Living and working near test sites in Australia and the Pacific proved challenging. Veterans’ memories focus on both the positive side of serving their country, and the hazardous conditions that are troubling to this day.
Once they arrived at test sites in South and Western Australia (1952-1967) or on Christmas and Malden Islands in the Pacific Ocean (1957-1962), British nuclear test personnel spent their time in lots of different ways. In hot conditions, the men were ordered to complete jobs such as constructing roads, buildings, the cinema, and toilets. Others made clothes, prepared food, or cleaned the toilets. Many veterans recall interacting with Indigenous communities as part of their day-to-day lives. While the men were often busy and the work could be hard, quieter periods led to boredom. This meant leisure activity was important to the men during downtime.
While some veterans were directly involved in the testing of nuclear weapons, many were indirectly involved through the clean-up afterwards, for instance washing clothes or cleaning radioactive planes. This has led to the perception from some veterans that radioactive contamination was not controlled and that certain groups of men were at greater risk of radiation harm. The clips that accompany this article suggest that the organisation of life on the island has led to some of these doubts and unanswered questions. The veteran testimony was recorded as part of ‘An Oral History of Nuclear Test Veterans’, funded by the Office for Veterans’ Affairs.
Alfred Fielding was a regular serviceman in the Royal Navy and a petty officer during Operation Hurricane in 1952. This operation culminated in Britain’s first atomic test above the Monte Bello Islands. In his interview Fielding discusses his first impressions of life on the other side of the world.
After joining the Royal Navy in 1946, Alfred Fielding was posted to HMS Tracker in April 1952. He travelled from the UK to Australia later that year, passing through the Indian Ocean during the monsoon season. The crew were later told that they were travelling to take part in Operation Hurricane – the UK’s first atomic test – and they would be moored near the Monte Bello Islands. In this clip, Fielding recalls what life was like in the lead up to the test. He mentions LSTs, which stands for Landing Ship, Tank – a ship developed during the Second World War to transport troops and vehicles. After his military service he worked as a senior lecturer at Canterbury College of Technology until his retirement in 1993.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Alfred Fielding was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
Nothing there, about thirty-six of them altogether, some of them were quite large, but most small. But we, the three LSTs, were able to enter the shallow waters of the islands, because obviously the LSTs were built for that thing, and unload what we had onto the island, plus the Royal Engineers onto the island. And they then started to build whatever was required, using the island as the base, to record what would happen when the bomb went. The only snag is, what are you going to do? You couldn’t go anywhere. Could have a swim, but you’d only do that before the explosion, you couldn’t do it afterwards! What we did see was a lot of those manta rays, the big… but that was on the outer area. But apart from that, your normal duties, you just carried on. Could go for a swim, you could do some fishing if you liked, piece of string on a flippin’ stick! [laughs] And we did have a cinema show. But the cinema show was what, the 1930s, so flippin’ old. So, you had a job now to occupy your mind. So, we used to have talent, throughout the ship, somebody could sing, somebody could recite, and whatever.
[ends at 0:01:39]
The cloud from Britain's first atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane, rising above Trimouille Island in the Montebello archipelago off Western Australia. Photo courtesy of Jack Duperouzel.
Living conditions were challenging on Christmas Island, which is situated in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. Most men were far away from home for the first time in their lives and had to adapt to very hot weather conditions. It is important to note that in the Cold War era this military activity was happening alongside Indigenous communities, with some people being displaced or evacuated because of nuclear testing. Derek Woolf trained as a Royal Air Force (RAF) medic and then served as a medical assistant on Christmas Island. In his interview he describes treating a village elder from the one native village that was generally out of bounds to British personnel and receiving an unexpected gift as thanks.
Derek Woolf was posted to Christmas Island in 1957 where he worked at the RAF hospital. He occasionally assisted with the medical transfer of patients to Honolulu. In this clip, he recounts giving medical assistance to Indigenous people while on Christmas Island and being rewarded for his work. It was uncommon for veterans to have had extended interactions with the Indigenous population of Christmas Island, making Woolf’s interaction particularly unique. After returning from Christmas Island, Woolf remained in the Medical Service and was commissioned into the Medical Secretarial Branch in 1968. He retired as a flight lieutenant in 1977.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Derek Woolf was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Christopher R Hill. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
And he was brought back every day for, I think, almost a month while we treated these wounds that he’d suffered. But I recall the, I recall the aftermath to this when he was cured, when he came back up to the hospital, and the family were with him, and Colin Austin – Colin Austin was the name of the lad I worked with – were called in and then the SMO was there, Senior Medical Officer was there, and the Australian DC, District Commissioner, who said that they want to present you with some gifts. And the gifts were a ceremonial fan and a ceremonial sword. Now, these were made of wickerwork with coloured feathers and shark’s teeth round them. And Colin stepped forward first, and they gave him, and Colin took these two things, and they looked a bit glum, and the DC said to me, ‘When they offer you these, snatch them from them, because it’s a sign that you’re pleased to have them’. So when they proffered the sword to me, I snatched it, but unfortunately he didn’t let go quickly enough, and to this day I have the scar on my finger there where the shark…
From the shark’s tooth?
… teeth ripped open…
Oh my word!
And there was blood everywhere, and they were clapping like mad. So that was my memory of my final day.
Yeah, he really wants to get it. Cut his hand open getting it.
Yes, I really wanted to have it. Anyway, I remember that with clarity.
[ends at 0:01:35]
A ceremonial fan (te kabaang) and sword with shark's teeth (iriba). Donated by Alan Jacobs, who served on Christmas Island and befriended the I-Kiribati community in 1957. Photo © Chris Hill.
Many veterans talked about experiencing sunburn during their time abroad or complained about the quality of food and water available to them. New arrivals to Christmas Island were nicknamed ‘moonies’ because of their pale skin. Ray Carbery relates the unpleasant, and occasionally surprising, experience of going to the toilet on Christmas Island.
Born on the Isle of Man, Ray Carbery joined the Army before leaving for Christmas Island in 1958 on HMT Dunera. He witnessed five bomb tests.In this clip he describes the toilets on Christmas Island, which were made of oil drums. In other interviews veterans recall being burnt by the metal lids. In his interview, Frank Bools describes how the initial sanitation system leaked because engineers had used coral as a building material, forgetting that it is porous. Providing effective sanitation for 1000s of troops proved difficult on a coral reef atoll.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Ray Carbery was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Jonathan Hogg. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
The toilets to the- Mickey, that I’ve just said, from Shropshire, he didn’t smoke but he used to borrow a cigarette off me to go to the toilet, because of all the flies, blowing the smoke out, it did work. The toilets were just oil drums, and you sat on them, they were dug deep so that there was room for it to come out. And that couldn’t have been doing us any good. They were on the ship, and then your tents that you’re living in are only about fifty yards away, you know, that couldn’t have done us any good. And some rotten people used to put land crabs in there, so when you sat down there you didn’t see them and they’d, chk chk.
[ends at 0:00:55]
A bird's eye view of Christmas Island from the mouth of its lagoon. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.
Sport was a popular pastime on Christmas Island. Many veterans remember playing football on the purpose-built pitch, and fishing and swimming were also popular. Footballers complained of cuts from the sharp coral which covered the island and some, like RAF National Serviceman Gordon Coggon, suffered injuries while fishing. Injuries from coral could poison the men.
Gordon Coggon joined the Royal Air Force for his National Service. He worked as an administrative orderly during Operation Grapple in 1958, taking on many different jobs on Christmas Island. Here, he describes some of the hazards involved when fishing for sharks. He was also blinded for two weeks by the second bomb test that he witnessed. Upon returning home, Coggon signed up for a further 22 years in the RAF and worked mainly as a crash rescue fireman.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Gordon Coggon was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Jonathan Hogg. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
Yeah, I went fishing there and I caught a shark, me and my mate, and it pulled me into the coral and cut all my chest, before we managed to land it. But [laughs], I went to sick quarters that night because I’d been lacerated, and I got coral poisoning from it, and while I was in there, they were bringing senior NCOs, the old guys, instructors and whatever they were, from the sergeants’ mess into the sickbays. And they were playing hell, they were going to kill the bloke who took that shark to the sergeants’ mess because they’d eaten it and got food poisoning. They were drinking milk all night.
[ends at 0:00:53]
It was commonplace for soldiers to have their photo taken with the large fish and sharks they caught on the reef, as in this portrait of Frank Bools. Photo © Frank Bools, used with permission.
To maintain a semblance of British normality, a radio station and cinema were set up on the island. Listen to this rare extract from the Christmas Island radio station.
This clip is taken from the Christmas Island Broadcasting Service (CIBS), which was established and run by servicemen during Operation Grapple. The Broadcasting Service provides a vivid example of how servicemen made a home on Christmas Island, which included creating their own organisations for leisure and entertainment, such as a cinema and theatre group.
We hear popular country and rock ‘n’ roll singles from 1959, Conway Twitty’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and Connie Francis’s ‘Lipstick on your Collar’. The presenter is Arthur Mansfield Sandles, a National Serviceman who kept a personal copy of the recording. The upbeat character of CIBS is perhaps not one might expect on the site of nuclear testing base, but CIBS was in keeping with the emergence of ‘lighter’ radio from the Second World War. It also coincided with the rise of pirate radio broadcasting, as young musicians and presenters pushed back against the strictures of BBC radio.
This is an extract from a recording preserved by Arthur Mansfield Sandles. The full recording is held by his daughter, Rebecca Sandles, who has kindly given the British Library permission to use this extract.
[The song ‘Mona Lisa’ by Conway Twitty plays]
Mr Conway Twitty there with ‘Mona Lisa’, number 2 on the CIBS Sapphire 10 number that’s really climbing. Connie Francis is next on the list but that’s in a moment. CIBS time now is seven minutes to ten. ‘Lipstick on your Collar’...
[The song ‘Lipstick on your Collar’ by Connie Francis plays]
[ends at 00:00:21]
The film reel on which the Christmas Island Broadcast Service clip was recorded. Photo © Rebecca Sandles, used with permission.
Phillip Fawke, a civilian who helped set up the ‘Kamak San’ cinema on Christmas Island, recalled the popularity of film screenings. He was proud of how his efforts helped boost morale and wellbeing amongst the men, and here he recounts what happened one evening when a rainstorm interrupted a film screening.
Phillip Fawke was a civilian who helped to build and then run the ‘Kamak San’ cinema on Christmas Island ahead of Operation Grapple in 1957-1958. Fawke had experience running cinema projectors and worked for the UK military in Korea. In this clip, it is clear how important the cinema was for the men stationed on Christmas Island. Fawke had a long career in the cinema industry, working until the age of 83 as a projectionist at the Midlands Art Centre.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Phillip Fawke was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Jonathan Hogg. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
It poured. I think it was The Quatermass Experiment, or one of them films.
Oh yeah.
It absolutely poured. And it was on and it kept… So I went, I come out of the box, I had a sort of balcony. I said, ‘Lads, I shall have… it’s no good carrying on’, I said to them, ‘we’d better stop’. And the sergeant, he was sitting in front of the projection, he said, ‘No’ he said, ‘give me a blinkin’ cloth’ he said, ‘and if it smears’ he said, ‘I’ll clean it’. And then he sat there in the pouring rain and every time it got a bit blurred he cleaned it. And if a plane went over, the floodlights would absolutely block everything out, you know…
Oh, of course, yeah.
… because they landed it sort of, over, if they happened to land while a show was on.
[ends at 0:00:53]
The open-air cinema on Christmas Island, originally named 'Kamak San', referring to the battle between UN forces and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War. Photo © Sam Ovenden.
John O’Nions, who worked as an aircraft engineer on Operation Grapple, recalls visiting the cinema too, and discusses a novel – if slightly dramatic – way of cooling beer.
After three years of technical training as an RAF boy entrant, John O’Nions was posted to Christmas Island for Operation Grapple, where he worked on aircraft servicing. In this clip, he remembers flying planes filled with beer in order to chill them for consumption, showing us that military discipline was not always strictly upheld on the island. O’Nions stayed in the RAF for the rest of his career, working at home and abroad including in Singapore.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. John O’Nions was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Fiona Bowler. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
We had a big lagoon. As you know, Christmas Island is shaped in a horseshoe and in the centre there’s a lagoon, we used to go swimming in this lagoon. Why we never got eaten by sharks or anything like that… oh, and fishing.
Fishing?
Fishing. Fishing off the reef, swimming in the lagoon, or lying out in the sand. And then we did have a little cinema there, which was an open-air cinema.
Okay.
We used to go to the cinema in the evening, they used to show those Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Did they?
I think there was a big, Christmas Day on Christmas Island, I think that was a big deal, they had running Tom and Jerry cartoons in the cinema right through. And we obviously, drinking, we used to have so many, we used to go to the NAAFI and get cans of beer, you know, you could go there. But that was a problem there, chilling the beer, because the NAAFI would only have so much chilled beer, and of course, once the beer, sold out the chilled beers, it was all warm. So what we used to do, we used to load beer into our Dakotas, and then take them up into the… take them up to 8,000 feet and fly around. [laughs]
To chill them?
To chill them. [laughs]
[ends at 0:01:27]
Servicemen drinking pale ale and playing guitar in their quarters. Their time on Christmas Island corresponded with the skiffle boom back in the UK. Photo © Valerie Shirley, used with permission.
O’Nions wasn’t the only one thinking of ways to cool the beer down. In this clip, keen artist and RAF serviceman Gerry Rogers tells a story about beer being buried on the island.
Gerry Rogers joined the RAF through National Service and was selected to go to Christmas Island to participate in Operation Grapple. While on Christmas Island, he composed works of art to represent and remember his experiences. In this clip, he recalls a novel way of cooling beer. This anecdote is supported by another veteran, Alan Jacobs, who also claimed that the NAAFI put the decimal point in the wrong place when submitting the beer order. The NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) is a company that runs leisure facilities for British military personnel.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Gerry Rogers was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
The only other place that was built first was the NAAFI, because of the, protecting all the beers and stuff. The laugh about the NAAFI was they used to sell Pegasus beer, all in tins, never cold, Pegasus beer and Allsopp’s, we called it All Slops, it was horrible. Anyway, but they didn’t sell much of that, so one night we heard bulldozers, and they buried it. They dug a big hole, buried all these cans of All Slops. It was buried and forgotten, they thought, and a few days later, this fellow’s going out there, digging it.
[ends at 0:00:37]
The NAAFI bar, freshly repainted by Michael Dash, whose wall mural depicted island landmarks (such as the cinema, Astra, and broadcasting service, CIBS) within a London cityscape. Photo © Hannah Dash.
Working on the tests themselves could be extremely hazardous. Veterans frequently talked to us about the inconsistent safety culture at the test sites. Anthony Broomfield worked for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and travelled to Christmas Island in 1957. In this clip he describes his work setting up cameras to record nuclear detonations in precise detail.
Soon after joining the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) in 1956, Anthony Broomfield was posted to Christmas Island to take part in Operation Grapple. He worked on Malden Island where he helped to set up high-speed cameras to collect detailed imagery of nuclear detonations during the series of tests. He stayed with the AWRE (later AWE) until his retirement.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Anthony Broomfield was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
My job, which thankfully didn’t fail on any occasion, was to tell the cameras to stop. Why is that necessary? The film to catch the expansion of the blast wave has to be very, very fast and there’s a technical device called the Carcel [sp?] camera, which goes extremely fast and allows photograph frames to be taken at very short spacings of development of the bomb. That’s what you’re seeing in the distance, a bomb, this camera is photographing all that. And so essentially that’s my job. There are a team of people specially trained to run these cameras, and slower ones, it’s not just all on this fast one, some are also slow ones, which information…
[ends at 0:01:18]
Technicians setting up the high-speed cameras that would capture the moment of the blast. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.
Some personnel undoubtedly carried out hazardous tasks. David Whyte attended the Army Apprentice School before being posted to Operation Grapple. In this clip he talks about the sudden death of Lance Corporal Derek Redmond on the island and describes his burial at sea.
David Whyte was posted to Christmas Island for Operation Grapple. As well as other jobs, he drove a heavy road roller to ground zero for several weeks following the Grapple Z series. In this recollection, he talks about the death of Derek Redmond, a fellow serviceman, on Christmas Island. Redmond was doing similar work to Whyte before he passed away. The fact that a decision was made to bury Redmond at sea made many veterans suspicious about his cause of death. Whyte has been involved in nuclear test veteran campaigning since the 1980s.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. David Whyte was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
There was a driver with us, Derek Redman, he was a lance corporal, and his job was to take the boffins down to the Ground Zero to examine where the bomb was exploded, or near where the bomb was exploded. Now, he didn’t only just drive one lot down, he’d take one down, take them back, and he’d have another lot to take down. Now, he did this fairly regularly for a good few days, and there was one morning, he turned round and says to the chap in his tent, ‘I’m not feeling very well today, I’m not going in to work’. So the chap in his tent went and informed the sergeant major, the sergeant major went to see him, he was dead. He was to be buried the next day, well, at sea. So they had to get him prepared then, and I was picked as the firing party. And we went on board the Narvik, and went out to sea… The coffin went over the side and we fired a volley of shots.
[ends at 0:01:02]
The BNTVA coffin drape, used here for the funeral of Terry Brown, a highly decorated RAF sergeant. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.
Remarkably, Whyte was then asked to carry out the same work that Derek Redmond had been doing. This involved entering the ‘forward area’ to collect radioactive debris from the bomb detonation. The fact that he recalls the reading on his dosimeter is rare amongst veterans. This testimony is extremely valuable in highlighting the different levels of protective clothing worn by personnel.
While discussing his experiences at Operation Grapple Z, David Whyte describes entering the forward area, working with heavy machinery, and clearing up radioactive debris. The memory of this work is extremely important to Whyte and has informed his fight for compensation and recognition.
The image shows photographer John L Stanier wearing protective clothing, Whyte had no such protection while working on Christmas Island.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. David Whyte was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
I then drove into Ground Zero and picked up all the radioactive debris. There was probably, I would say probably about a stone in weight of debris that I had to put in the truck.
So, was it just you in this truck then?
It was just me, yeah. I was the only one that I could see in the area. The other members of my party had been given a separate area. What their jobs were, I don’t know. I think they were probably much the same as mine, pick up the debris. It makes me wonder why debris was there, but when you think of the bomb, it explodes in a 360-degree circle, you’ve got stuff that is shot up into the air, into the cold atmosphere, that comes down and lands. Whereas the stuff that comes down from the bottom is heated and is vaporised. So this is why there is some debris left. So, as I say, I picked up the debris and put it into the truck and drove down to Ground Zero. Now, I should add at this time that I was not given any protective clothing or respirator. All I had was my radiation film badge and my QFE dosimeter. And so I got down and I put the truck in its parking bay, and then I noticed an AWRE chap coming out, in full protective clothing, wearing a respirator, and he jumped in my truck to drive it away to empty it. I went into the decontamination tent and there was a serviceman – he wasn’t Royal Engineers – he was taking the radiation film badges. He took it and he wrote something on a piece of paper. I’ve a funny feeling it was probably the time, because they need to know how long you were in Ground Zero for. He put it in a box on the table, and there was quite a few badges in there. So I left him and I went round to another serviceman, again, not Engineers, and he took my dosimeter from me. And he read it, and it was reading five roentgens, which was fifty millisieverts. And he wrote that down on a piece of paper, and I went round, and they ran a Geiger counter up and down me to see if I was okay, and everything was there. So that was it.
[ends at 0:02:21]
John L Stanier at Maralinga in protective clothing showing a camera also protected in a special plastic cover. Photo: National Archives of Australia. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
One of the most hazardous jobs was cleaning down ‘sniffer planes’ that had flown through radioactive mushroom clouds to collect samples of fallout. Arthur Matthews, part of 76 Squadron who worked on Grapple Z, was tasked with preparing and then cleaning down sniffer planes. The work was hard in the equatorial heat, and he was convinced that the aircraft remained dangerous to work with even when visibly ‘clean’.
Arthur Matthews was part of 76 Squadron during Grapple Z and was stationed on Christmas Island in 1958. He had been trained as a radar mechanic from the age of 14 since being recruited by the RAF. He is still friends with pilot Terry Hilliard, who is also featured in our collection, and in their interviews they both talked about the inconsistent safety precautions taken during the test series. In this clip Matthews describes in vivid detail the process of cleaning ‘sniffer planes’ – aircraft that had flown through radioactive mushroom clouds to collect samples – including the clothing he wore for the job.
The photograph shows the runway on Christmas Island. During Operations Grapple and Dominic, the British and Americans buried high-grade radioactive waste under the runway, where it remains to this day.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Arthur Matthews was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Jonathan Hogg. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
When the aircraft came down and we got the crew out and got the samples out the wingtip into lead containers and that, then in turn we were stripped down and the aircraft was closed up and left for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, the half-life and that they left in the compound at the end of the runway. After a couple of days we’d go back in and put on all the gear again – and we were two degrees north of the equator and we had woollen underwear, the white suits, zip and double flap, we had surgical gloves, taped, thicker gloves over the top, taped, full mask, and you had to go out and wash them down, and with brushes remove all the emulsion. So we’re doing that and they’d time it. You were given twenty minutes at a time. That was considered, you were then… that was a bloody long time. You’d sweat and your boots, your wellington boots were taped, you had special socks and wellington boots taped to the thing, and you’re just filling up with your own sweat.
Yeah.
And then you come off, they strip you off, and somebody else will take your place and go out, until you got the aircraft washed down. After that they’d come back on the line, they’re back in use, no protective clothing, nothing, not even gloves. Nothing. Now, you might have washed off what was on the skin, but aircraft like that is a compressor continually working to pressurise aircraft up to a certain level, and the aircrew, their nitrogen in their suits, and they’re on a hundred per cent oxygen, so they’re not breathing any of this, so they’re okay, up to that point. But the inside of the aircraft, the hatches where we’d got our equipment and all that on the inside, that hasn’t been washed, that hasn’t been decontaminated. And on the apron, when we’re back in service, we used to go out. We had, all we had in the tent was a stand and a hand- you could put your hands in and get a reading. And we used to go out to the hatch, I remember seeing if the airframe mechanic, under the undercarriage, see what reading he’d get on his hand, and I’d go up in the hatch on top, see what I get. I was getting a huge reading, huge readings. And the aircraft were generally, they were dirty and that was it.
[ends at 0:02:51]
Aircraft on Christmas Island runway, now known as Cassidy airport. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.
Fireman Robert James was at Maralinga when a plane that had flown through a mushroom cloud caught fire soon after landing. Although he was wearing a dosimeter as he helped put out the fire, he had no idea what the reading was. Like David Whyte’s testimony, this again shows how secrecy and unpredictable events led to an inconsistent culture of safety.
After joining the RAF and receiving further training as a firefighter Robert James was posted to Maralinga for Operation Antler in 1957. In this clip he talks about the dangerous work involved in putting out an irradiated airplane. Later in life, James became involved in nuclear charities and campaign groups. In 2024, he visited Kazakhstan to take part in a Nuclear Survivors Forum, organised by a number of groups including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Robert James was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua Bushen. This project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
We did have… we had no protective clothing against radiation at all, none of us did. Nobody on the airfield, not even the officers, nobody did. The only people that had protective clothing was the scientists when a few days after each test they would go [inaud 00:14] area with the Geiger counters and what have you. But we did have, quite often when there was a test, aircraft would fly up through the cloud getting samples. And of course, when the aircraft came back, they were full of, giving off radiation, alpha and beta rays. Amongst other things, one thing I remember, we had a V bomber coming in, it was a Valiant, and nearly overshot the runway, and of course he braked hard and all the undercarriage was on fire. And with aircraft undercarriage, a lot of the metals are made with metals that burn and produce their own oxygen, like zinc, magnesium. And of course, putting those fires out is difficult. We had water, foam and carbon, CO2 gas, right? CO2 gas is freezing, it’s good for smothering, but we couldn’t use it, because it would have caused it to disintegrate and explode, because it’s freezing cold on red hot metal, it would just explode. So we had to spray, not foam, but to spray water slowly over the undercarriage. We were right underneath. But of course, while we were doing that, we done that satisfactory, took about half an hour to really cool it down, if not longer, it was giving off radiation.
Yes, so this was a plane that had just flown through the cloud, then land, catch fire, then you’re underneath it putting the fire out.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah.
And so we were absorbing radi… we didn’t know, we didn’t realise that we were. But we did, all of us got issued with a dosimeter for recording the amount of radiation, but in those days, it was a film badge.
Just, yeah.
There was a little holder with a film inside and it recorded the amount of rads or roentgens, the amount of rads your body’s absorbed. But they never told us what the readings were.
[ends at 0:02:12]
Crash and fire crew vehicles on Maralinga airstrip. Photo © Steve Purse, used with permission.
As is so common with nuclear test veteran stories, recollections of work and everyday life prove to be varied and complex. There were many jobs to do, and new activities to engage with. Many veterans valued their time abroad, seeing their experience as an adventure and a chance to make lifelong friends, while also being worried about the effect of the hazardous conditions they lived and worked in.
Some live with the uncertainty of how radiation from nuclear weapons testing has impacted their lives. Many veterans talked about the different levels of protection they were offered against radiation, which was often dependent on military or scientific rank. The testimony collected for our project suggests that the men perceived risk in ways that differ from the official record.
Dr Jonathan Hogg is Senior Lecturer in History at The University of Liverpool. He researches the social and cultural history of the nuclear age, and his book British Nuclear Culture was published in 2016. He is currently working on a number of publications, including a book length exploration of life in 1980s nuclear Britain, and acts as co-editor of the online collection Fallout Reframed which explores ‘nuclearity from below’. The book is led by Dr Chris Hill and will be published by Liverpool University Press.
Header image: A cartoon by Gerry Rogers, entitled 'Gerry's Christmas Island Blues' and representing life on Christmas Island. Illustration © Gerry Rogers, used with permission.
