Op GRAPPLE

[superplum]

Britain’s Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story is on BBC Four on Wednesday, 9pm.

:cool:

[Molemot]

The first three tested didn't work as intended, iirc. The fusion element didn't deliver... got it right in the November test.

[sandiego89]

As well as the incomplete reaction on more than a few tests, it is also interesting to see how far off some of the yield calculations/estimates were with some of the early UK and US testing of A-bombs and H-bombs (and I assume programs in other countries). Not blaming anyone, just interesting to note some of the uncertainties involved. Hey what's a megaton or so off....

[Ddraig Goch]

My Father was there for 12 months 1957/58 and witnessed them, no protective clothing only wearing shorts, he was impressed by the explosions then paid the price by dying from a very unusual cancer later. There were many others.

[NRU74]

Just watched this on iplayer having been in France when it was first aired. Interesting programme.
Good to see both Alan Pringle and Derek Tuthill look in quite good nick cosidering both must be 82/83 ish now !

[Rotate too late]

I'm I the only one thinking of Bosnia! (I.e. Operation Grapple for the Balkans)
Strange that there is two....:confused:

[KiloB]

I'm I the only one thinking of Bosnia! (I.e. Operation Grapple for the Balkans)
Strange that there is two....:confused:

There must be at least three. The Zambezi Valley Operational Area in Rhodesia was 'Op Grapple'.

[walter kennedy]

Yeh, there was JOC Grapple, Thresher, Cauldron? - memory fading

[walter kennedy]

sandiego89
a very good point - the first ever test (in USA) had a greater effect than predicted - imagine if it had been a couple of orders bigger - would we have done a first test of such a device in our own backyard these days?

[MAINJAFAD]

An interesting program and actually confirms that the British design for the H-Bomb was based around a spherical secondary instead of the Cylinder that was used by the US 2 stage weapons. The First two British H-bomb tests did actually give a Sizeable Fusion yield (300+ and 120+ KT) , while the middle test was in fact a bloody huge 700+KT Fission Bomb with maybe a bit of DT boosting. First Fizzle by the US was deliberate and that was to see how little Fissile material could be used, while the king of cocking up weapon designs yields was one Edward Teller!!!!

[Pegasus107]

My Father was there for 12 months 1957/58 and witnessed them, no protective clothing only wearing shorts, he was impressed by the explosions then paid the price by dying from a very unusual cancer later. There were many others.

Had the same with the father-in-law. Funnily enough, can't find record of his service life either, yet photos of him on Arctic Convoys in late 44 !

[noflynomore]

while the king of cocking up weapon designs yields was one Edward Teller!!!!

There they were, 75 years ago, trying to harness completely new technology and physics at the utter outside limits of mechanical, scientific and intellectual capability which were only partially understood and so new that only a handful of men on the planet had any knowledge of them at all...

and someone drops a throwaway line like the one above!

Teller was one of the top three or four most innovative and brilliant scientists involved in the conceptualising, building and developmant of atomic weapons and to belittle his ability like that is extraordinarily smug, even with such evident 100% knowledge from hindsight (!!). They were inventing the science as they went along. You'd be one-in-a-million if you even understood a thousandth part of it.

Given the complexity and imperfect understanding of the science it is amazing that they made so few errors, and those they did make were not so very serious.

We'd do better recognising their extraordinarily accurate genius rather than slagging them off for the odd minor mistake from imperfect understanding of a completely new science as though we were capable of doing a thousandth as much ourself without cocking up in spades.

It's a good thing we don't tend to slag off our historic aircraft designers in the same way. I mean incompetent fools like Roe, Sopwith, Mitchell or Chadwick all of whom designed lemons... Kings of cocking up designs, the lot of them. Evidently.

[West Coast]

Well said Nofly. Armchair quarterbacking on issues understood by a quick Google search belies the complexity of the endeavor.

[ricardian]

A three-year £450,000 cytogenetic study (https://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/Study-to-examine-nuclear-test-veterans-for-genetic-damage#) by Brunel University London’s Dr Rhona Anderson will carry out chromosomal analysis of cells from nuclear test veterans and their children. Researchers will look for any cytogenetic alterations to ascertain if there are any differences between nuclear veteran and control family groups.

