfall was actually caused by Grapple Y.
This revelation is repeated twice in the report; the first is in the main text which states that two hours after the blast, “precipitation reached the surface in a shower possibly caused by the bomb.” The second, and even clearer reference, is in Appendix 1 of the report which states: “Precipitation in sight, more than 5 km from station, reaching surface. Cumulonimbus from bomb.”
Cumulonimbus is an extremely dense, vertically developed cloud extending to great heights, usually producing heavy rains, thunderstorms, or hailstorms. Just for the sake of pedantry cumulonimbus is Latin for “rain heaps.”
This is prima facie evidence that Grapple Y created a thunderstorm which deposited rainfall on areas where servicemen were gathered thus exposing them to rainout.
According to the Meteorological Office, rain that originates above a radio-active cloud causes areas of heavy contamination just downwind of a nuclear blast. All the evidence suggests this phenomenon is precisely what occurred after Grapple Y.
The 50-year cover-up was beginning to unravel. But this remarkable document had not yet relinquished all its disturbing secrets. Buried in the text is a passage strongly indicating that servicemen were deliberately exposed to radioactive fallout.