The Smithsonian Affiliated National Atomic Testing Museum “Using lessons of the past to better understand the present.”

60th Anniversary Exhibit Opens September 21 1958 U.S. & U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement Background History

The National Atomic Testing Museum is very excited to be hosting an impressive 60th anniversary exhibit commemorating the 1958 U.S. and U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement, also known as MDA. The exhibit opens on Friday, September 21 in our new Area 51 Theater. There is a long history of joint cooperation in the nuclear field between our two nations that goes back to the very beginning of the nuclear age. Great Britain played a significant role in the United States’ development of nuclear weapons. In fact, it can be argued that the idea to actually build an atomic bomb began in Britain.

An Englishman, H.G. Wells, first conceived of such a power in his science fiction novels. Moving beyond fiction to reality, it was an Irish , , working with who became the first to artificially split the nuclei of a atom. They did this using an early form of a particle accelerator at the at Cambridge University in 1932. Just weeks before that momentous experiment, discovered the at Cambridge.

The concept that tremendous energy could be released through a fission process slowly developed. Yet, scientists thought it would take huge amounts of fissionable material to create such an energy release. 1

Understandably, enthusiasm for research on an “atomic bomb” was thus cool—even though the great radio series “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” in the 1930s talked of “atomic” weapons as if they were on the verge of reality.

By spring 1940, two German refugee , Otto Frisch and , working at University authored two papers theorizing that if the rare -235 could be separated, a weapon would result based on the principle of a fissionable chain reaction. Furthermore, what made their theory so startling was that it calculated that only a few pounds, rather than tons, of this material would be needed. A practical “super bomb” with the of at least a thousand tons of TNT now seemed feasible.

This was not an unattractive idea for Britain, which, at that time, in the wake of France’s fall, was soon to be facing alone in a battle for the very survival of their island nation. As a result of this potentially important concept outlined in what is now remembered as the Frisch- Peierls Memorandum, (pictured right) the British government formed the “.” That organization facilitated research into fission and in doing so gathered together some of the leading British scientists of the day. By July of 1941 the Maud Committee concluded the theory proposed by Frisch and Peierls could realistically lead to a weapon. Peierls, (pictured below) would later be knighted by the British for his contributions.

On the other hand, the committee, with Peierls’ help, soon realized that such a weapon would require a large-scale enrichment program for the separation of U-235. There inlay Britain’s catch-22 because the costs and logistics of producing were then beyond their ability. Britain’s national resources were already stretched to the breaking point in the war with Hitler. Yet, Hitler was the very problem. The fear, of course, as and Hungarian physicist Leo Szilárd pointed out in a letter to Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, centered on the nightmare scenario that Nazi Germany could build a fission weapon. Hungarian physicists and had consulted on that letter as well, which Szilárd wrote and Einstein edited and signed and forwarded to Roosevelt. They knew that Germany had the know-how and scientists to start a nuclear program, which they feared would be fully supported by Hitler. They urged Roosevelt to start a U.S. program. Britain, which had just begun to break into the German secret Enigma codes and had a first-rate intelligence service, soon learned that Germany did indeed have several such nuclear research projects underway.

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Earlier in 1938, it was a German chemist, , with his pupil , in consultation with that raised the concept of an atomic bomb based on the process of “uranium fission.” Meitner, of Jewish ancestry, fled Germany, but Hahn and Strassmann remained. It was thought they were working on an atomic bomb project, but they never did. Other German scientists of note who stayed in Germany, like , were known to be working on a bomb project. German efforts never succeeded, yet in 1940 no one could have guessed that. Fortunately for the western powers, Germany had lost many of its scientific all-stars due to Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. Since 1933, 11 Nobel prize-winning physicists and four chemists fled Germany, including Hans Beth, , , Albert Einstein, , Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn, Peter Debye, Dennis Gabor, Fritz Haber, Gerhard Herzberg, Victor Hess, George de Hevesy, Erwin Schrodinger, , and Eugene Wigner.

