Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH

  April 28, 1958.

  The men didn’t need much prodding from their bunks; everyone knew there was going to be a bomb drop and the excitement was palpable. In the half-light of daybreak, they could see that weather conditions were far from perfect. It was raining heavily at Main Camp and the countdown was delayed. The gloomy weather was recorded in the Operations Record Book for No. 76 Squadron, the Canberra aircraft used to collect samples from the mushroom clouds.

  After noting the heavy rain and ‘almost complete cloud cover’ the book records:

  There was considerable speculation as to whether the weapon would be set off that day as the squadron aircrews sat around straining to hear the extremely inadequate Tannoy across the dispersal tarmac.

  Despite the delay, and with little fuss and a minimum of noise, trucks began ferrying thousands of men from the Main Camp to allocated “viewing” positions in palm groves and on beaches near the Port area. This was also a precaution against a radiation leak in the event of a crash landing at the airfield which was near to the Main Camp. Unusually, a dozen or more landing craft were moored on the beaches and the word spread they were there for a quick getaway should the bomber crash on takeoff.

  The rain gradually cleared and the men were ordered to their viewing positions. The word spread: “It’s go!” The men faced the sea, their myriad cigarette ends glowing darkly red like fading fireflies. There were nervous chuckles and a few bad jokes, but an almost supernatural stillness descended as the first roar of the Valiant engines signaled the start of the operation.

  Meanwhile Ralph Gray was scratching his head over the fact his ‘few gentlemen’ seemed to have vanished in the night. “I walked over to their tents, but they were all empty. Even the guards had gone. They had all packed up in the night and departed without telling me. And I knew they were not coming back because all their clothing and personal belongings had disappeared with them. All that was left was the smell of tobacco smoke and some half empty gin glasses. I walked across to the other tents and spoke to an officer who told me they had gone somewhere safe…very safe. He told me not to ask questions and advised me to make for a small corrugated iron Nissan hut near the beach.”

  Gray wasn’t to know, but Penney and most of his entourage had boarded two Dakota aircraft that ground crew had prepared for take-off. Just before the scheduled time for the bomb drop, the aircraft took off and headed south toward Malden Island, 400 miles away. The flight is recorded in the Operations Record Book. The log reports that eight people were aboard, although they were not mentioned by name. But at least one aircraftsman noted the portly figure of William Penney boarding the lead Dakota.

  The countdown was delayed by one and a half hours, and Valiant XD825 was finally swung into position just as the sun broke through. Its whiteness dazzled onlookers as it reached the centre of the runway. With a tremendous roar the engines revved changing soon to a high-pitched scream as the plane picked up speed.

  At Port Camp hundreds of men were ordered on to the landing craft moored in the shallows. Scores were crammed into each vessel and there was standing room only. There was much nervous laughter as the ungainly craft bobbed about in the swell, the men hardly able to move.

  Archie Ross recalled: “It was ludicrous really because if the Valiant did crash on takeoff, God alone knows what we would have done. The landing craft were just not suitable for putting to sea. They would have been swamped as soon as they reached the big rollers breaking a hundred yards from the shore.”

  There was an audible sigh of relief from onlookers all over the island as XD825, piloted by Squadron Leader Bob Bates with its 8,000 pound load, rose smoothly into the air and headed into the blue. It was followed by the other Valiant, the grandstand aircraft that would take up position a mile behind to film the bomb drop. Finally the five Canberras of 76 Squadron took off in quick succession. Three circled the proposed dropping zone. These were to act as spotters, sniffing out the highest concentrations of radiation. Two others flew a hundred miles downwind ready to track the onward migration of the cloud as it drifted over the Pacific ocean.

  Canberra WH980, with Flt Lt Eric Denson at the controls, was the last to go. His aircraft like the rest was smothered with a sticky, cream substance that had the consistency of molasses. This ‘protective varnish’ had been invented by the atomic weapons research boffins back at Harwell, and was designed to absorb radioactive fallout leaving the interior of the aircraft relatively clean. At least that was the theory. Denson took WH980 straight up to 40,000 feet and waited. Then into his headset a harsh metallic voice announced, “Bomb gone…”

  On the ground, speakers mounted on tall poles, announced in their tinny, alien voices, the countdown. The metronome voice marked off the seconds like footsteps on the gallows.

