Britain and the H-Bomb

Transcription

1 Britain and the H-Bomb

2 Also by Lorna Arnold A VERY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: British Atomic Weapons Trials in Australia WINDSCALE 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident

3 Britain and the H-Bomb Lorna Arnold with Katherine Pyne Foreword by Professor Lawrence Freedman palgrave macmillan

4 * The Ministry of Defence 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London Wl P OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of st. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). Outside North America ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arnold, Lorna. Britain and the H-Bomb / Lorna Arnold; foreword by Lawrence Freedman. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Hydrogen bomb-great Britain. 2. Great Britain -Military policy. I. Title. UG 1282.A8 A '25119'0941-dc

5 To David Holloway in admiration and friendship

6 Contents List of Plates Foreword by Lawrence Freedman Preface ix x xi PART I SETTING THE AGENDA 1 Stellar forces 2 The first superbomb project - the United States 3 The second superbomb project - the Soviet Union PART II BRITAIN AND THE THERMONUCLEAR QUESTION 4 What must Britain do? 5 A general instruction from the government PART III BRITAIN'S RESPONSE 6 Aldermaston and the weaponeers 7 The megaton mission 8 Captain Cook's coral island 9 Racing against time PART IV THE PACIFIC TRIALS 10 The first trial - Grapple 11 'We shall have to do it all again' - Grapple X 12 Britain's biggest explosion - Grapple Y 13 Mission accomplished - Grapple Z PART V A SPECIAL NUCLEAR RELATIONSHIP 14 The great prize 15 Some questions and answers APPENDICES Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Appendix 5 Technical note Summary of weapon tests, The history of British R&D on atomic weapons Health and safety aspects of weapon trials A 1985 claim vii

7 viii Contents Notes and References Select Bibliography Index

8 List of Plates 1 Map of the Pacific Ocean, showing positions of Christmas and Malden Islands 2 Map of Christmas Island, during the Grapple trials of Port London, Christmas Island 4 Coconut palms in Christmas Island 5 Sir William Penney, director of Aldermaston from William Cook, deputy director of Aldermaston, at Grapple talking to John Challens and Noah Pearce 7 Sam Curran, chief of nuclear research at Aldermaston 8 Henry Hulme, special adviser to the director of Aldermaston 9 Graham Hopkin, chief of materials at Aldermaston 10 John Corner, head of theoretical physics at Aldermaston 11 Charles Adams, chief scientist, with John Challens, scientific supervisor at Grapple 12 Roy Pilgrim, scientific director for Grapple Y and Grapple Z 13 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visits Aldermaston, August Keith Roberts, theoretical physicist 15 Bryan Taylor, theoretical physicist 16 A Valiant V-bomber of 49 Squadron at Christmas Island. 17 Air Vice Marshal Wilfrid Oulton, task force commander, arrives at Christmas Island 18 Air Vice Marshal John Grandy, William Cook, Air Vice Marshal Wilfrid Oulton and Ken Bomford at Grapple X 19 Air Vice Marshal]ohn Grandy, task force commander, at Christmas Island for Grapple Z 20 Blue Danube bomb-casing used for the Grapple airdrops 21 Short Granite, the first Grapple test device, dropped off the coast of Malden Island in May Orange Herald, the second Grapple test device, May The explosion of the Halliard device - the second Grapple Z test in September Red Snow, produced after the 1958 bilateral agreement, was a British-built version of the American MK 28 warhead 25 Meeting at the Sandia National Laboratory in September Grapple badge ix

9 Foreword In this rich, informative and lucid analysis of the development of the British H-Bomb in the 1950s, Lorna Arnold has provided yet another valuable contribution to the nuclear history of this country, in addition to those she has already made both independently and in collaboration with the late Margaret Gowing. A number of scholars have already analysed the policy-making process which preceded the decision to follow the superpowers into the development and production of thermonuclear weapons in July Such a decision is not the end of the story but only the beginning. In 1957 and 1958 four weapon trials were conducted in the Pacific and this is largely the story of those tests. This was a remarkably challenging undertaking - in many ways more so than the development of an atomic bomb, for now there was great ignorance about how the Americans were going about their nuclear business, and Fuchs, one of the few British scientists to have had known about early American calculations, had been revealed as a spy. Lorna Arnold's distinctive contribution is to bring this project to life, setting out the obstacles that faced those charged with turning this aspiration into a reality, from the scientific and engineering challenges to Treasury parsimony. With affection and respect, she explains the special talents and the singular personalities of the responsible individuals, especially Penney and Cook. All this is against the background of public unease at the questions of morality and safety raised by the thermonuclear age, high-level diplomacy as attempts were made to reconstruct the special nuclear relationship and the pressure of test ban diplomacy. Such a book cannot answer the question of whether Britain was right to travel in this direction, but it does put back into centre stage those who considered it their duty to ensure that it did become the third thermonuclear power LAWRENCE FREEDMAN King's College, London University x