The year 1940 proved a period in which British Prime Minister was successfully soliciting more and more aid and close cooperation from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. The cash strapped Britain had little to offer in return except scientific know-how, which Churchill quietly and subtly used as a bargaining chip. Aside from nuclear theory, Britain was far in the lead in areas like , anti-submarine warfare, ballistics research, and aircraft engine technology. Although, in the nuclear field they had another unique insight. The Cavendish Laboratories (pictured right) predicted in 1940 that a new man-made element called “Element 94” could be created by bombarding Uranium- 238 with . Simultaneously, the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory discovered under physicist Edwin McMillan that a byproduct of the operations of nuclear reactors was that same new Element 94. Element 94, soon called by McMillan, was subsequently first produced by chemists Glenn Seaborg in early 1941 on the at the University of California Berkeley. (Plutonium provided an alternative to the problem of the slow rate at which uranium could be enriched for a bomb. Because of this only one uranium-based bomb design could be built by the end of the war which was so simple it did not need testing and was called “” and subsequently used on Hiroshima. Plutonium presented more complex challenges, but allowed the “” series of three additional nuclear plutonium bombs to be produced. One was tested on July 16, 1945, and one was soon used on Nagasaki with one spare left if Japan would not have surrendered.)

By late 1940 Britain began exchanging nuclear information with America. In October 1941 the American formally began. Britain worked closely with America on this project under the “.” Sir Wallace Akers lead that British team overseeing the Directorate of Tube Alloys in England. Initially, with America’s continued inability to enter the war as a combatant, the British planned to design a plant to produce enriched uranium on their own. The Maud Committee’s continued research and findings motivated Roosevelt to step-up the pace of the Manhattan Project. Then came Pearl Harbor and coupled with the U.S. entry into the war, a greater commitment from America followed to build an atomic bomb. Under the Agreement of 1943 Britain abandoned their own Tube Alloys effort and via an agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt, Britain became a partner, albeit a junior partner, with the Manhattan Project. Churchill in fact understood the immense economic burden that a nuclear project posed and willingly looked to the United States to make the tremendous investment required.

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Professor James Chadwick then led a British effort of 40 nuclear scientists, of which 19 went to work directly at Los Alamos. This included Sir Geoffrey Taylor, William Penney, , James Tuck, Danish physicist , German immigrant Rudolf Peierls and (pictured right). Peierls, then having tremendous stature, had insisted that Fuchs join the mission because everyone widely agreed his calculating skills were unsurpassed. Fuchs, of course, would later become famous for passing to the Soviets; however, Fuchs played an important role in developing the implosion method that enabled plutonium to be detonated successfully in a nuclear device.

The original Frisch-Peierls Memorandum conceived of the gun-assembly for the detonation of and that worked fine with enriched uranium. Plutonium proved a much more difficult element to bring to a chain reaction, and the British team made a significant contribution in designing the implosion method. They already had a lot of experience studying blast waves and the principles of ballistics, all of which contributed to the idea of using specially-shaped charges or explosive lenses that imploded the fissile plutonium core in a critical-mass explosion and thus starting a chain reaction. Fuchs, Peierls, and Tuck were key minds behind this technique.

Ironically, Adolf Hitler, the whole reason America and Britain put so much effort into making a nuclear bomb, had brought himself and his nation to ruin by the time the first atomic plutonium bomb was tested.

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Rudolf Peierls from the British team witnessed that first-ever nuclear test (called ) in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. What history has completely ignored about the subsequent use of the American uranium bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki is that the original agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt back in 1943 in Quebec created a “Mutual Consent Clause.” Although Roosevelt did not live to see the bomb used, his successor, Harry Truman, formally honored that mutual consent agreement in a communiqué from Washington to Churchill on July 2, 1945, 14 days before the first bomb was even tested in New Mexico and 15 days before the Potsdam Conference began.

Churchill and Truman thus jointly authorized the use of atomic weapons on Japan. That fact is confirmed by Churchill in an address to Parliament in November 1945 and in his personal memoirs. This very relevant fact has today virtually been forgotten by history. Granted, Churchill was not about to veto such a plan with Britain still fighting Japan and the cream of its fleet then committed to the Pacific. Admittedly, Truman probably exercised simple courtesy by consulting with Churchill, as Britain had become a rather small—although recognized—part of the Manhattan Project by 1945. But it is an important fact of history.

