The task force arrived at the Monte Bello islands in good order. Plym was anchored in a lagoon near Trimouille Island, the main one of the group. The rest of the squadron withdrew to safe positions about 12 miles off shore. An advance party of royal engineers had been laying cables and preparing the ground for weeks and everything was in readiness when Penney arrived by seaplane. He was welcomed aboard HMS Campania by the Commander of the Special Squadron, Rear Admiral Arthur Torlesse.
There were many delays caused by bad weather, and frustrating arguments over faulty equipment before Britain’s first atomic bomb was detonated on October 3rd, 1952. It was exploded inside the hull of Plym which was anchored in 40 feet of water, 400 yards off-shore. It was a replica of the Bikini explosion witnessed by Penney in 1946. A dense cloud of mud and water rose 15,000 feet into the air, but the ‘beauty’ of the explosion was somewhat marred as the familiar mushroom shape was distorted by a series of cross-winds. Penney on the flight deck of Campania made no comment, but was said to be disappointed.
Penney’s account of what he saw was broadcast around the world by the BBC. In his quiet, middle-England accent, he told his audience: “I was on the flight deck of HMS Campania with Admiral Torlesse and most of the ship’s company. We all faced away from the explosion as the last few seconds were counted over the loudspeakers. Suddenly there was an intense flash, visible all round the horizon. We turned to look. The sight before our eyes was terrifying… a great greyish-black cloud being hurled thousands of feet into the air and increasing in size with astonishing rapidity. A great sandstorm suddenly sprang up over the islands. It seemed ages before we heard the bang, but in fact it was less than a minute. Somewhat to our surprise a second bang, at least as loud as the first, followed a few seconds later. At the same time we felt a peculiar sensation in our ears such as one has in an aircraft losing height rapidly. We were feeling the suction of reduced pressure, which always follows a blast wave. All the time the cloud was getting higher and higher and assuming fantastic shapes as it was pulled about by the strong winds at different altitudes…”
Penney spoke at length about radiation, electronic gadgets, re-entry parties, contamination and how everyone had pulled together to make the test an outstanding success. He spoke soothingly about how the survey parties all wore protective clothing covering them from head to foot, and how they also wore gas masks to prevent inhalation of “foreign particles.”
He continued: “The appearance of men in protective clothing, scrambling about on the white sand hills in the blazing sun and peering at their instruments every few seconds, was a weird sight. Everyone in the parties sweated profusely, and one man lost no less than 17 lb in weight in a single trip. However, on his return to the health control centre, a few long drinks of water, some salt tablets and a meal with lots of tea, quickly restored the loss of weight and nobody felt any the worse…”
It was all good Boys Own stuff delivered in the manner of a cosy fireside chat between old friends. The bomb had gone off without a hitch, everyone was safe, and ‘our boys’ had pulled it off and no damage done. Britain had a new hero who had restored its rightful place as a world power.
Rear Admiral Torlesse, listening to Penney’s broadcast as he shepherded his little task force back to Britain, might have raised a somewhat quizzical eyebrow. As task force commander he had been involved in every stage of the operation. And although it had been an undoubted success, it had most assuredly not been without its problems.
For a start Torlesse and Penney’s right-hand man Leonard Tyte, the operation’s scientific director, had argued and bickered constantly. They fought royally over everything from lost messages, timings of rehearsals, accommodation, supplies; they even blamed each other for the capricious weather. At D-day minus two the relationship between the pair had deteriorated to such an extent they weren’t even on speaking terms. It was only the prospect of international humiliation, not to mention the towering rage of Winston Churchill, newly returned to power after six years in Opposition, which pulled them back from the brink.
Even after the success of the mission, Torlesse remained a stickler for rules and procedure. He found the lack of discipline among the scientists a constant irritant. On one memorable occasion, Torless insisted on the scientists, who were famously bohemian in appearance, wearing ties for mess dinner. The scientists complied… the only problem was they “forgot” to put shirts on…
For his part, Tyte found the Rear Admiral an insufferable snob. It amused Tyte no end to see Torlesse’s obvious irritation when Penney, who deferred to no man but Churchill, regularly plundered his personal cigarette stash.
Bickering apart, Torlesse had been greatly concerned about the safety of his men, especially those who had been sent in to some very dangerous areas to satisfy the scientists’ insatiable thirst for knowledge. He later told in an interview how he was particularly concerned about radio communications from the pilots of two Shackleton aircraft who were tracking the mushroom cloud. At first Torlesse said he was irritated by the chatter, fed into main communications centre on the bridge of Campania, between the two pilots who were joking about who was the “hottest” pilot, when all of a sudden everything changed. One of the pilots was obviously in trouble.
Torlesse said: “I remember there was a hell of a flap about a chap in one of the planes who was flying through the cloud to collect samples. He was ordered back and I understand flown immediately to a hospital in Perth. I’m not sure what happened after that. It was all secret. No-one would tell me anything.”
The Rear Admiral wasn’t the only one to take a somewhat jaundiced view of Penney’s cosy assurances. Thomas Wilson, a sapper in the Royal Engineers, scratched his head and wondered if he had been at the same bomb test as Penney when he heard the scientist talking about how the re-entry parties had been given head to toe protection from the radioactive fallout. And he should know: he was in the very first re-entry party that stepped ashore after the bomb was detonated. The only protective clothing he had on was an overall and bush hat.
This is how the former 19-yr-old squaddie remembered the event: “We went in on a little rubber dinghy and hit the beach on the run. As soon as we stepped ashore it was clear the whole place was crackling with radiation. I had a small hand-held Geiger counter and it was going crazy. I was wearing just a thin overall and a bush hat. Even I knew that wasn’t enough. But being young we had this sort of couldn’t-care-less attitude to the dangers and we just got on with the task in hand. We didn’t think we were in any danger and enjoyed all the excitement.”
For several hours Wilson and the other soldiers wandered around the scorched island collecting the scientific paraphernalia used to record the effects of the blast wave. They checked damaged buildings, and collected food stocks and other items for measurement back on the ship. They also had to bag and take back with them hundreds of dead seabirds that littered the island. It was all done beneath the blazing sun, and the smoke and heat from dozens of scrub fires ignited by the blast.