This sinister possibility is revealed in a passage discussing wind directions recorded during the whole period of the Christmas Island tests, 1957-58.
The report, illustrated with charts and graphs, shows the prevailing winds during the bomb tests always blew away from the island, and certainly away from areas where the majority of men were billeted. But then the text takes a sudden startling turn:-
except for the period up to about 9 hours after the test at 1905 GMT on 28 April 1958 when the winds were light, and near to being southeasterly. Since the airfield and the camp were almost due northwest from the explosion, the winds on this occasion were examined in more detail.
So, Britain’s biggest ever bomb was detonated at the only time during the H-bomb testing programme when the winds were blowing over the island and directly toward the Main Camp where the majority of troops were living.
This immediately gives the lie to the official announcements in Parliament and elsewhere that nuclear bomb tests were only ever carried out when the wind direction ensured fallout was taken away from inhabited areas.
Clearly this was not the case for Grapple Y. But it gets worse. The weathermen then go on to calculate precisely when the fallout would arrive at the main campsite:-
Assuming particles were released at 2.4 km, 22.3 n miles to the south-east of the camp (direction about 142 degrees), it appears that those with fall speeds of about 1/3 m/s could have reached the camp at 2100 GMT (1200 local time). Heavier particles released from the thermonuclear cloud at greater altitudes could have arrived at the camp later.
Remember, this report with all its disturbing implications was compiled in response to a request from an Aldermaston bigwig on November 13, 1985.
This was at the height of the nuclear veteran’s battle for compensation with the Thatcher government. At the time servicemen and their organisations were being ridiculed for daring to suggest that the tests exposed them to radiation. They were criticised for making “unfounded allegations”, lectured about the safety precautions taken for tests, and were chided for suggesting that anyone was in any danger.
Yet all the time the Ministry of Defence was in possession of a this deeply disturbing document suggesting that not only were servicemen contaminated by rainout, but also that they were deliberately put in the path of fallout.
If this report had been released at the time (as it should have been) it would have caused uproar and doubtless would have led to a complete vindication of the veteran’s claims. It would also have focussed attention on Grapple Y, which was something the Ministry of Defence clearly wanted to avoid at all costs.
This last point cannot be emphasised too strongly. In Britain the powerful Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had been formed in January 1958, just three and a half months before the Grapple Y explosion.
The movement, which numbered among its members Bertrand Russell, Canon John Collins, the Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, J.B. Priestley, Kingsley Martin and the author Doris Lessing, was formed as a direct consequence of the Bikini atoll disaster four years earlier when the Bravo bomb had gone so disastrously wrong.
When the new organisation was presented to the public in Central Hall, Westminster, in February 1958, more than 2,000 people turned up. This unexpectedly large turnout encouraged the organisers to stage a 50-mile protest march from London to Aldermaston over the four-day Easter Period in early April. They said that if 60 or 70 people turned up, it would be enough to make the national newspapers.
In the event 5,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday morning, April 4, 1958. They filed through the streets in a two-mile column and proceeded toward Aldermaston.
There was a carnival atmosphere among the throng as they marched down the highway. Students sang folk songs, Jazz bands played, mothers pushed prams; whole families marched together in an infectious spirit of peace and love.
The cause seemed good and brave and it caught the national imagination. On one of the coldest, windiest Easter Sundays in memory, more than 10,000 people shivered in the driving rain outside the barbed wire perimeter of the site, to hear speaker after speaker calling for a ban on nuclear bombs.
The Establishment was rocked to the core and it was hardly surprising that when Grapple Y went wrong it was covered up. And the cover-up continues to this day, as further documents that came to light proved.
THE TRUTH OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND
The Meteorological Office reports had established a credible pathway for the radioactive contamination of troops on Christmas Island.
But although the new information was a momentous advance for the veterans, the Ministry of Defence still had a “get out of jail” card in that there was still no direct evidence that contamination actually occurred.
The mantra by successive defence ministers had never varied. Defence minister Hamilton confirmed it in his speech to the Commons:-
Shortly after the test, extensive environmental monitoring did not measure any deposition of radioactive materials from the detonation.
And Dr Mooney reiterated it in his April 2003 letter to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, when he stated that
environmental recordings were below the level of detection for contamination.
So despite the rain, and the fact it was caused by the bomb, and that the wind blew it over the island, there was, apparently no evidence of contamination.
It didn’t make sense, so further Freedom of Information requests were made, this time for the environmental records, for Christmas Island at the time of Grapple Y.
Thus far the only environmental records released by the government covered the whole Pacific, obviously a huge area encompassing thousands of islands in the general area of both British and American bomb tests.
The islands in the British sphere of influence were so far away from Christmas Island that it was hardly surprising there was little increase in radioactivity recorded.
What the British had conspicuously left out were fallout records on Christmas Island itself. This was apparently for the simple reason the bomb tests were supposed to have been detonated too high in the air to cause localised fallout.
Nevertheless, the FoI requests specifically asked for this data. After some resistance, Aldermaston reluctantly released a hefty 42-page report: “Environmental Monitoring at Christmas Island 1957-1958.” Written by four officials from Atomic Weapons Establishment Safety Directorate it was written specifically to reassure politicians about safety aspects on Christmas Island. It began with a warning.
This document and the information it contains is the property of the Ministry of Defence. It is provided in confidence for the personal information of, and use by, recipients and holders. It must not be communicated either directly or indirectly to, or discuss with, the press or other media, or any other person not authorised by, or on behalf of, Director Safety AWE to receive it.
What didn’t they want us to know? Maybe the reason is that the report is a master-class of obfuscation and evasion clearly designed to reassure, yet failing dismally. Even the opening sentence is a falsehood.
Detonations were permitted only when it had been reliably concluded that the meteorological conditions, in particular wind directions, were such that fall-out would be carried away from inhabited areas (emphasis added).
We now know of course that this isn’t true: the Meteorological Office report clearly states the winds for Grapple Y explosion were blowing toward areas where servicemen were gathered. So, based on the MoD’s own stringent requirements, the shot should not have been fired. The authors of the report were clearly not conversant with the weather reports.