Winston Churchill had been replaced by as Prime Minister just before the defeat of Japan in August 1945. Churchill had felt content with keeping all the technology they could, but letting the United States retain ownership of this profound new weapon. Attlee, however, ordered the construction of an atomic pile by 1946 and, thus, the production of plutonium. This decision was made because of the post-war formation of the Atomic Energy Commission by Harry Truman, and a resulting AEC policy stemming from its originating McMahon Act, which stopped the sharing of nuclear technology. In addition, the U.S. Congress at that time had significant anxiety about giving any more aid or assistance to Britain after spending billions in assistance to that island nation during the war.

Unfortunately for Britain, the English team did not take part in the production of the during the Manhattan Project, so knew little about it. Building the logistics for a nuclear program from scratch became a gargantuan undertaking. Attlee did not reach the decision lightly. He called a confidential meeting of the key leaders and scientists of the day, and they all felt Britain needed its own atomic bomb in order to stay competitive in the post-war world. So, across a period of seven years Britain, much to Churchill’s dismay, would spend considerable sums in a new arms race for the sake of image, if nothing else. Not America nor even Parliament would know of this program for several years.

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Britain’s new head of armaments and Los Alamos team veteran William Penney, (pictured right) who had been an observer in the photographic plane over Nagasaki, did go to the Bikini Atoll nuclear test in 1946. Los Alamos scientists treated him with great appreciation and respect. The United States also stood firmly behind Great Britain as an ally and had no hesitation at various times to station nuclear weapons under U.S. control on British soil. The fact remained, however, that the Congress would not then tolerate any new assistance to Britain to support a nuclear program of their own—at least not yet.

By 1947, Britain thus made the commitment to an all-out, highly expensive nuclear program. As British stated, “We have got to have this thing whatever it costs, and it’s got to have the bloody Union Jack on it!”

Penney led the new British nuclear project. Future chief British nuclear bomb designer Ken Johnston has since recounted that they concentrated on a plutonium device. The first experimental British A-bomb design is depicted below in this extremely rare picture that has only recently been released.

The British effort became known only as “” or HER. Of all the British scientists that participated with the Manhattan Project, only William Penney worked on HER, although research from British Los Alamos veterans was utilized. Their experience at Los Alamos, which obviously they were not simply going to forget, had pretty much given Britain the ability to make a bomb. The hard part, as already stated, came in recreating the enormous logistics that go into the production of fissile material.

The village of , 60 miles from London, slowly became the center of Britain’s nuclear program. This had been the site of a key airfield supporting the D-day landings and was about as a remote or rural of an area as you could get in the highly populated English countryside. There simply was no truly isolated location such as a Los Alamos or a in Britain.

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By the time Conservative leader Winston Churchill had returned to power as Prime Minister in a election over Labor Leader Clement Attlee in October of 1951, Britain had almost become a . At heart, Churchill still did not see the need for a nuclear stockpile, but he favored possessing the technology. He stated, “We should have the art rather than the article.” In contradiction, Churchill had been very bombastic in the early days and freely threatened Russia with nuclear attack even though Britain did not then have a , nor had he even been in power at the time. Such details, however, never concerned one who had such oratory powers.

Yet to Churchill’s consternation the situation became even more complex in the years between his two terms as prime minister. Once the USSR test exploded its first bomb, “Joe One,” in the fall of 1949, the Cold War went into high gear. England and America should have then reignited their nuclear cooperation. They probably would have if not for a recent revelation that British Manhattan team member Klaus Fuchs had passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Animosity over the wartime association with Britain rekindled all over again, and many in Congress felt that the English simply could not be trusted.

Despite this, there is now a feeling among some Aldermaston veterans that by that time William Penney, still leader of Britain’s nuclear program, began receiving useful assistance from the Americans, even though this would have been in clear violation of the McMahon Act. Such an unofficial and very quiet exchange would have likely involved technical information from U.S. nuclear testing. The evidence for this is in recently released data about the early British nuclear tests, which clearly indicate similarities with pre-1952 U.S. technological breakthroughs in nuclear testing. Churchill may have even been involved in this early back channel dealing which facilitated U.S. and U.K. cooperation long before the Mutual Defense Agreement came into effect in 1958.

Regardless of how much help America may have covertly started to lend, one would think that Churchill would have then become an even more determined Cold War warrior. Surprisingly, Churchill began a dramatic, although slow, metamorphosis into a nuclear peacemaker. Churchill’s evolving behavior may have stemmed from his desire to first try and mend relations with the United States and work toward another World War II-like partnership. This would also include in his mind direct talks with the Soviets via a Big Three-like, WWII-style conference.

