Clouds of Deceit (10 page)

‘The explanation of the two bangs heard on the ships and also heard on the mainland is actually quite simple. The first bang was the direct sound wave, and the second was a reflection from a layer of warm air some two miles up.

‘Many comments have been made about the shape of the cloud and how different it was from the mushroom cloud with the very high stalk shown in most American pictures of atomic explosions. The great weight of the mud and water in the cloud at Monte Bello kept the cloud from rising very far.'

In fact, the shape of the cloud was a warning of just how unpredictably atomic clouds can behave. Clouds would get lost or they would be blown in unexpected directions, either because the wind changed or because winds were blowing in different directions at various levels. The cloud from Hurricane encountered exactly this phenomenon, as Penney explained in his broadcast: ‘The peculiar Z-shape of the cloud ten minutes or so after the explosion was due to the strong winds blowing in quite different directions at different heights. The cloud was pulled into a gigantic spiral shape which, when seen from the ships and from the mainland, appeared rather like a letter “Z”, rapidly
moving northwards away from the islands and the mainland.'

Penney went on to say that ‘the experiment went according to plan'. But the key secret report on Hurricane, compiled by Rear-Admiral Torlesse and released only in 1985, during the Australian Royal Commission hearings, tells a more complicated story. As planned, the early fallout fell into the sea to the north of the islands, and on the northernmost section of the islands themselves. Torlesse records the results of a helicopter survey on the day of the explosion, which showed the area to the north of where
Plym
had been moored to be ‘heavily contaminated'. Instruments placed on the northern islands, including Trimouille, confirmed that they must be considered ‘dirty' when monitoring teams were being sent out. But Torlesse's report shows that the cloud then behaved so erratically that, by the next morning, most of it was lost; it also shows that part of the cloud broke away and drifted over the mainland not at the expected height of 25,000 feet, but at 10,000, while another piece of it was detected on its way to Fiji.

The operation of tracking the cloud was initially put in jeopardy by what Torlesse calls a ‘signal mishap'. As the cloud moved out to sea, he says, ‘it was obvious that within a few hours large and increasingly rapid errors in its estimated position were inevitable. In addition, there was an alarmingly large wind sheer in the layers just below 10,000 feet, so that different parts of the cloud travelled in different directions.' Because of these problems, it was decided to start the search for the cloud sooner than planned. A message was sent to Broome, on the mainland, where RAAF planes were waiting to take off. But it took six hours for the secret message to arrive at Broome in ‘intelligible form'. It was a stroke of luck that the planes were still able to find part of the cloud, over the sea about 500 miles from the mainland, and collect samples.

A section of the cloud had been expected to travel south-east across the centre of Australia at between 25,000 and 30,000 feet. But on the day of the explosion, weak contamination was detected by an RAAF Lincoln at 10,000 feet near Port Hedland, on the mainland, to the east of the Monte Bellos. The following day, a Dakota aircraft detected a strong signal on radiation
measuring equipment at 10,000 feet in the same area over the mainland. A quantity of radioactive dust was drifting inland over the coast.

No attempt was made to track this section of the cloud further inland or to see if any other parts of the cloud had crossed to the mainland. Only one attempt was made to check for contamination on the ground: two Dakotas flew along the coast at five hundred feet the day after the test but reported no evidence of fallout on the ground. This result is not as impressive as it looks; it was revealed during the London hearings in 1985 that it was realized after the Totem tests in 1953 that an aircraft flying at this height registered only a tenth of the contamination lying on the ground.

None of the aircrew who took part in this sampling and tracking operation wore film badges or protective clothing. The safety measures adopted for the Hurricane test specified that anyone who might be exposed had to have special clothing and be supplied with devices to monitor their exposure to radiation, but an exception to this rule was made for aircrew. Back in 1950, the Air Ministry in Britain had sought the advice of scientists at Harwell on whether there was any risk to aircrew flying through the atomic cloud after the explosion. The answer was that aircrew must avoid flying through the
visible
cloud after the explosion but once the cloud could no longer be seen, there would be no danger.

This advice was later proved to be quite wrong. The cloud sampling operation, which involved the collection of samples in special canisters attached to the plane, was considered at the Totem tests the following year to be an ‘unexpected radiation hazard' not only for aircrew but for ground staff dealing with the plane once it had landed. When the sampling canisters were removed from RAAF Lincolns which had flown through the cloud at the first Totem explosion, they were so radioactive that they sent Geiger counters off scale when taken into the laboratory for analysis.

As a result of this incident, Australian aircrew at the later tests were provided with protective clothing and film badges. But at Hurricane and Totem, they had neither; radiation doses
received by the crew can only be guessed at by relating them to measurements of the radioactivity in the cloud.

Sampling the cloud was not, of course, the only operation which involved exposure to radiation. Helicopters were used to survey the area close to the explosion; salvage teams were sent on to islands to recover a variety of objects which had been left there to establish the effects of blast; ships sailed into contaminated water for various operations, and radioactive waste was stored on HMS
Tracker
and HMS
Zeebrugge.

Men involved in ‘dirty sorties' - expeditions into contaminated areas - went through health control on board HMS
Tracker
when their duties were finished. Torlesse's report shows that 912 people passed through health control in the twenty-two days after the explosion. Various examples are given in his report of incidents in which men were contaminated.

On the day of the explosion, the only party ‘significantly contaminated' was a sortie sent out to recover rocket heads from one of the islands after the explosion. Their hands were judged to be ‘dirty'. On two occasions, helicopters were ‘mildly contaminated'. The first was on the evening of the day the test took place, when a helicopter flew through a fire on Trimouille Island which had been caused by the blast. In this incident, ‘the helicopter crew was also slightly contaminated' and was sent to the health ship for decontamination.

