Page 12 - IB April 2018

Nuclear Testing

Hydrogen bomb Sixty years ago this month, the

UK government detonated a
hydrogen bomb at Christmas
test at Kiritimati (Kiritimati) Island in Kiribati. This

Grapple Y nuclear test – with
a yield of nearly 3 megatons –

was the most powerful of nine
British nuclear tests conducted
during 1957-58, as part of

Operation Grapple.

Islands Business
correspondent Nic Maclellan
has written a history of the

British nuclear tests in Kiribati,
“Grappling with the Bomb.”
This excerpt describes the

events of 28 April 1958 and the
effects on civilian and military
personnel living on Kiritimati.

device, which detonated with an estimated Archie Ross had arrived on Christmas
yield of 2.8 megatons. Island on 4 November 1957, but his
The initial run to drop the bomb from a memories of the Grapple Y test remained
Valiant aircraft was aborted when reports with him years later: “I still remember, as
of an approaching ship raised concern. though it was yesterday, the stem of the
An hour later, Squadron Leader Bob Bates mushroom cloud reaching down to the sea
By Nic Maclellan released the bomb from his plane (Bates and the waves parting like that famous
was one of many UK pilots exposed to scene from the film the Ten Command-
FOLLOWING three nuclear tests on significant levels of ionising radiation ments when Moses causes the Red Sea to
Malden Island in 1957, the UK military during Operation Grapple – he later died part. I remember seeing the water rushing
relocated the testing site to Christmas from leukaemia). up the spout, followed by all the mud and
Island (today known as Kiritimati). The The nuclear test was supposed to be an sand from the seabed, all being sucked up
decision to continue the weapons test- air burst at an altitude of 2,350 metres, into the cloud like a giant vacuum cleaner.”
ing programme at the south-east corner high enough to avoid the irradiation of Royal Engineer Ken McGinley recalled
of Christmas Island brought operations land and water that would generate ex- the enormous impact of the bomb, and
close to the base staffed by British, New tensive radioactive fallout. Despite later the subsequent winds and rainfall: “This
Zealand and Fijian military personnel, as official denials, many contemporary re- was the daddy of all bombs. There was
well as the homes of Gilbertese plantation ports state that the explosion was nearly a something incredibly sinister about the
workers living on the island. kilometre closer to sea level than expected. shimmering line of energy, skimming over
The largest of the six tests at Christmas The detonation sucked up quantities of the ocean with amazing speed. I dived to
Island was the massive atmospheric test water and debris into the fireball and the ground and as it hit, I felt an impact
on 28 April 1958, codenamed Grapple Y. mushroom cloud, irradiating them in the and a crack like lightning had hit close
New Zealand and Fijian nuclear veterans process. Irradiated water and debris then by. The huge fireball forming above me
have long argued that the greatest radioac- fell back to ground, contaminating an area seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.
tive fallout during Operation Grapple was estimated at 80 to 160 kilometres. I knew straight away we were far closer
created by this two-stage thermonuclear Twenty-three-year-old British soldier than we should have been from a bomb

12 Islands Business, April 2018