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Also, on his mind may have been his vast experience dating back to the beginning of an earlier and equally dangerous arms race when he served as First Lord of the British Admiralty. He always said the further you look back in history the further you can see into the future. In the 10 years prior to the First World War he lived through a time when Britain and Germany spent enormous sums of valuable national treasure intended for important social programs but diverted it to the building of great steel battleships that were affectionately christened dreadnoughts. That arms race lead to an equally disastrous war in which even the victors suffered from decades of debilitating debt afterwards. This was not just a lesson that Churchill took to heart but one that future President Dwight Eisenhower also became deeply mindful of from the perspective of his own experiences in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Churchill, himself, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer leading up to that world-wide Depression and both men knew the security risks of economic turmoil.

Churchill had by no means retrenched from his lifelong concerns over and the USSR. On March 5, 1946, when responding to an invitation from President Truman to speak in Fulton, Mo., Winston Churchill brought the phrase “” into use again. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” (At different times in history both Kaiser Wilhelm II and Joseph Goebbels had bantered that same metaphor around, warning of a growing threat and even a “cold war” with Russia, but this time history proved Churchill right.)

A day after delivery of the Sinews of Peace Speech, (ever since known as the “Iron Curtain Speech”) Churchill gave a similar talk to the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond. He was accompanied to the Virginia capitol by General Eisenhower who had become U.S. Army Chief of Staff. They had a close relationship from the Second World War. Churchill’s friendship with Eisenhower would continue into his presidency and Churchill’s second prime ministership. Churchill understood, like Eisenhower, that freedom provided people with a dignity. A dignity that was so important to human wellbeing that it made it necessary to stand up to totalitarian regimes whenever necessary.

Churchill also knew by that point in history that his many years of building a great alliance with America had not been wasted. The U.S. would continue to secure Britain’s security even if they, at that particular time, were not then willing to openly share its nuclear technology. Churchill understood deterrents and knew America would share its nuclear weapons if and when the need came. President Truman was much on the same page and had not only asked General Eisenhower to take over the new NATO command but also based B-29s in England under the Attlee government.

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In Britain, however, Churchill’s hard-learned patience did not spread virtue. Despite the famous statesman’s great influence and words of wisdom, the momentum toward becoming a nuclear nation was simply too great by that point. England could not resist. Churchill inherited in 1951 a full-grown and largely homegrown British nuclear project.

The life-long warrior only grudgingly accepted ownership of the bomb. Churchill took a full month before giving the required permission needed to proceed with plans for their first nuclear test. To his horror, he had learned upon assuming office that Britain’s bomb project had already cost 100 million pounds since he had warned against beginning such a program back in 1946. Churchill sincerely felt that if he could have remained in power in 1945, the cost of gaining a nuclear deterrent could have been paid for with U.S. dollars instead of English pounds. He pointed out, whenever the need came such as in the airlift in 1948, America was there. America, in turn, was always generously offered British bases, so in Churchill’s eyes cooperation existed already. He felt confident he could have gotten Britain the bomb for free or barter.

On New Year’s Eve, shortly after re- assuming the prime minister’s seat, Churchill voyaged on the Queen Marry with his top advisors, just as he did 10 years earlier on the HMS Duke of York, bound for America. That first trip, right after Pearl Harbor, cemented an alliance with Roosevelt. Now a decade later almost to the month, Harry Truman would be courted. The British leader’s hope was to reestablish close ties once again. Churchill knew Truman was soon to leave office and a national favorite, Eisenhower, would likely sit in his seat. But, Truman was the man he had to deal with first, and he knew him well from Potsdam and his 1946 trip. In fact, in 1946 Churchill and Truman became very well acquainted on the long train trip from Washington to Fulton on Truman’s Presidential rail-car Ferdinand Magellan.

There were important similarities to his wartime dealings 10 years earlier. The U.S. and U.K. were again allies in a war in Asia, this time in Korea. The Middle East held the attention of both countries where Britain was still the senior partner as it had been in 1941. Also, as in 1941, enemy bombers could reach London but not Washington. This restriction was as true in 1952 for Soviet bombers as it had been in 1941 for German bombers, so England, not America, was again the front line in this new (Cold) War.