[thunderbird7]

It is curious how all this affects people. Wifes Uncle was an airman at Woomera and is still fit as a fiddle but his wife died from the big C and brother (father in law) has had the big C - never served but worked in a chemistry lab.

[BossEyed]

I'm I the only one thinking of Bosnia! (I.e. Operation Grapple for the Balkans)
Strange that there is two....:confused:

Nowadays it would presumably be named "Trial GRAPPLE", as it wasn't an Operation.

When did the nomenclature change?

[Danny42C]

Well, if we're talking about "grappling", how about the Bombs of Palomares ?

[retreating blade]

This thread has just come to my notice so I am late with my comments.
My father was a RAF weapons specialist (observer brevet) and was present at Christmas Island and Woomera for the British tests. Family lore had it that he was in the crew of either a Valiant or Canberra at Christmas Island that was tasked to fly - depressurised, through the mushroom cloud to take air samples.
Of course he died subsequently from multiple carcinomas.
He too was ordered to be on the ground another time to witness an explosion and his brief was to face the other way until he heard the bang and then turn to look at the result.
Pedro

[FlightlessParrot]

Teller was one of the top three or four most innovative and brilliant scientists involved in the conceptualising, building and developmant of atomic weapons and to belittle his ability like that is extraordinarily smug, even with such evident 100% knowledge from hindsight (!!).


They were working in unexplored territory, and there were huge uncertainties (including the possibility, which was real enough for some scientists to have a bet on it, that Trinity would ignite the atmosphere). I don't have any idea whether Teller was better or worse at yield estimates than any one else. But all the histories I have read suggest that he was by no means a major asset when it came to weapon design, being too undisciplined to do the work assigned to him, and the Teller-Ulam design is named that for a reason (chiefly, that Teller was senior so his name had to go first). His chief attraction in some quarters was political.

[deltahotel]

My father was a Canberra nav on the 76 Sqn xmas island detachment. I’m away from home at the moment so can’t check dates from his log book, but he flew through the subsequent ‘cloud’ as ‘Sniff 2’. I don’t know whether the ac was pressurised or not but I believe it was equipped with sampling devices, so probably not.

[Tankertrashnav]

Good to see both Alan Pringle and Derek Tuthill look in quite good nick considering both must be 82/83 ish now !

Alan Pringle was at Marham when I was there, but as he was a very long serving and highly regarded pilot and I was young and inexperienced I was somewhat in awe of him, as I was of many others, andnever really got into conversation with them. Then I met Alan again at one of the V Force reunions and found him very chatty and affable. He told me he was one of the tiny number of aircrew who had actually dropped two nuclear weapons. Each crew was only supposed to do one "live" sortie, but when the designated co - pilot on another crew went sick, Alan took his place and thus got to take part in two bombs being dropped.

Interesting accomplishment to have on your CV!

[retreating blade]

I would be very interested to read about your findings in respect of your father’s flight as ‘sniff 2’
Of note, whilst I have my own father’s log books, there is no record whatsoever of his flights in connection with these tests. This leaves me to conclude that he was required to hand in the relevant book. This might explain the gap that exists in his flying record.

[Fareastdriver]

I don’t know whether the ac was pressurised or not but I believe it was equipped with sampling devices, so probably not.

The cockpit is pressurised by air from the compressor stage of the engines. That air comes from the front of the engine so whatever is outside is going to come in.

You can close the pressurisation valve before take off and fly unpressurised on 100% oxygen. This will MAY ensure that the same air is in the cockpit as when you left.

[MadsDad]

A friend of mine, sadly no longer with us, told me about some missions he flew in a Canberra sampling the atmosphere after a nuclear bomb test (presumably the 'sniffer' missions described above).

One thing he said which interested me was that when they landed after the mission he refused to allow his crew to disembark until the aircraft had been fully washed. This resulted in the crew having to sit in the aircraft in the sun for 1 1/2 hours or so. It did not make him popular at the time but when he did some checking relatively recently his crew was the only crew from his flight where they were all still alive.

[deltahotel]

Dad told me that after the flight they kept showering until the geiger thing stopped clicking! When I get home I’ll look up the date of his flight. I do know that the bomb was suspended from a balloon at height.

[NutLoose]

Father was there for 12 months 1957/58 and witnessed them, no protective clothing only wearing shorts, he was impressed by the explosions then paid the price by dying from a very unusual cancer later. There were many others.