The second occasion happened three weeks after the explosion, when a helicopter was hovering over the sea in the lee of an island and became contaminated by dust blowing off the island. The following day the contamination had to be washed off the aircraft.

Although Torlesse's report is detailed, there is at least one interesting omission from it. He records a number of occasions on which ships sailed into areas where the water was contaminated - HMS
Tracker
detected fallout one mile south of Flag island, directly south of Trimouille, on the day of the explosion, for example. But the fact that the ships were still radioactive on their arrival back in Britain is not mentioned.

The Torlesse report is dated 20 March 1953. Thirteen days before,
The Times
reported an Admiralty announcement that
Campania, Narvik, Tracker
and
Zeebrugge
‘still carry some evidence of their association' with the atomic explosion at the Monte Bello Islands. ‘Although they were outside the range of the direct effects of the explosion,' the Admiralty said, ‘it was necessary afterwards for the ships to enter water which had become contaminated by the radioactive products of the explosion. As was expected, this deposited a certain amount of radioactivity in those parts of the ship coming into contact with sea water, such as the ship's bottom and, inside the ship, saltwater pipe systems and fittings.'

(In fact, a special warning had to be issued to men working in the engine rooms of the ships after intakes were found to have taken in contaminated sea water, the Royal Commission was told by Major-General Alec Walkling in January 1985.)

At the time, the Admiralty went on to say reassuringly that, ‘as contact with radioactivity was premeditated and controlled and several months' natural decay has occurred since the event, the residual contamination is now so light as to be almost negligible and does not affect the serviceability or habitability of the ships.'

Even so, to avoid potential risk to the health of men required to carry out repairs in future, the royal dockyards had been asked to remove the contamination. ‘Precautions will be taken to obviate health risks to the men doing the work,' the Admiralty stated.

The Times
went on to report the cheerful news that ‘it was pointed out at the Admiralty yesterday that the effect of the contamination has not prevented the ships remaining in commission since the Monte Bello test, and that all have continued to have complements living on board.'

Torlesse's report does not deal with the implications for the health of the people who lived on the four contaminated ships during the long journey home, or of those servicemen who were still stationed on board at the time of the announcement. If the ships were sufficiently radioactive five months after the explosion to need decontamination, how much more contaminated would they have been in the weeks after the test? Nor does it seem that the Admiralty had a very clear idea of how to
deal with the problem, as
The Times
story goes on to make clear.

‘The dockyards have had no previous practical experience of this work,' the Admiralty statement admits, but then looks on the bright side. These ships, although only ‘lukewarm', ‘will provide a most valuable training exercise for the organization which must be set up for the handling and decontamination, should the need arise, of the really “hot” ships which must be anticipated in a future war in which atomic weapons may be used. It will also be an opportunity for practical training for the passive defence organizations.'

It is clear from Torlesse's report that contamination eventually spread from the water around the northern islands in the group southwards for several miles. But this was not the only way in which ships could become contaminated. Torlesse's report reveals that ‘a certain amount of gear and equipment used by special parties in the contaminated area, together with some contaminated equipment which was salvaged, could not successfully be decontaminated. Such gear was stored in the radioactive waste store in
Tracker
to await dumping at sea.'

Lightly contaminated protective clothing was kept on board
Tracker
and brought back to Britain for decontamination at home. Rubber boots, and gloves, were cleaned on board ship, where they responded ‘fairly well' to treatment to remove radioactivity. ‘Heavily contaminated' suits and other woven items were taken off by the people wearing them when they arrived at health control on board
Tracker.

Heavily contaminated clothing was packed in old cement drums with a sufficient quantity of cement to achieve what Torlesse calls ‘negative buoyancy' - in other words, to make them heavy enough to sink.
Tracker
carried twenty tons of cement and twenty tons of aggregate for this purpose. Cementing was done by servicemen on the upper deck under the supervision of health control. The drums were then thrown overboard.

There was also a problem of radioactive waste on board
Zeebrugge.
Effluent from the laboratories, consisting of fresh water which had been used to wash down contaminated items, had to be disposed of. The drums were thrown over the stern of
Zeebrugge.
To the dismay of those on board, the partly-filled drums
floated. The solution adopted was simple. The drums were riddled with rifle fire until they began to fill with sea-water and sink.

Torlesse reports: ‘The bullet holes permitted the effluent to seep away slowly, after which it would be diluted by the sea, thus ensuring that potentially dangerous concentrations did not remain in the drums for a long period.' Presumably, the same result of contaminating the sea with radioactive waste could have been achieved by simply pouring it overboard in the first place. Perhaps Torlesse had other things on his mind at the time - the return of empty beer bottles, for instance?

The Rear-Admiral gave considerable thought to the question of the type of beer most suitable for operations of this sort. It is a tribute to the British habit of secrecy that his recommendations on this subject appear in a report which bears the classification ‘restricted'.

‘Canned beer costs one shilling for a 12 OZ can and is not as popular as bottled beer,' the Rear-Admiral reports. ‘Further, about two per cent of the cans were found to contain flat beer. Australian beer, costing one shilling and threepence (Australian) for a 26 oz bottle, is cheaper and better. The decision to use British beer was taken because of:-

(a) the convenience of canned beer and

(b) doubt about the availability of sufficient quantities of Australian beer.

It is recommended that in any future operation in this area Australian beer should be used. The return of empties is a disadvantage but presents no insoluble problem.'

The concern about the return of empty bottles is touching. Radioactive waste was considered less of a problem, it seems. But the Rear-Admiral was right about the unpopularity of canned beer. Between August and October, 1,100 men in the Monte Bellos drank only 86,400 cans between them - just under one a day each.