As in the Second World War, America was highly dependent on Britain for land to establish bases and this became all the more urgent by the 1950s. Truman had been allowed under Clement Attlee to base B-29s at East Anglia airfields. So, Britain was a major player and partner in all things nuclear whether the U.S. Congress liked it or not. Now that the Cold War was heating up, Churchill knew if the Americans ever launched a nuclear attack from England, it would mean that they in return would be under direct fire. London, not Washington, would be a target.

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Thus, Churchill was going to demand a mutual consent agreement as he had with Roosevelt in World War II. Truman, in fact, honored that original mutual consent agreement signed at the Quebec Conference before he used the bomb on Japan. Truman and Churchill had a history of cooperation. Churchill would not get a second mutual consent agreement, but he made it clear he would be consulted. This was becoming an increasingly thorny issue back in England, and Churchill once again proved himself as the one man with the clout to make Britain a respected partner again with the mighty U.S.

Now with Britain returned to centerstage, the two leaders had a lot to talk about. First on their agenda was an amendment to the McMahon Act allowing the AEC greater interchange in atomic . Both leaders wanted more official sharing of technology but unfortunately this amendment did not include the exchange of weapons technology. So, by the strictness of the law, Churchill and his staff could not even receive a detailed briefing from the , who could only talk to them in generalities while they were in Washington. In contrast, Churchill freely discussed what would be Britain’s first nuclear test scheduled for later that year.

The British were transparent about their program. The tested its first atomic bomb (pictured below) on October 3, 1952, in a shallow bay on Trimouille Island in the Monte Bello Islands chain off the coast of . They called the test Operation “Hurricane.” Prior to Churchill’s second term, the British had requested to use the American ; however, that request was rejected by the U.S. Then negotiations started in 1951 to use the Nevada Test Site.

The idea, or offer, was that Britain could share its test information with the Americans. President Truman gave tacit approval, although the AEC wanted to charge Britain a fee for the use of the Test Site and demanded payment in U.S. dollars. Still suffering economic hardships from the Second World War, it was finally decided by the time Churchill had regained power to test their new bomb in their own dominion lands. Clement Attlee had already secured permission to do so from Prime Minister of Australia.

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That first British nuclear test was very focused on Britain’s unique position. involved the detonation of a 25- kiloton plutonium device on a ship anchored in shallow water. At the time the British were extremely worried about the possibility of a foreign nation smuggling a bomb, hidden in the hull of a ship, into the Thames estuary. To test such an effect the old HMS Plym, (pictured above) was used to detonate the device. The nuclear package was positioned in Plym’s hull about three meters below the waterline as the veteran ship anchored 350 meters off of Trimouille Island. The resulting explosion left a saucer-shaped crater on the harbor bottom about 6 meters deep and 300 meters across.

British scientists at Aldermaston had developed their own high-speed camera technology to record the blast and measure the yield. In England there was no specialized contractors with EG&G’s expertise, so this too had to all be developed from the ground up. Detailed images of that special film taken at the first British nuclear test have only recently been released from Aldermaston. Britain had become the third nuclear power. Weeks later America tested the first concept for a thermonuclear device using the principle of fusion. The Soviets were soon to follow and even China would become a nuclear and then thermonuclear power. A had begun. One would think the new atomic age would be beyond someone of Churchill’s years.

To the contrary, Churchill, who first saw action near Afghanistan in 1897 and participated in the last British cavalry charge in the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898, understood the fine points of nuclear weapons and related strategies better than his contemporaries. When he looked back on his long experience with war he recalled the First World War. The 50-year veteran of Parliament explained that at the start of that war the leading generals, political leaders and advisors all envisioned a conflict of movement leading to a decisive victory. The employment of the machine gun, however, abruptly halted the cavalry and the mobility of large armies. On the sea Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, saw new inventions like the mine, torpedo and submarine lead to commerce war and blockade.

The great powers found themselves unable to maneuver. Facing each other in trench warfare for four years France, Britain and Germany literally lost a significant portion of their younger generation in a stalemated war. Churchill himself fought in the trenches and saw significant action during a brief period in which he was out of political office. By the end of , Winston Churchill’s inspiration leading directly to the invention and development of the tank started to show its potential. Churchill’s strong support for the airplane when he was in the Admiralty and later in the war as Minster of Munitions, lead to increased appreciation for airpower by 1918.

