Alan Rimmer - Between Heaven and Hell

The importance of whether or not it rained after the blast was not lost on Labour MP Jack Ashley who went on to ask specific questions in Parliament about the height the bomb exploded, protective clothing worn by the men, and the allegations of rainfall. His questions obviously hit a raw nerve judging by the tetchy reply from Defence Minister Archie Hamilton:-

I must say at the outset that the irresponsible and sometimes misleading allegations made by the “Dispatches” television programme, from which the right hon. Gentleman drew many of his points, were based on a series of factual inaccuracies. The unfounded allegations made by the programme can only add unnecessarily to the concern and anxiety of those who participated in the nuclear test programme and their relatives.

After brushing aside doubts concerning the height the bomb exploded, the protective clothing worn by the servicemen and the distance they were from the blast, Hamilton really gets into his stride. In a high dudgeon he professes to being “mystified” by the allegations about whether or not it rained after the blast:-

The Dispatches programme alleges that there was heavy rain off Christmas Island on 28 April 1958 which substantially increased the amount of radioactive fallout. All that I can say is that shortly after the test extensive environmental monitoring did not measure any deposition of radioactive materials from the detonation. On the basis of that evidence therefore there could have been no exposure to internal contamination as a result of inhalation.

It is interesting that Hamilton does not actually say that it didn’t rain, just that there was no radioactive fallout. He goes to great lengths, over six pages, to rubbish the points raised by veterans over the years, but the crucial question of whether or not it rained is dodged.

The same pugnacious stance (and evasiveness) was evident in the reaction of another defence minister called upon to answer similar allegations nearly 15 years later.

Labour MP Dr Lewis Moonie was in combative mood when he replied to a letter sent to his department in 2003 by Labour MP Siobahn McDonagh. She had written to Moonie demanding answers to questions raised by her constituent Shirley Denson, whose husband had piloted one of the sampling aircraft that flew through the mushroom cloud created by Grapple Y.

In a seven-page reply Dr Mooney insisted that Mrs Denson’s late husband had never been placed in any danger while carrying out his duties:-

The Canberra aircraft used for sampling had pressurised cabins which prevented the ingress of air… and no significant levels of contamination were ever detected…

But when the question of rainfall is raised Dr Mooney is as indignant as Hamilton:-

Some of the assertions made by Mrs Denson have been raised by members of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association before on many occasions over the years. The Ministry of Defence has addressed these points time and again but the BNTVA chooses to lend credence to certain misapprehensions.

When he finally gets round to answering the question, Mooney shows he is every bit as nimble-footed as Hamilton. The following passage quoted verbatim from his letter is a master-class in dissembling:-

Environmental recordings for Main Camp on Christmas Island for the date of the trial and subsequent days showed that sticky paper and air samples were below the level of detection for contamination, and also that there was no rainfall. The first measurable rainfall at the Main Camp following the detonation occurred on 2 May 1958. There is a meteorology report giving observations of precipitation 5km from station 2057Z, which was a surface wind monitoring position, two hours after the detonation. However, environmental testing on Christmas Island during and after the Grapple operations showed no measurable fallout on the island. AWE Aldermaston has no evidence to show that water contaminated with radiation was precipitated out over the island.

This is a murky statement. In the first sentence we have Dr Mooney stating quite clearly that there was “no rainfall.” In the second sentence he states “measurable rainfall” was recorded four days after the blast. Then in the third sentence he blurs the issue further by stating there was “precipitation” two hours after the detonation.

Dr Mooney is being disingenuous. Precipitation means rainfall, which means it did rain soon after the Grapple Y explosion as eyewitnesses have testified. Dr Mooney obviously had no intention of addressing that issue for he quickly moved on to say that environmental testing showed no fallout over the island after the blast.

It is interesting to note that Dr Mooney refers to only the Main Camp while making his observations about there being no rain. What he didn’t say was that it was irrelevant whether it rained over Main Camp or not because there were few troops there to be rained upon.

Most of the men were evacuated to various mustering areas miles away as a safety precaution against the possibility of the bomb-carrying Valiant aircraft crashing on takeoff from the airfield, which was next to the Main Camp.

Why has the British government been so afraid of acknowledging that it rained? If there was no resultant radioactive contamination why bother to deny it? Was something being hidden?

Rainout is well known in scientific circles as being a particularly pernicious form of radioactive contamination. It was first observed about 30 minutes after the Hiroshima bomb as a “black rain” which was discoloured by tar and other materials in the wooden buildings set alight by the explosion. Its ability to hold its strength and not be dissipated like dry fallout is well known. A notorious example was observed in the township of Troy in upstate New York in April 1953.

What became known as the “Troy Incident” began at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when a group of students entered a laboratory for their radiochemistry class. They were startled to note that all the Geiger counters used in their studies were registering radiation many times the normal rate.

Their tutor took the students on a tour of the campus and discovered similar high readings. High concentrations were found in the gutters and drains which were overflowing because of the previous night’s heavy rains.

The school contacted the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Health and Safety office in New York City. Further measurements were taken and it was found that gamma radiation on the ground was a hundred times normal; beta ray radiation was even higher and hot spots were found in gutters and puddles.

The explanation was soon forthcoming: there had been an atomic bomb test conducted in the Nevada desert two days earlier. The mushroom cloud had reached 40,000 feet into the atmosphere then drifted 2,300 miles across the United States in a north-easterly direction. It passed over Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania before being caught up in a storm that dropped rain on upstate New York, southern Vermont and parts of Massachusetts.

In recent years the discovery of a leukaemia cluster in the Troy area has been confidently attributed to the incident.

Had a similar but much more localised incident taken place on Christmas Island? The only way this could be answered was by examining the environmental records and meteorological reports for Christmas Island at the time of the Grapple Y blast.

This was impossible during the time Hamilton and Mooney were making their statements because the relevant documents were buried deep in government archives, and not available for public consumption.

But things changed. The Freedom of Information Act which came into force on January 1, 2005 allows a general right of access to information held by public authorities.