10 Preface Scope and purpose In 1952 Britain - having played a crucial part during World War II in creating the world's first atomic weapons - became the world's third atomic power. Significantly, Britain came after the superpowers and before any other nation, and was the only European member of NATO with atomic weapons. Rather than setting the agenda Britain acted in response to a situation created by the superpowers, and one in which it felt uniquely vulnerable. Britain's objectives, its modes of thinking and its resources differed greatly from theirs. Britain wanted, as soon as possible, a minimal, low-cost but effective weapons programme which would provide a credible, independent deterrent, contribute to the strength of Western defence and - not least in importance - give Britain political leverage in Anglo-American relations. In 1957 Britain was again to be the third power, in developing the H-bomb. Much valuable work has been done by historians on this strategic and political background. Our chief concern is with the nuclear weapons programme itself, how it was carried out and by whom. A great deal less is known about the British than the United States and even the Soviet programmes; we have tried to fill some gaps and to dispel some misconceptions about the work of the British weaponeers faced with the urgent demands of national defence policy in the 1950s. Britain's H-bombs were conceived and fabricated at Aldermaston, a wartime airfield in rural Berkshire, and were tested in four weapon trials, code-named Grapple, in the Pacific in 1957 and We should have liked to write more about these dramatic events and the experiences of the thousands of test participants, many of them young National Service men most of whom had never been abroad, or flown in an aircraft, before their long flight to and across America, then to Hawaii and finally to Christmas Island. That would be another book and we are chiefly concerned with the trials as part of the R&D programme. The role of weapons trials The role of weapon trials - and so their success or failure - was and is little understood. Trials were essential in developing nuclear warheads and the information needed from them changed as development proceeded.! The first might simply confirm that the device would produce a real nuclear explosion. xi

11 xii Preface More questions would then follow. Could the design be improved to give a larger yield? Could the required yield be obtained from a smaller device, or one using less (expensive) fissile material? Could it be made into a gravity bomb, or one carried by a torpedo or a ballistic missile? How could it be made safer to store and handle? After fission weapons the same questions, and a host of new ones, would arise for H-bombs and boosted bombs. At least one test might well be needed for each question and it would take a series to explore even a few lines of enquiry. But the British weaponeers did not have the luxury of numerous trials as both time and resources were very short. Trials could have other ancillary purposes as they afforded unique opportunities for civil defence studies of thermal, blast and radiation effects on structures and materials, for biological experiments and for military training. These all featured in some British A-bomb trials in Australia, but were ruled out at the Grapple trials by constraints of time and cost. An atmospheric test might also have a political and propaganda purpose, as did the huge 58-megaton Soviet explosion which coincided with an intense East-West crisis in Berlin in October Who was the father of the British H-bomb? People sometimes ask who were the British counterparts of Teller and Ulam, famous as the inventors of the first H-bomb, and of Sakharov and Khariton in the Soviet Union. It has been suggested that William Penney, the director of Aldermaston, was 'the father of the British H-bomb'; three other men have been named - William Cook, K. V. Roberts and]. B. Taylor; and claims have also been made for the physicist John Ward. We have found no 'Eureka' answers. What Norris Bradbury, the second director of Los Alamos, said of the American H-bomb is at least as true of the British H-bomb, 'Well, who invented it? No single individual probably invented it'. In a laboratory there is 'constant interplay between people. And then the way is found.'2 The record Records of this important project are voluminous but nevertheless incomplete and fragmented. Many crucial meetings and discussions went unrecorded, perhaps for reasons of secrecy. In Whitehall the Prime Minister himself had ordered that officials should write nothing down about the project if it could be avoided. Many useful papers have undoubtedly been destroyed3 deliberately or inadvertently. In a radical but well-intentioned reorganization of Aldermaston's records 40 years ago, files were broken up and unsatisfactorily reassembled in some 6,500 synthetic new files which lack archival integrity, and in the