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Yet, by the beginning of the Second World War many of the inventions that had started to make a difference by 1918 had largely been underestimated. In 1940, everyone anticipated a long, drawn out, largely stagnate conflict akin to the Great War. France prepared for just such a conflict and, as a result, met defeat within weeks. Britain under Churchill’s leadership held on by a slim thread with a handful of fast fighter planes and brave pilots.

The new inventions that followed during the Second World War far outclassed those of the first because by 1940 science and engineering were no longer working separately. World War Two brought the two disciplines together. Weapons of global scale resulted in the first use of rockets and nuclear weapons. Churchill’s early Tube Alloys project inspired President Roosevelt in late 1941 to kickstart his own early Manhattan Project even before Pearl Harbor made it a necessity. By the early 1950s, Churchill knew a future war would be as hard to predict as the first two because of the age of nuclear weapons and missiles. It led him to be cautious and more analytical than ever before. He had seen the complexities of war from Cuba, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, South Africa, a bloody revolution in Russia, two world wars and an unpredictable Cold War— to which he now wanted to negotiate an end.

Churchill would still occasionally spout hawkish rhetoric. However, from the moment he regained the Prime Minister’s seat, his focus was on negotiations and talks with the Soviets, not nuclear brinkmanship, toward which the U.S. was unintentionally leaning. Churchill also became very sobered when the thermonuclear age arrived. He increasingly feared that an atomic war may occur in Europe. On a trip back to America in January 1953 to visit the new incumbent U.S. President, Churchill and Eisenhower reasoned that tactically applied nuclear weapons could serve as a useful deterrent against the Soviets. Small fission or A- bombs and nuclear artillery shells negated the cost of matching the USSR man for man and tank for tank if they charged through the Fulda Gap.

Although Hydrogen bombs were a far different matter. He understood that Europe and especially Britain with the majority of its population concentrated in just 12 cities could not survive such weapons. The loss of those 12 cities literally would mark the end of Britain, whereas it would take the destruction of 200 American cities to cause the U.S. to lose its ability to function as a nation. And Churchill’s 12 cities were then within easy reach of Soviet bombers whereas none of the American cities were yet able to be threatened in the early 1950s. He warned in a speech of “humanity approaching a precipice,” but what he was really taking about was Western Europe approaching Armageddon. Emergency plans were put in place to evacuate the Queen in the event of a nuclear strike.

Yet, as Prime Minister he had to face reality. He put in motion a rough, quasi-unofficial equivalent to the Atomic Energy Commission to manage all research and development. To head that effort, he chose the aging professor of physics Frederick Lindemann (pictured far left in the adjacent image). Lindemann had been Churchill’s supreme scientific advisor for more than three decades and leader of Britain’s Second World War science endeavors under the cabinet office of Paymaster General.

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He was an equivalent to in the U.S. In after-dinner conversations as early as the 1930s, Churchill and Lindemann speculated about atomic-like weapons. Their talks were inspired by scientific papers, as well as science fiction stories. In Churchill’s new government Lindemann returned to head the Pay Master General’s office, and he had an atomic energy board under his authority. He also closely oversaw the Operation Hurricane test with William Penney and in coordination with the Admiralty. Churchill formed the APEX committee under Lindemann to oversee Hurricane. It, however, met only four times.

Churchill had provided the name APEX. X stood for unknown. APE came from a satirical cartoon. In the cartoon apes reflectively looked on as sole survivors over a nuclear landscape and wisely decided not to evolve into man again. This is an interesting anecdote because Lindemann became the hawk and Churchill the dove in nuclear issues. Lindemann, unlike Churchill, in previous years had lobbied the Labor government for an atomic bomb project and called for a literal equivalent to America’s Atomic Energy Commission. Churchill, as we have seen, acted more conservatively, but was devoted to Lindemann. He never forgot that Lindemann had been the first to recognize the evidence of the V-2 rockets when all the other experts said such a weapon could not exist. In all research and development matters Churchill eventually deferred to Lindemann. Lindemann, in fact, proved one of the few men who could look Churchill in the eye and tell him when he thought he was talking nonsense, and Churchill would listen. At least that was usually the case. Lindemann also became a big supporter of nuclear energy because he knew one day Britain’s coal reserves would decline. Churchill became slow to warm to that idea and Lindemann never did agree that America held the potential for close nuclear cooperation. He saw South Africa with is deposits as a better alternative. Lindemann, above all, stressed that the U.S. and USSR would continue development of both civilian and military uses of nuclear energy and Britain must not be left behind but should remain independent as much as possible.