Old family friend was there who is sadly no longer with us, one quiet evening in the pub he told me all about it, something he hadn't talked about before, he said they all lined up with goggles on, turned around away from the flash and said he could see those standing in front like X-rays, he said unfortunately no one told the NAAFI cat not to look at it and it was blinded, same went for all the landcrabs that were walking around bumping into trees etc. The funny thing he said, was the one thing that really worried him about it all was he went into the little NAAFI store and all the toothpaste had squirted out of the tubes... He didn't die from anything cancer related, so in that respect was lucky.

[Danny42C]

In late 1949, the Lincolns from Binbrook were doing runs up to Jan Mayen Island (about 70 degrees North Lat) to sniff for fall-out from possible Soviet tests.

[deltahotel]

Some info from Dad’s log books. The trial sequence was Op Grapple Zulu. The test was a suspended bomb on 22 aug 58. He flew in ‘Sniff 2’. Which sort of implies that there was at least a ‘Sniff1’! Prior to this on 16 & 19 aug they flew two sorties designated as ‘scientific rehearsal’ and ‘operational rehearsal’. He died in 2009 from some rare cancer; he did smoke a pipe every day for 60 years and at his funeral his pilot was in pretty good nick.

As an aside and one of those quaint coincidences his log book was signed by the 76 sqn xmas island det cdr who subsequently taught me to fly the chipmunk
at Manston in 1984.

Rgds

[retreating blade]

I much appreciate your response, thank you.
My father died in ‘85 of multiple carcinomas. He too was a smoker.
Regards

[LAME2]

This may help. The book, Sniffers and Bottlers, is an interesting read,

https://www.pprune.org/australia-new-zealand-pacific/482514-1954-search-two-missing-raf-canberra-bombers-en-route-momote-kwajalein.html

[deltahotel]

Thanks - ordered!

[Wander00]

Had a flt cdr on 360 (ED) who had flown a sniffer Canberra. Subsequently very ill and died. his widow is on of the claimants against the Government.


Also a well known RAF medical officer and also a pilot who also flew a sniffer Canberra. Rose to 3 start and lived to a ripe old age. I by some odd chance met his son in law on a small airfield in France when I went to look at a Flamant

[ricardian]

Scientists looking for survivors (https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/scientists-trying-prove-cold-war-12326858)

[Molemot]

Anybody wishing to know more about the development of the British Bomb ought to read "Test of Greatness" by Brian Cathcart. Available as a Kindle version from the usual South American river site...it's well worth a read.

[Pontius Navigator]

My uncle dropped one he was 80 when he died.

[MAINJAFAD]

The problem with the genetic disorders and other health issues that affected the Christmas Island Vets is that exposure to the radiological effects of weapon detonations is only one of the large number toxic and dangerous items (i.e. chemicals) that were in use at the time that could in the long term cause genetic damage that would lead to cancers and alike. Quite a few of which were considered "Safe" at the time. The accommodation areas were quite regularly sprayed with pesticides by low flying aircraft to keep the flies away, plenty of research since has shown that long term exposure to pesticides can result in the same effects as ionizing radiation. Of course a lot of smoking went on as well.

[Haraka]

Quite a few of these issues surrounding Op Grapple are discussed in Tony Blackman's "Valiant Boys". One of my uncles (actually Army National Service ) was in a group photo taken in front of a mushroom cloud. He told me about his experience , confirming the total lack of protection.

[roving]

The accommodation areas were quite regularly sprayed with pesticides by low flying aircraft to keep the flies away, plenty of research since has shown that long term exposure to pesticides can result in the same effects as ionizing radiation. Of course a lot of smoking went on as well.

Indeed. The photo on this link, shows an Auster spraying the NAAFI and was taken by Sqn Ldr Ted Hart, who was a friend of my parents and served with my dad in K.L. in the late 1950's before being posted to C. I.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205192891

https://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/35/905/mid_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photographs[/url]

[mgahan]

You may be interested in this letter set to the CHOGHM to be held next week.

Roy Sefton Letter to UK Government.

The following letter has been forwarded to the NZ Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Ministers of Fiji, Tuvalu and President of Kiribati, and the PM of Samoa as Chair of the Pacific Island Forum). The letter has been forwarded directly to the PM of the UK. In particular, a Media release including the letter has been made in the UK.

