Abstract
In detailing the role of nuclear weapons in shaping the Cold War, historians have extensively documented the political and technical histories of the U.S. and Soviet weapons programs. Much less attention has been paid to the British program, and in particular to its H-bomb project.
In Britain and the H-Bomb, Lorna Arnold, the former official historian of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, does an excellent job of filling the gap. She is assisted by Katherine Pyne, the first technical historian of Aldermaston, Britain's nuclear weapons production plant.
In tracing Britain's H-bomb quest, Arnold attempts to answer several beguiling questions: Who was the father of the British H-bomb? Was Britain's decision to acquire thermonuclear weapons a “rational” choice? What was the economic burden of the country's research and development program? And were Britain's bomb efforts justified for international security reasons, despite the threat to public health posed by atmospheric testing?
Arnold was given full access to Aldermaston's official and classified records. Her research was also supported by the Ministry of Defence, which copyrighted the book. As a result, Britain and the H-Bomb contains much previously unavailable technical material about Britain's hydrogen bomb. Although much of this information makes for dense reading, it is sure to be of great interest to aficionados of technical military history.
Despite her unprecedented access, Arnold's research was limited by Al-dermaston's shoddy record keeping–a problem historians have also found at U.S. weapons laboratories. As at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, at Aldermaston the files of key directors have been dismantled or lost.
Arnold acknowledges that national pride and prestige were critical factors in Britain's decision to build the hydrogen bomb. But there were other important reasons as well–for example, Britain wanted to maintain its military independence even as it was developing a special post-war relationship with the United States. By 1953, U.S. and Soviet success in developing thermonuclear weapons had tipped the world's strategic balance of power. Arnold explains the dilemma this posed for Britain, which ultimately led the country to develop an autonomous nuclear program.
In 1954, Winston Churchill tried to assuage the concerns of its Commonwealth partners–New Zealand, Canada, and Australia–by explaining that without the H-bomb, Britain could not belong “to the club.” Development of this bomb, he said, “was the only sure way of preventing war.” Just how the British H-bomb would augment NATO or add to America's atomic shield Churchill did not explain–nor were these issues probably of much concern to him. In fact, the British H-bomb was intended more to impress the Americans than to deter the Russians. “If we had it,” Arnold writes, “the Americans would respect our intervention in world affairs far more than if we did not.”
One of the more interesting elements of Arnold's book is her assessment of the motives of British scientists, including Sir William Penney and William Cook, leaders at Alder-maston, and many others. Most scientists believed they were making an essential contribution to national defense and world peace. Some believed the American/Soviet duopoly of thermonuclear weapons was unacceptable. Other young scientists were attracted by the call to national service. For a few, it was merely a job. No one actually thought the weapons they were building would ever be used.
Writes Arnold, “No one at Alder-maston appears to have considered nuclear weapons, above all H-bombs, as weapons for waging war. They were for deterrent and diplomatic purposes. One weaponeer remarked that Aldermaston seemed to him more like an agency of the Foreign Office than the Ministry of Defence.”
Interestingly, Arnold found that few scientists and engineers were attracted to the project because of the scientific and technical challenges of building the bomb. Fortunately, Arnold is fascinated by the intricate technical history of the British H-bomb project, and she devotes a major portion of the book to the testing at Christmas Island in the Pacific, culminating in the 1957-1958 “Grapple” test series during which Britain demonstrated its thermonuclear capabilities.
Ultimately, Britain was in a hell-bent-for-leather race to develop the bomb–but it was not a race against the Russians or any other foreign threat. Britain was racing to finish its project before the atmospheric test ban treaty was completed, and here it got American help. Although the United States was loath to share technical details with the British, it stalled the test-ban negotiations with the Soviets to give its ally time to join the thermonuclear club.
Many have wondered whether the British H-bomb project was helped along by Klaus Fuchs, the notorious atomic spy who passed American bomb secrets to the Soviets. Arnold concludes that his assistance was unlikely. Although Fuchs worked at the Harwell nuclear facility before his arrest in 1950, there is no evidence that he provided weapon information to scientists at Aldermaston. The greatest outside assistance the British received, says Arnold, came not through cooperation with the Americans, nor through atomic espionage, but through careful technical analysis of fallout debris from Soviet atmospheric tests.
About the only shortcoming of Arnold's book is its failure to address adequately the impact of the Ban-the-Bomb movement on Britain's thermonuclear project. Some readers might also be disappointed by the absence of discussions of NATO, Euratom, or France from the narrative. Still, the author is entitled to set the parameters of her history. The result is an excellent book that sheds needed light on the world's third thermonuclear power.