Churchill certainly understood that the genie had long since been let loose from the bottle, and a nuclear arms race was not a contest you could simply stop playing before the other side did. The big concern to Churchill, and the whole declining British Empire by 1952, centered on the economy. We do not adequately understand that economic element in our country because the Second World War actually stimulated the American economy and finally took us out of the Great Depression. It led us into one of the most prosperous periods in our history by the late 1950s. In contrast, two world wars had bled Britain dry. Rationing continued another nine years after 1945 for them and became even more severe than during the war. Britain, like America, was also trying to address the starvation diets in war-torn western Europe and was by then taking part in the . Even its small participation in Korea forced Britain to increase its defense spending once again despite its enormous war debt. That debt, measured by 1950 era dollars, amounted to billions. As much as $200 billion was still due from the First World War. Economic facts such as these are what so impressed conservative leaders of their day, like Churchill and Eisenhower. We cannot adequately appreciate such figures with today’s blind complacency with our own national debt—which actually far exceeds in comparative numbers what England once faced. We do not realize the historical significance of our economic predicament yet, but our grandchildren will. It does, in part, date back to a spending battle during the Cold War, which eventually destroyed the USSR—proving in Churchill’s own words that economics is as mighty a weapon as the sword. If Churchill lived today he would be pleased that in 2014 Britain finally paid its First World War debt off thanks to many years of determined work by leaders inspired through his example.

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Nuclear weapons thus seemed to be expensive luxuries to Churchill, who then saw his beloved British Empire becoming a shadow of its former self. Despite this, Churchill reluctantly agreed with Lindemann. Owning your own nuclear weapons are vital and necessary deterrents. Churchill and Britain, like America, were forced into a nuclear arms race which they had no choice but to enter. Nuclear weapons, as history proved, deterred another world war.

The English, it can be argued, are often more pragmatic than us Americans. Professor Lindemann stated that Churchill’s hope was always to get the United States to produce the nuclear weapons and then sell or loan them to Britain. During that 1952 trip to Washington to see Truman, he reminded the President of the original . He did this again to Eisenhower during his 1953 trip to Washington. Professor Lindemann and Churchill’s ever-present right hand, , begged him to forget the past and move on to the future. Churchill remained stubborn. He explained to Truman and then Eisenhower that if Roosevelt had lived he would have honored the principle of that 1943 agreement and would have shared their nuclear weapons with Britain. Churchill had made this same argument to the Attlee government back in 1946 to discourage their insistence to start an expensive nuclear project of their own.

However, that labor party’s socialist leanings were the issue in itself. Their political disposition made it all the more unlikely that a then already hostile U.S. Congress would start sharing nuclear weapons. By 1951/52, the Fuchs scandal still soured American lawmaker’s attitudes toward Britain. In fact, just prior to the Fuchs’ scandal, the Labor government and Truman administration had almost worked out an agreement by where a stock of atomic bombs would be turned over to Britain in return for some of their newly enriched plutonium. The Fuchs’ scandal and the fall of the Labor government ended that. So, although Truman may have always been sympathetic to mutual cooperation and now understanding of Churchill, he could do little while he was president. Churchill thus had to keep proceeding with Britain’s own nuclear tests and enrichment programs.

To Churchill’s surprise, news of the first Operation Hurricane test actually started to ease relations between Britain and the Congressional restrictions under the McMahon Act. This helped break ground for Churchill’s courting of the next president, Eisenhower. Senator McMahon made an interesting statement just prior to the Hurricane test:

The achievement of an atomic explosion by Great Britain, when an accomplished fact, will contribute to the keeping of the peace because it will add to the free world’s total deterring power. This event is likely to raise in still sharper focus the problem of atomic cooperation between ourselves and Great Britain. The British contributed heavily to our own war-time atomic project. But due to a series of unfortunate circumstances the of the agreements which made this contribution possible was not disclosed to me and my colleges on the Senate special atomic energy committee at the time we framed the law in 1946. Now we may consider rethinking the entire situation with all the facts in front of us.