  As Grapple Y was released from the bomb shackle and began its fall, it automatically turned on the telemetry recording instruments that were focused on the point in space where the bomb was planned to explode, some 8,000 feet above the ocean. Its release from the shackle also switched on the clockwork timing mechanism which would set off the firing sequence. Extensions to the fins on the tail of the bomb snapped into place and began to damp down its oscillations to a graceful arc through the morning sunlight.

  The firing sequence began a series of events lasting only a few millionths of a second. At 42 seconds, the uranium-rich atomic core exploded followed almost immediately by the high explosive supercharge, squeezing the beryllium tamper. This in turn crushed the lithium deuteride fuel with enormous force, reducing it to a ball of super-dense liquid metal as hot as the centre of the sun. The core now went into an uncontrolled chain reaction. This implosion phase had taken some 70 millionths of a second. The explosion phase followed at 300 millionths of second.

  FIRE!

  A light so bright and white it could only have come from the very heart of creation momentarily turned the island and every man and creature upon it into stone. Then, with a whiplash snap, the light was gone to be replaced by a steadily rising heat as though someone was slowly opening the door to a gigantic furnace. The men lined up in quaking masses slowly turned to each other, an unspoken question on their lips: “Where’s the bang?” But there was no sound at all…No birdsong, no wave crashing. It was as though the universe was holding its breath.

  Thousands of indigenous frigate birds nesting near the southern tip of the island where the bomb exploded were the first casualties. They were turned instantly into blazing flying feather balls or incinerated on their nests. Next, large shoals of dead and dying fish floated to the surface as huge areas of the ocean boiled. Lush green vegetation withered instantly as though irrigated with boiling acid, and palm trees lashed furiously about before snapping like dry twigs.

  The eerie silence that followed the blast remained unbroken for a minute, but it seemed like hours. Most of the men were on their feet now, thinking it was all over. Suddenly the loudest bang anyone had ever heard rent the air like the crack of doom. The noise sent everyone crashing to the ground and the men could only watch helplessly in goggle-eyed awe as on the horizon a dark shadow, rippling like billions of tiny fish, formed and raced toward them with terrifying speed.

  The realisation hit home that the blast wave was about to overwhelm them. Panic set in. Men threw themselves about in desperation. Some began a futile run for shelter. Too late, the blast wave like a giant hand, slapped down…”

  Ken McGinley, a young Royal Engineer who had arrived on the island along with a thousand other troops on the Dunera a month earlier, was sitting on the beach when he heard a roar “like a thousand stampeding horses” as the blast wave approached: “We had had a talk from an officer on what we could expect, but nothing compared me for this. This was the daddy of all bombs. There was something incredible sinister about this shimmering line of energy skimming over the ocean with amazing speed. I dived to the ground and as it hit I felt an impact and a crack like lightning had hit close by
. The huge fireball forming above me seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. I knew straight away we were far closer than we should have been for a bomb that size. It was truly awesome; a great rolling, roiling, boiling mass of fire. Then a spout seemed to rise from the ground and the familiar mushroom cloud began to form.”

  Archie Ross: “To be honest, I considered myself a bit of a cool dude. I remember being mildly surprised when the impact of the blast wave hit and my goggles were slapped against my face. Some people near me were panicking but I felt sort of detached. But then things began to happen that made me realise just how small and insignificant I was when compared with the forces of nature. I still remember, as though it was yesterday, the stem of the mushroom cloud reaching down to the sea and the waves parting like that famous scene from the film the Ten Commandments when Moses causes the Red Sea to part. I remember seeing the water rushing up the spout, followed by all the mud and sand from the seabed, all being sucked up into the cloud like a giant vacuum cleaner. I remember the cloud spreading and becoming a hellish green on the underside…”

  Ralph Gray: “In my corrugated hut I was close, very close. The bomb seemed to go off right over my head. Through a slit hole I saw the blast approaching and it was as though the whole island was being shaken. As I watched palm trees were suddenly flattened; a large oil bowser was tossed around like a leaf; a huge refrigerator that had recently been delivered and was too heavy to move was shunted neatly into the space allotted to it. It was a terrifying experience.”