12 Preface xiii process Penney's and Cook's directorate files were demolished. These are gaps in our scientific history that cannot be filled. One senior Aldermaston scientist, at the centre of developments in the 1950s, thought that many strands of the nuclear weapons story would be difficult to disentangle, and impossible for anyone working solely from documents. He was, he said, one of only three people knowing certain important aspects.4 All three have since died. None of the British weaponeers, even Penney - unlike their American or Soviet counterparts - has ever published memoirs, or articles about what they did at Aldermaston. They worked in the anonymous traditions of the civil service; their achievement was considered a corporate achievement and only very exceptionally did anyone claim individual credit for a personal contribution to it. Sadly, less and less first-hand evidence is available. We are all the more grateful for the help generously given to us by the scientists and engineers whose names are listed below, in interviews, correspondence and conversation. We were, unfortunately, too late to talk to either Lord Penney or Sir William Cook, and some others whose recollections would have been invaluable. Words and meanings When the British scientists began work on the H-bomb they did not know clearly what they were trying to make. They knew that a 'superbomb' with a megaton or multi-megaton yield involved using a fission explosion to create conditions in which thermonuclear reactions - fusion - could take place in isotopes of hydrogen (see Appendix 1). But how? Many ideas were examined. The terms 'superbomb', 'hydrogen bomb', 'H-bomb', 'thermonuclear bomb' and 'megaton bomb' were used rather loosely, as well as terms like 'intermediate' and 'hybrid'. Was a megaton bomb necessarily a hydrogen bomb? It seemed clear that a multi-megaton bomb would have to be an H-bomb (such yields were otherwise theoretically impossible). But could a megaton bomb (or a bomb 'in the megaton range') be just a very big fission bomb? Was a boosted bomb a thermonuclear bomb or not? There were complaints that people used the same words to mean different things and different words to mean the same thing. Whatever they called it, what the government wanted in 1954 was a megaton explosion as soon as possible, achieved by whatever technical means, to demonstrate Britain's ability to make such weapons, and to meet military requirements. Military requirements were for megaton warheads: first, as gravity bombs; then as powered guided bombs, for the RAP's V bomber force; and later for a medium-range ballistic missile (under development). Eventually, a multi-megaton warhead was wanted. The scientists and

13 xiv Preface engineers would have to solve the problems of meeting these requirements within the limited time and resources likely to be available to them. Fission weapons were comparatively simple devices, employing a single nuclear reaction. The H-bomb was a very different matter. To quote a Soviet weaponeer,5 it was '... one of the most perplexing challenges ever tackled in the history of mankind. The physical processes involved in the detonation of the thermonuclear charges were so extraordinarily complex that physicists could develop the required concepts only by attaining a high level of mathematical modelling and comprehension of these subtle processes'. This book tells how the British scientists and engineers met the challenge. Acknowledgements We thank many past and present members of staff of Aldermaston and the Ministry of Defence for much help in interviews, conversations and correspondence, especially the late Ken Allen, Jim Biltcliffe, John Challens, the late John Comer, the late Sir Sam Curran, David Dearden, Les Elliott, Lord Flowers, Alan Fraser, Ken Johnston, Peter Jones, Bill Lord, the late Victor Macklen, Mike McTaggart, Clive Marsh, the late Charlie Martin, the late Frank Morgan, Eric Pendlebury, Herbert Pike, Peter Roberts, Leslie Russell, the late Bill Saxby, Ron Siddons, Bryan Taylor, John Ward and Tony Wilson. Two of the task force commanders, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Grandy and the late Air Vice-Marshal Wilfrid Oulton, kindly gave us interviews. We owe a great debt of gratitude to British, American and Russian historians working in the nuclear field (though consultation with colleagues was limited by the nature of our task). The help of Anne Marshall and the staff of AWE Corporate Archives at Aldermaston has been much appreciated. Many thanks are due to Melanie Kingdon, who typed the early drafts, and Valerie Marson, who expertly produced the final typescript. Katherine Pyne - who subsequently, in 1996, became the technical historian at Aldermaston (the first such appointment) - made a very special and greatly valued contribution to the book during two arduous years of research. Finally, many thanks to Alison Howson and Keith Povey of the publishers for their expert and kindly help in making this book a reality. The author was given full access to official documents. She alone is responsible for the statements made and the views expressed. Plate 2S (the Sandia meeting) is reproduced by kind permission of the Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. All the other plates are courtesy of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK.