PAUL GRACE Operation Hurricane. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

Tags: atomic bombs/ British negligence/ British nuclear tests/ Montebello Islands/ Paul Grace/ radiation contamination/ Robert Menzies

Paul Grace details the shameful conduct of British atomic testing in Australia and its toxic legacy.

Even though the Americans and British were allies during World War II, the Americans were not prepared to share their knowledge of atom bombs with the British. They wanted to maintain a monopoly on the use of this new weapon; though, of course, the Soviet Union quickly acquired it too. As the Cold War intensified, the British sought to rectify this situation and initiated their own atomic program. They reached a point where they had a prototype bomb, and British scientists decided that the Montebello Islands, 50 miles off the north-west coast of Western Australia and a long way from the British Isles, would be a suitable place to test it.

On 16 September 1950, a member of the United Kingdom’s High Commission to Australia presented Australia’s Prime Minister Robert Menzies with a cable from the UK’s Prime Minister Clement Atlee asking to use the Montebello Islands. Paul Grace reports that Menzies ‘was positively enthusiastic about the idea’ and agreed without consulting anybody else, readily accepting the proposal and:

 … making no demands and setting no conditions of any kind. He even volunteered to pay for Australia’s entire contribution to the project, even though Atlee had not asked him to.

A bomb was subsequently detonated at 8.00 a.m. on Friday, 3 October 1952. Paul Grace’s Operation Hurricane provides an account of the major events associated with the detonation of this bomb. Approximately half of the book is devoted to the preparation of the Montebello Islands for the test, including extensive details of the problems associated with transporting such a large amount of equipment to such an isolated part of the world.

There are also discussions of topography and weather patterns and arrangements for provisions for the men and maintaining the associated sea and air craft. A continuing problem that was never solved was access to fresh drinking water for so many men. This was a particular problem after the test was conducted. Seawater contaminated with radiation was desalinated to provide drinking water and showers, which, among other things, were used to decontaminate men affected by radiation. All of those involved in the test drank and washed in water that was contaminated.

Grace focuses on three major themes in his examination of these events. The first is the ongoing tensions between the British scientists and the commander of the sailors. Both thought they were or should be in control of proceedings and clashed over issues as important as dressing appropriately for meals. Colonel Blimp was alive and well.

The second is the condescending attitude of the British to the Australians and, especially at the political level, the supine response of Australian leaders. Whenever concerns were raised by Australian representatives about possible levels of radiation, they were simply batted away with assurances that all precautions would be taken and there was no need to worry. Grace quotes once such response by British diplomats which said:

… there will be no danger from radio-activity to the health of animals or people on the mainland of Australia. There is a slight risk of minor damage to property from reverberations (for example, perhaps a few broken windows) but this will be no greater than the risk caused by gunnery practice.

The Australian government wanted some Australian scientific experts to ‘attend’ the test. Grace says:

… [they] were only there because the Australian government had more or less begged for their inclusion. Many of the British planners wanted them out, most notably, Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s infamously snobbish scientific advisor, who tried to limit the number of invitations to the colonials by citing ‘lack of accommodation’ as an excuse … the official scientific representatives of the Australian government … were mostly sidelined and told as little as possible.

Possibly the worst example of British snobbery and the contempt in which they held Australians was when, ‘for security reasons’,

… the Task Force Commander refused to tell the Australian admiral the target date or any other useful information about the trial. According to Admiral Torlesse’s paranoid logic, the Flag Officer commanding the Australian Fleet, the most senior sea-going officer in the RAN, the man in command of security patrols for the test itself, was a security risk simply because he was Australian.

Following the detonation of the bomb, the British scientists wanted to measure the levels of radiation on Montebello Island and in the surrounding sea and air, and to this end they installed an extensive amount of measuring equipment on Montebello. This would necessitate ships travelling to Montebello in order to check instruments and perform what were thought to be important salvage and other functions. There would also be flights up and down the coast of Western Australia and into the interior to measure radiation levels. These follow-up tests went on for at least three months. This, of course, meant that the personnel who conducted the detonation and those who observed it from ‘close’ islands were exposed to radiation from the detonation. The ships, planes and other equipment used in the tests were also exposed and would transport the radiation to new sites. Despite assurances to the contrary, radiation did drift to the mainland and across the continent. The airmen who conducted flights after the detonation flew into air contaminated by radiation.

This leads to the third and most damning finding of Grace’s research. While the British scientists were provided with protective clothing, the same was not afforded to the soldiers, seamen and aircrew associated with the detonation and the collection of scientific material. This was also the case for those charged with decontaminating various pieces of equipment, including ships, planes and vehicles. Men would spend many hours trying to clean and water-blast machinery, in the process being exposed to radioactive material, their clothing contaminated, and then spreading radiation further with flows of water and detergents.

A decision was made to salvage a lot of the material that remained on the Montebello Islands after detonating the bomb; something in the order of 70 tons of it, all contaminated with high levels of radiation. The problem was what to do with it.  Why not just leave it there? Grace provides examples of how salvaged material, including clothing and equipment, was placed in 44-gallon drums and dumped into the sea off different parts of the Australian coast.

Grace also includes material on eleven further tests conducted by the British in Australia from 1953 to 1963, the majority at Maralinga in South Australia. In addition to this there were another 600 top-secret minor trials conducted in this period.

Planned and executed with little to no oversight from the Australian government, the minor trials were tests of individual bomb components and mad experiments to see what would happen if an atom bomb was accidentally blown up in a plane crash or set on fire in a warehouse … The resulting explosions left millions of fragments of plutonium … scattered around the desert. Other trials added sprinklings of toxic beryllium and radioactive polonium to the red dust. If anything, the minor trials were even worse for the environment that the atomic tests.

Grace provides estimates of the financial cost expended by the British and Australian governments in conducting Operation Hurricane. He says that the ‘true cost’ of the detonation of an atom bomb on Australian soil on that morning on 3 October 1952 was much higher than that.

The test destroyed the environment of the once pristine Montebello Islands, leaving the remote archipelago too contaminated for human visitors and the surrounding waters full of dead and dying fish. Despite the best efforts of the British and Australian meteorologists, part of the radioactive cloud had drifted across the mainland, from Port Hedland on the west coast to Townsville on the east, dropping fallout who knows where in between, because no one bothered to look for it. By far the most likely to be affected were the 4583 Aboriginal people living in and around the North West at the time.

Paul Grace’s Operation Hurricane is an important book that documents a sad and disturbing time in the history of Australia. It provides a forensic account of the radioactive contamination caused by atomic weapons. The Menzies government willingly conceded its responsibilities to the British government who wanted to test nuclear weapons on Australian land. The result exposed Australia to radioactive poisoning that will be with us forever. It casts a damning light on Robert Gordon Menzies and his legacy.

Paul Grace Operation Hurricane Hachette Australia 2023 PB 368pp $34.99

Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at Melbourne University who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.

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