Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
There was a sharp flash, I could see the bones in my hand like an X-ray... then a roar and the 600mph wind
who also worked on the US bomb. In 1949 the Russians exploded their first atomic weapon and in 1950 MI5 hauled Fuchs in for questioning.
He admitted telling the Soviets how to process uranium. Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years and the US withdrew co-operation from the British project, refusing even to provide a test site. Penney’s team was now under immense pressure. In 1951 Australia agreed the blast could take place at Monte Bello. James Stephenson, 85, remembers being given an unexplained posting to Abergavenny. The former Royal Engineers soldier says:“we went for training and they started weeding us out, removing lads they thought were Communist sympathisers or not up to it.
“Nobody told us what it was about. When we embarked in Portsmouth we had to load machinery ourselves, they wouldn’t let the dockers do it.”
James left with the first wave of vessels in January 1952. They were folfuchs lowed six months later by HMS Plym carrying the bomb.
He recalls: “One day at sea, when we couldn’t tell anyone, they told us we were going to be taking part in a nuclear explosion. We didn’t mind – I had friends who were fighting in Korea and I was just glad not to be with them.”
Early on October 3 – three days late due to bad weather – seven kilos of plutonium was placed in the bomb and the fleet sailed a short distance away.
Welsh physicist Ieuan Maddock counted down from 10 over a Tannoy.
Thousands of UK and Aussie servicemen saw the mushroom cloud disperse before dozens of planes flew through it to collect dust samples.
The press had been given a viewing tower 55 miles away. The Mirror announced: “This bang has changed the world”. No official statement was made until October 23 when PM Churchill the Commons: “All concerned are t warmly congratulated on the succes outcome of an historic episode.”
But ground crews who washed down planes that flew through the cloud soon began falling sick and low levels of radiation were detected all over Australia.
Derek explains: “It was a plutonium bomb – the dirtiest. A few years later
I went to the doctor and mentioned Monte Bello.
“He asked if I was married.
I said ‘Yes’ and he replied ‘My advice is never have children’. He wouldn’t say why.”
It was a warning Derek, now liv alone in Crediton, Devon, coul ignore. He says: “My wife wanted c dren and in the end I walked away f the marriage. She never blamed me