Open letter to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), London, 16-20 April 2018.

Support for nuclear veterans in the Pacific.

Sixty years ago this month, the UK government exploded a 2.8 megaton thermonuclear weapon, codename Grapple Y, at Christmas in the central Pacific. This was one of nine atmospheric nuclear tests during Operation Grapple, the program to develop the British Hydrogen Bomb.

As leaders gather in London the commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), we call for justice for the survivors of these nuclear tests.

We write to you as participants in Operation Grapple – sailors and soldiers from New Zealand and Fiji who supported the British Empire in the 1950s. Between May 1957 and September 1958, we served in the armed forces during the nuclear tests at Malden and Christmas (Kiritimati) Island in the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands - today part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

We call on the British Prime Minister and government to fulfil promises made 60 years ago, to address the health and environmental consequences of the UK nuclear weapons programme.

Nearly 14,000 British troops travelled to the central Pacific for the H-bomb testing program, but other Commonwealth countries were also involved. New Zealand sent aircraft and two naval frigates with 551 New Zealand sailors to support the tests. The British colony of Fiji supplied 276 Fijian participants from the Royal Fiji Military Force and the Fiji Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Dozens of Gilbertese Islanders worked as labourers to support the Military operation. Commonwealth countries like Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji and Australia hosted radiation monitoring stations.

In the decades since the H-bomb tests, successive British governments have argued that there was no danger to participants from radioactive fallout. But as survivors of the tests, we have lost friends and colleagues to cancer, leukaemia and other illnesses that can be caused by exposure to ionising radiation. This includes Ratu Sir Sir Penaia Ganilau, the distinguished Fijian leader who witnessed the second Grapple test on Malden Island and later served as Governor General and President of Fiji.

The UK government talks of extensive safety precautions for the tests, to reduce exposure to radiation. But we know the reality. Many participants went without safety gear or radiation badges.
Some were used for difficult, dirty and dangerous tasks like dumping drums of nuclear material in the ocean or killing birds blinded by the flash of a megaton hydrogen bomb. There were many pathways to ingest or inhale radioactive isotopes.

Independent medical studies, such as research conducted by Professor Al Rowland at Massey University in New Zealand, have documented significant chromosomal translocations amongst the New Zealand sailors who joined the naval task force for Operation Grapple.

This evidence of genetic damage raises concern about possible intergenerational effects for our children and grandchildren. Children of Gilbertese plantation workers on the island suffered eye damage and other health effects from the nuclear detonations. Survivors on Christmas (Kiritimati) Island have formed the 'Association of Cancer Patients Affected by the British and American Bomb Tests'.

Today, governments and citizens across the Pacific region call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Many pacific governments – Kiribati, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa and more – have signed the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This treaty has important provisions which oblige countries to support environmental remediation and assistance for the victims of the use and testing of nuclear weapons.

We thank our own governments for the medical and financial support they have already given, but believe the primary responsibility lies with the UK government. Sixty years after Operation Grapple, we call on Prime Minister Theresa May for urgent action.

* The British government should provide compensation, medical support and environmental rehabilitation to all people affected by Operation Grapple, including New Zealand and Fijian military personnel and I-Kiribati living on Kiritimati Island.

* The British government should provide funds for an independent medical study to investigate potential intergenerational health effects for the children and grandchildren of Operation Grapple participants from New Zealand, Kiribati and Fiji – as it has done for the UK veterans.

* The British Government should meet its obligations under article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ''to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective control''.

We call on all the Commonwealth countries – including the three nuclear weapon states United Kingdom, India and Pakistan – to sign and ratify the Treaty on the prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, with its important provisions on assistance for survivors of nuclear testing.

As fellow citizens of the Commonwealth, we look to the citizens of the United Kingdom to support our call for justice.

Roy Sefton QSM, Palmerston North New Zealand.
Former sailor, HMNZS Pukaki, witnessed five nuclear tests.
Chair, New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association. (NZNTVA).

Paul Ah Poy, Suva Fiji.
Former sailor, Fiji Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, witnessed seven nuclear tests.
President, Fiji Nuclear Veterans Association (FNVA)

[mgahan]

I visit Kiribati on a regular basis and took these recently.

They show what was the Officers' Mess (now the Captain Cook Lodge) and the bitumen dump after Grapple and the "clean up'.

