Abstract
Hurricane, Britain’s first atomic bomb test, on 3 October 1952 off the northwest coast of Australia, was almost universally acclaimed as a triumph — a great scientific and technical success and a proof of Britain’s status as a major power though not a super power. It promised greater military security and would surely win increased respect from the United States.1 Britain desperately wanted to restore the atomic partnership so abruptly ended by the 1946 US Atomic Energy Act — the McMahon Act — which made it a criminal offence, subject to the gravest penalties including death, to transmit any restricted atomic information to another country.2 This had left Britain on its own in the atomic weapons business, obliged to be independent or to opt out. But for its security an effective deterrent was needed. The Soviet Union soon had an atomic capability, as demonstrated by its August 1949 test, and the presence of American bomber bases here made Britain especially vulnerable.
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Notes and References
M. Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, vol. 1, pp. 440–50.
See R. G. Hewlett and O. Anderson, The New World, pp. 714–22; M. Gowing, op. cit., pp. 104–12 and passim; J. Simpson, The Independent Nuclear State, pp. 38–9, 76–9; A. J. R. Groom, British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons, pp. 29–30, 115; J. Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations, pp. 24–8 and Ambiguity and Deterrence, passim.
S. Duke’s US Defence Bases in the United Kingdom is indispensable.
R. Rhodes, Dark Sun, p. 347.
J. Baylis, Ambiguity and Deterrence, p. 71 and Anglo-American Defence Relations, pp. 34–5.
N. Wheeler, ‘British Nuclear Weapons and Anglo-American Relations 1945–54’, International Affairs, winter 1985–86, p. 72, cites DEFE 7/516 ‘US air force groups in the UK’, 4 Jan. 1950.
J. Baylis, Ambiguity and Deterrence, p. 118, cites DEFE 4/32, COS(50)17, 27 July 1950.
S. Dukes op. cit., pp. 13 and 223, and L. Freedman The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, pp. 69–70.
J. Baylis, op. cit., p. 118.
S. Duke, op. cit., p. 50–61, Baylis, op. cit., p. 119.
J. Baylis, op. cit., pp. 119–20; M. Gowing, op. cit., pp. 316–17.
J. Baylis, op. cit., pp. 140–2.
M. Gowing, op. cit., p. 450.
For a full account of Sir James Chadwick’s work as head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project see A. Brown, The Neutron on the Bomb. See also M. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–45, passim, and F. M. Szasz, British Scientists and the Manhattan Project.
Sir John Anderson, later Lord Waverley, was a scientist-politician who played a key role in British wartime and post-war atomic affairs, and in the 1950s chaired the committee which led to the setting up of the UKAEA.
Lord Portal, a Marshal of the Royal Air Force, served in World Wars I and II, commanded Bomber Command, and was later Chief of the Air Staff. For his atomic energy role see Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, vol. 1, ch. 2 and passim.
See R. C. Williams, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy; R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, passim, and Dark Sun, passim; B. Cathcart, Test of Greatness, pp. 99–107; M. Gowing, op. cit., vol. 2, ch. 16.
Sir Christopher (later Lord) Hinton, a distinguished engineer from ICI, had played a key role in armament production during World War II, and was then appointed to head Britain’s post-war atomic production organization.
There is an excellent account of him in P. Hennessy, Whitehall.
The modus vivendi is reproduced in full in M. Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, vol. 1, pp. 266–72.
The papers and minutes of this series of meetings under Brook’s chairmanship were numbered retrospectively, not at the time of issue, and some error seems to have been made in the sequence of numbers. We therefore refer to the meetings simply as GEN. 465 with the date.
R. A. Divine, Blowing on the Wind, p. 6.
Daily Herald, 17 March 1954.
R. A. Divine, Blowing on the Wind, p. 8.
R. A. Divine, op. cit., pp. 7–8.
This paper, with a separate intelligence report, was later submitted to the (ministerial) Committee on Defence Policy set up in April 1954 ‘to review, in the light of the recent development of nuclear weapons, the strategic hypotheses underlying current defence policy and the scale and pattern of defence programmes, military and civil’. The Prime Minister (who chaired the committee) wished it to keep prominently in mind the aim of securing a saving of £150 million in the defence expenditure forecast for 1955. (NB There had been a differently constituted committee of the same name in 1954 ‘to consider the future level of defence expenditure’.)
Reynolds News and Sunday Citizen, 28 March 1954.
HC Deb., 30 Mar. 1954.
Headline in Daily Mirror, 1 Apr. 1954.
Daily Express, 3 Mar. 1954.
HC Deb., 5 Apr. 1954.
The text of the 1943 Quebec Agreement is published in M. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–45, pp. 439–40.
Churchill said that Senator McMahon told him that ‘if we had seen this agreement there would have been no McMahon Act’. This is discussed in A. Pierre, Nuclear Politics, pp. 117–20.
The typed copy is unsigned but a MS version is signed by Dolphin and dated both March and April 1954. It bears a note ‘One copy typed for DAWRE [Penney] only.’
It started as a very small group, with meetings carefully minuted but with very few copies made. The membership increased but was always variable. Penney attended twice. Its purpose was to exchange scientific ideas and the discussions were wide-ranging. Many of the scientific papers circulated as TPNs were discussed. The committee held its last meeting in 1956 about the time that the WDPC was set up — see chapter 6.
GEN 464/1st meeting. Those present were the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord President, the Minister of Defence, the Commonwealth Secretary, and Sir Norman Brook.
D. A. Rosenberg, Origins of Overkill, p. 38.
Ibid.
They were organised and catalogued in detail by Corner personally — a very busy division head — so he must have regarded them as especially important. Their destruction at some later date leaves a most unfortunate gap in our nuclear weapons history.
A subordinate committee of the Chiefs of Staff. The chairman was Sir Frederick Brundrett (chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence). Members were: General Sir Frederick Morgan (Controller of Atomic Weapons, Ministry of Supply); the Deputy Chiefs of Staff; the scientific advisers of the Service ministries; Cockcroft and Penney.
The British guests present were the Prime Minister, Lord Cherwell, Christopher Soames, General Nye, and John Colville (who took notes).
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Arnold, L., Pyne, K. (2001). What Must Britain Do?. In: Britain and the H-Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599772_4
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