Early deaths and deformed children... legacy of atom bomb ormed children...

After the horrors of the Second World War, it was deemed necessary for Britain to have a weapon which could unleash hell. When atom bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, LIFE magazine reported: “People’s bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured.

“Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles-an-hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air.”

Yet, the powers-that-be in Britain decided a nuclear capability was the only was to guarantee our safety.

A small nation, racked by poverty and rationing, somehow defied American anger, Soviet spies and growing public outrage to create a device 100 times more powerful than those dropped on Japan.

But it came at a price. Of the 22,000 scientists and servicemen who took part in radioactive experiments in Australia and the South Pacific, just a handful are alive.

Their families report cancers, rare medical problems, high rates of miscarriage and deformities, disability and death for their children – and their grandchildren.

Now, the full story of Britain’s nuclear experiments is told for the first time in a Mirror website which details not only the scientific, military and political battles, but the human fallout. damned.mirror.co.uk

features top-secret documents, witness accounts and searing testimonies.

The site takes its name from an editorial wriitten in 2002 by Mirror editor Richard Stoott, who thundered: “How many more generations of the damned will our politins cianallow to suffer before they accept the calamities of their predecessors and the connsequences of their own cowardice?”

Inn May, the Mirror called for an award for the veterans and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a medal review.

Damned begins with Operation Hurrine canin 1952, when Britain exploded its first atoomic bomb, covers the Minor Trials in Souuth Australia, which left the landscape littered with plutonium debris for decades, and reports on Operation Grapple in 1958 wen the UK detonated its biggest weapon.

It also details the human cost and shows howw every other nuclear nation on Earth camme to accept and recognise their nuclear herroes – leaving Britain the only one to denny a duty of care.

The MoD said: “The National Radiologl icaProtection Board has carried out three large studies of nuclear test veterans and found no valid evidence to link participan tioin these tests to ill health.”

Damned has a memorial section with the pictures and health problems of every veteran from our archives. Some of their stories can be read here...