At last it was all over and Wilson and his band returned to their ship. Each man had to enter a special decontamination unit, and throughout the afternoon the clicking of Geiger counters were a constant feature. The men were ordered to strip, and their clothing was immediately consigned to the bottom of the sea encased in concrete. It was then into the showers where they were vigorously scrubbed down until the counters stopped ticking. Despite three scrub downs, Wilson remained radioactive for hours. A note in his Army paybook records: “1952 atomic tests. Radiation received 1.99 Roentigens.”
Another serviceman who knew things hadn’t all gone to plan was Royal Marine commando Frank Gray. Not long after the bomb went off, he and a small detachment of specially trained men were sent skimming in a dinghy across the highly-radioactive lagoon where Plym had been vapourised to rescue a group of scientists left in a forward area bunker. Mr Gray recalled: “We were told the scientists were in trouble because the fireball had finished very close to the bunker. We were dispatched to get them back. One thing I remember very clearly was the thousands of dead fish scattered all over the lagoon. And I remember we even had to avoid a sick whale that was thrashing about. When we got to the bunker which was built into the side of a hill we found it charred and smoking. The first thing I saw was two men in protective clothing and several others who were shaking and wrapped in blankets. They were only wearing sandals, shirts, stockings and shorts with no headgear. I was told they were scientists, but they didn’t say anything and seemed to be in deep shock. We took them in two dinghies back to the ship. They had to be helped up the gangplank and a couple of them collapsed onto the deck. I believe they were taken from the ship later that night, and that was the last anyone saw of them.”
Thomas Wilson and Frank Gray were to suffer terrible health problems in later life which they always blamed on their involvement in Operation Hurricane. Their complaints, however were dismissed as ‘fanciful’ by doctors, and disdained by politicians; the same depressing response was experienced by many hundreds of servicemen in the years to come.
But there was no doubting the technical success of Hurricane; it brought heady days for Penney who now found himself a national hero, feted and lionized wherever he went. His home-coming was pure Hollywood. He arrived back in Britain from the Monte Bello islands on October 15. The press and newsreels clamoured for news. They descended on the airfield at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire after it was leaked that his plane was going to land there. They were herded into the airfield cinema and held for hours as the excitement mounted. At 4.20 and 4.25pm, two Hastings aircraft touched down. The press surged forward…
Was Penny on board? Officials said they couldn’t say; it was secret.
Which plane was he in? That was a secret too.
What was in the other plane? That was also a secret.
As the press hubbub reached a crescendo, the object of all the excitement suddenly appeared round a corner. Penney was surrounded by RAF policemen and he looked stunned by all the attention.
The press swept forward. Penny managed a smile as he blinked into the combined light of scores of flash-bulbs. The cameramen wanted to know if he could be snapped by the aircraft he had arrived in? The answer was “no.”
Penney kept smiling as his security detail cleared a path for him. After some whispered discussions, Penney was persuaded to move to a bank of microphones set up by the newsreel men. An official handed out a typed slip. It was a statement from Penney: “Naturally I am glad to be home. The test was most successful. I can say no more about it until I have made my report to the Government.”
Would he speak about the atom test, they wanted to know.
No.
Would he say what it looked like?
No.
Would he say what the weather was like?
Emphatically, no.
Penney seemed relieved when asked what he did in his spare time: “What spare time I had in Australia I spent golfing. Golf is the complete relaxation. After completing my report I expect to be off on holiday… I should get some golf in.”
After imparting this pearl of news, Penney was bundled into a waiting saloon car which roared off toward his tightly-guarded home in Idminster Road, Norwood, London. By this time Penney had remarried and his new wife Joan, a midwife, was a no-nonsense woman who ran the Penney household, and his two sons, with commendable efficiency.
A journalist who managed to get a word with Mrs Penney reported the following exchange (revealing that Mrs Penney was just as closed-mouthed as her famous husband):-
What had she cooked him for dinner?
“Brown stew,” said Mrs Penney.
What was in it?
“Don’t ask.”
What did Dr Penney do after dinner?
“Why, the washing up of course. I washed, he dried. Being a great man doesn’t excuse him from chores, you know.”
Penney celebrated with a champagne lunch at his favourite Soho restaurant, the Pe’re Auguste. Sitting on his left was his wife who kept a close eye on her husband’s alcohol consumption. On his right sat General Sir Frederick Morgan, controller of atomic energy at the Ministry of Supply. A group of sharp-eyed special branch detectives had taken up strategic positions at nearby tables. A man with Penney’s secrets was far too important to be left unguarded, even at lunch.
Newsreels showed him blinking owlishly behind his spectacles as the flash-bulbs popped around him. Observers noted 43-yr-old Penney looked the quintessential English boffin. He wore a rumpled old tweed suit with a tie knotted untidily round an ill-fitting shirt collar. His unruly hair flowed over his forehead in schoolboy style. A fountain pen was stuck carelessly in his breast pocket. He had ‘a mischievous grin’ and seemed to be perpetually amused as he talked brightly about atomic energy and how this new force could be harnessed for the greater good of humankind. His grin widened when he saw the menu specially prepared by the maitre d’hoteclass="underline" Sole Monte Bello, Pommes de Bateau Vaporise, and Bombe Isotope.
As a scientific achievement, Penny undoubtedly deserved all the plaudits, and the champagne lunch. Almost single-handedly he had designed and built an atomic bomb with a fraction of the resources of America and the Soviet Union. In the finest traditions of British ingenuity, he was said to have confounded the Americans and nonplussed the Soviets by assembling the bomb with little more than “string and sticking plaster.”
Penney had been to see Winston Churchill, and was still glowing with pride from the unrestrained praise he had received from the Great Man. In triumphal mood, Churchill had announced that the successful detonation of Britain’s first atomic bomb was ‘among the finest scientific achievements of the 20th Century.’ Penney was hailed as the hero of the hour and Downing Street announced he was to be knighted.
ARMAGEDDON
The euphoria surrounding Penney’s stupendous achievement lasted all of two weeks. On November 1st, 1952 the Americans exploded an awesome new weapon on a remote Pacific atoll. It wasn’t a bomb in any conventional sense; it was basically a giant flask containing a liquid hydrogen isotope whose energy was released by an atomic bomb “trigger” in a process called fusion. There was no way of delivering the device which was so big it had to be housed in a 30-foot tall building. But the explosion was the equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, and it was clear the hydrogen or “super” made atomic bombs obsolete even before they had left the production line.