  Forty thousand feet in the air Eric Denson was suspended between heaven and hell. Above him the clear, blue sky, clean and serene. Below the dark, boiling mushroom cloud rose to meet him like fumaroles from the bowels of hell.

  Instructions from his squadron leader 20 miles upwind filled his earphones. Sophisticated monitoring equipment in the Canberra targeted areas of maximum radiation burn. Denson assimilated the information, adjusted his controls, took one last deep breath and flew his aircraft arrow straight into the maw of the monster. As he entered the cloud he intoned over and over again Tennyson’s tribute to foolhardy courage in the Charge of the Light Brigade: “Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell…”

  Denson fought with the controls as WH980 was tossed around like a leaf. The controls were loose and floppy, it was like trying to steer a car on an icy lake in a blizzard. He made several passes through the mushroom cloud. When the aircraft emerged after the final run it was alive with radioactivity. And when it landed and taxied to a halt at the far end of the runway near the decontamination pits, the Canberra sent every radiation counter crazy. His log book showed he was in the air for 1 hr 55 mins

  Kevin Murphy, one of the ground crew, recalled: “We were told WH980 was the hottest aircraft ever to return from a cloud sniffing mission. We were on the far side of the runway, but we could see there was a hell of a flap on about it. Men in protective suits were running around, but no-one went too near. They sprayed hoses on to the aircraft, but that was as close as they got…”

  Flt Lt Glen Stewart, the navigator of a Shackleton aircraft on patrol 60 miles from ground zero watched as the sky around the explosion boiled with clouds and smoke. He noted that the blast set off a chain of violent thunderstorms that marched in a line toward Christmas Island, and his aircraft ran into torrential rain on its return. He said: “The rain entered the unpressurised cockpit like a sieve, turning the only detector, a small rudimentary device on the captain’s lapel, immediately the wrong colour. I believe another Shackleton was caught in the same predicament.”

  An RAF observer in one of the cloud sampling “sniffer” planes, also testified the aircraft was lashed by a belt of heavy ‘black rain’ which he saw cascading down the sides of the mushroom cloud. Flt Lt Joe Pasquini recorded his aircraft was suddenly “pelted” with rain and all the radiation monitoring equipment lit up “like a Christmas tree.” The downpour lasted for about 30 seconds and he estimated the rain belt to be three nautical miles wide.

  He recalled: “We were flying near the stem of the mushroom cloud when I saw quite clearly a huge belt of black rain. The heat from the fireball had obviously vapourised the surface of the ocean which sent up huge quantities of steam into the stem of the cloud. As it rose, it cooled and came back down to earth as this dirty rain.” Pasquini watched in awe as the cascading waterfall of rain scythed across the island in a sizzling curtain of radioactive droplets.

  The phenomenon was observed by a senior RAF officer on the island, Squadron Leader Kenneth Charney. He was in the reinforced steel and concrete bunker at ‘C’ site about 17 miles from ground zero. After a nerve-jangling few moments as the blast wave made the steel structure creak and groan, he and a group of scientists ventured outside to examine their instruments. As they scrambled about the scorched terrain they were hit by a sudden belt of rain that disappeared almost as soon as it arrived. Charney knew instinctively that this was ‘bad’ rain and like so many others he was to pay a terrible price in the future. The swirling curtain of rain moved up the island like a tsunami gathering strength from the crackling air, and by the time it reached Port camp, it had morphed into a full-blown tropical storm.

  Unaware of the dangers servicemen, used to only saltwater bathing because there was no natural freshwater on the island, stripped off their clothes and ran naked and whooping into the downpour. They opened their mouths to suck the moisture into their parched bodies and only the arrival of a posse of scientists, garbed in protective ‘moon-suits’, alerted them to the danger. But no warning was issued to stop thousands of men from later swimming in the lagoon at Port camp, where most of the heavy rain fell.

  Caught out in the open RAF fire crewman Jim Wallace welcomed the storm. But he soon changed his mind. For this was like no tropical storm he had ever experienced. “The droplets were unnaturally large,” he said. “And then I realised they were black. This was a dirty rain that I’d never seen before. I knew then that something had gone wrong with this bomb.”

  Archie Ross also remembered: “After the blast the clouds started building in the sky and I noticed they were a peculiar shade of deep green and turquoise. And then it started to rain, very sudden, very heavy and very wet.”

  Thousands of men received a radioactive shower that day. But nearly everyone on the island was contaminated in one way or another from either drinking water distilled from the sea, or from the lagoons where they swam.

  Out at sea the ships were last to receive a radioactive bath. HMS Narvik, the scientific and supply ship, which was 30 miles from ground zero, was anchored just offshore from Port London. Bernard Geoghan, an officer on board described how the cloud “developed and developed and developed.”

  “It was absolutely enormous,” he said. “Eventually it came right over the top of the ship and passed the ship. Then it started raining…it absolutely bucketed down; a real tropical drenching. We were all soaked to the skin. Most of us were wearing the cotton zoot suit and perhaps a pair of tropical shorts. We were all very apprehensive. Here was this rain coming smack out of the nuclear cloud right over our heads. Inevitably everyone was pretty petrified about it. Very soon after that a broadcast came from the bridge assuring us that there was no contamination registered on the ship, which we did not believe for one minute. It was a while before we were allowed to disperse.”

  Most of the islanders had been evacuated to the Narvik. Mrs Sui Kiritome, reporting to an official inquiry some years later, told how the islanders had been roused at 3am ready for evacuation: “We were told the test would take place early in the morning around 5 or 6am and that we should be at the wharf ready for evacuation from the island. We were transported to the ship on landing crafts.”

  Mrs Kiritome’s husband acted as interpreter for the British officers. A roll call was taken and the people were grouped on the basis of their home islands (most of the people were migrant workers from nearby islands). People made their way to landing crafts as their names were called. Before leaving their homes, the
islanders were told to remove items hanging from walls as well as ensuring that pets and other animals were put out of harm’s way. Once on board they were escorted to the holds were a movie show of Disney cartoons had been set up. Large bags of sweets were handed round by two WVS ladies, Billie and Mary Burgess

  As the countdown began, Mr Kiritome told the people to put their hands to their ears to muffle the sound of the blast. There were a few screams as the shock wave hit and the screen went blank. But everyone soon recovered. Later the islanders were allowed to troop up on deck --- and found everyone else wearing white cotton overalls, covering their heads, faces and bodies. Some of them were studying the effects of the bomb with binoculars.

  “We didn’t have any protective clothing. We went on deck wearing our normal clothes,” said Mrs Kiritome. “We were watching the black cloud and smoke from the blast drifting toward us. When it came overhead, I felt something like a light shower falling on me. I thought it was rain. My husband stood under a lifeboat so he was protected from the shower. I felt wetness on my head, face and skin.”

  After several hours the islanders were taken back to their homes. Mr and Mrs Kiritome found all the windows and doors blown in and a concrete wall cracked. Their pet frigate bird was running round the house, blind. A few days later Mrs Kiritome was alarmed to discover that something had happened to her hair. Every time she brushed it large strands came loose. To make matters worse she developed burns to her face and parts of her shoulder.

  A New Zealand navy ship HMNZ Pukaki was stationed 80 miles east of ground zero. She was an observation and weather reporting vessel which had been present at most of the Grapple tests. As she took her final position for the blast there was a flurry of excitement: the radar operators reported a small but firm radar contact about 12 miles away. The ship immediately started to close on the unknown contact at 12 knots.