MJG

[Chugalug2]

Christmas Island sported two Austers used for DDT spraying, c/s's Flit 1 and Flit 2, in the early 60's. 48 Squadron had a rotating detachment of two Hastings at Christmas Island to provide airlift capacity to/from Hickam AFB, some 1000 miles north, and ASR cover for that (no-one else flew the route and the Navs would get their own winds back at met briefing for the return flight some days later).

[TBM-Legend]

Tks Mike...

[retreating blade]

I have undertaken further research on my father's involvement in Grapple Y.
His log books reveal that he travelled to Christmas Island arriving on 25 April 1958 following a three-day mixed commercial/military flight combination via Goose Bay, New York, San Francisco and Honolulu. The airburst weapon known as Dickens was exploded on April 28 just south of CI and yielded 3 megatons. He flew home on the reverse route the following day. His logbook has no entries covering his time on the island. Why was he there? What was so important that he was required to spend 6 days travelling for three days on CI? I will probably never know since he died of multiple carcinomas in 1985.An account of Operation Grapple Y by Susie Boniface in a Mirror Special Report includes harrowing detail of one pilot's involvement in the tests as 'sniff 2' and his most unfortunate legacy. You may find this very upsetting.The Damned: Chapter 3 - Operation Grapple (http://damned.mirror.co.uk/chapter3.html) RB

[Wander00]

Subsequently. in the later 60s Sqn Ldr Eric Denson was my flight commander on 360.

[weemonkey]

This is the services equivalent of the Hillsborough cover up.

[Doctor Cruces]

My Father In Law recently died of multiple cancers. He was there for five of the tests.

[57mm]

Regarding the Sniff aircraft, did we also use some to monitor the French nuclear testing in the Pacific?

[Pontius Navigator]

57, and the Chinese.

[BEagle]

Yes


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[retreating blade]

And we used Lincolns to check on the Russians

[Tengah Type]

PN #48

I think it was 27, not 57, doing the Weather Reconnaissance.

[cavuman1]

Though admitting to thread drift, I feel compelled to offer the following, as I embrace the family members of all who had the unparalleled courage to involve themselves in atomic testing. So should we all.

Having graduated in 1971 from Vanderbilt University with a baccalaureate in Psychology, I wound up being the Purchasing/Material Controls Manager for Allastics, a Division of Kusan, a Wholly-owned Subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation. That's what it said on my business card. We did injection molding: sporks for Mickey D's. separators for DeLaval, and dashboards for Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. None of that has any importance whatsoever.

What is noteworthy was that our Plant Engineer, Ernie *********, a slight, dark-eyed gentleman who oozed genius, kindness, and sense of irreparable loss, had a story to tell. It was this: his father, a physicist, had been gathered up from a college classroom by Big Gummint and shipped off to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, in the company of a cadre of other gentlemen of superior intelligence, Ernie's father specialized in high-explosive lensing of nuclear explosives. He was good at it. He was there, right beside Robert Oppenheimer, when Trinity was set off on 16 July, 1945. The inventors of that awful and terrible (in the old and proper sense of those words) weapon had two immense worries. The worst was that no detonation would occur. The second was that the Earth's atmosphere would be set afire. The "Gadget" yielded approximately 20 kilotons.

Ernie said that "Oppy", after the early morning sky had become as illuminated as a blistering mid-day in the desert, did, in fact, turn to the others close by and said "Thus I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds."

Ernie's father's name is one of the seven men's names on the U.S. patent for Device, Nuclear, Explosive. Of those seven, five, including our plant engineer's father, died of testicular cancer. (The ones who would bring two half-grapefruit-sized castings of Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 in proximity to one another barehanded just to witness the eerie glow.) Another perished from CA of the lung.

All who grabbed the tail of "The Dragon" risked their lives. They all earned our enduring respect and gratitude. I feel particularly fortunate to have known someone whose father helped to take the concept from blackboard theory to the weapon that, in its ability to destroy life on this planet, kept a peace, however uneasy.

Ernie told me that he and his father embraced just when the Reaper came swinging the scythe for his father. Far too soon. He told me that his father's last words were "Never do this again!" The elder then became the precious, whirling, inscrutable, unamalgamated collection of atoms which he was when he started life. So do we all...

- Ed