It seems clear Senator McMahon knew full well the facts of the Quebec Agreement in 1946. Yet, times were slowly changing as the Cold War grew hotter and hotter. This was simply a politically expedient statement that recognized an ever-changing tide that would eventually lead to the Mutual Defense Agreement in 1958 with full and open nuclear cooperation.

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Now from Churchill’s point of view, and as he stated in his multi volume history of the Second World War, his departure from power in 1945 interrupted that original nuclear partnership that he was then trying to reignite. Now Churchill was back. In his mind, he was going to stay back. Despite strokes and heart attacks and appeals from everyone from the Queen on down to let his long mutually agreed-on successor Anthony Eden take power, Churchill hung on! He hung on and did so with good reason. He still had a job to do.

In 1953, although he could not talk President Eisenhower into a summit with the Soviets, he did break ground for what would lead to the Mutual Defense Agreement. In 1954 the rationing finally ended after 14 years of austerity. Churchill’s second reign, despite a lot of criticism which persists to this day, had made a decided improvement for Britain and Britain’s relations with the U.S. With the recovering economy and America’s determination to build an H-bomb, Churchill authorized Britain to pursue its own thermonuclear program. This, despite his growing concerns over nuclear weapons in general.

He gave Aldermaston a three-year deadline to produce an H-bomb with a yield of one megaton. Brian Taylor, the father of the British hydrogen bomb began work. Again, at this time, some unofficial cooperation may have transpired between America and Britain as it related to the sharing of data from U.S. nuclear testing. That, at any rate, is the feeling among some Aldermaston veterans. Churchill made an emotional speech at the time stating that Britain would have to stay current with nuclear deterrents “even if it meant being victorious on a heap of ruin.”

In 1954, President Eisenhower publicly announced the U.S.’s possession and mastery of the hydrogen bomb. Even with Stalin’s death, the U.S. president continued to rejected Churchill’s repeated proposals for a new “Big Three,” World War II-style summit with the Soviets. Churchill, who was by then in debilitating health, became despondent. From that point on he and a growing peace movement endeavored to warn of what a nuclear war might actually mean. He would go on to talk about ways to “chain the nuclear monster.” Realistically though, nuclear weapons had become a daily reality of life and new generation of politicians came to take them more and more in stride.

In gross simplification, Parliament became more and more weary of nuclear weapons. At the same time, they realized they must have them as a deterrent. The growing fear was that eventually America would be forced to fight a nuclear war with the Soviets, but that Western Europe would be the battle ground. It was another catch-22. The U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement was only four years off, as both countries realized they needed each other’s help.

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In April of 1955 after 55 years as a parliamentarian Churchill stepped down as Prime Minister, and his trusted associate Anthony Eden would only enjoy a brief time as PM. In his last major speech to Parliament Winston Churchill did not use the term but virtually described the characteristics of what would become known as mutually assured destruction—this a decade before MAD became an accepted policy. The one thing Churchill did not foresee nor any of the politicians in the early Cold War period was the threat of proliferation.

The focus remained on a contest between the USSR and the Western world. Seven further nuclear tests were conducted by Britain on the Australian mainland between 1955 and 1963. Pictured right is a rare image showing Britain’s first serviceable atomic bomb. Many still contend that Britain had some secret assistance from the U.S. or at least shared technical data from American nuclear testing as early as 1950. We do know that in 1954 the U.S granted Britain permission to observe and conduct air sampling at the Castle series of American thermonuclear tests at Bikini.

That would have provided the British team with a clear understanding of a two-stage hydrogen bomb design. The success of the Castle series is in fact what inspired Churchill to proceed with a directive to build a British H-Bomb before the growing international pressure on atmospheric testing prevented them from conduction their own thermonuclear test. Finally in 1954 an amendment to the Atomic Energy act allowed “limited” exchange of information between the U.S. and the U.K.

By 1955 Britain had developed a deployable pure fission atomic bomb and a boosted fission design using U-235 surrounded by lithium deuteride; a concept they undoubtedly got through some means from the Americans. They did however already know from their own experience in the Manhattan Project that U-235 is easier to produce than U-238, however, U-235 absorbs neutron bombardment whereas U-238 is easier to form a chain reaction. Yet, U-238 is much harder to refine so they had to utilize U-235 more efficiently as early American nuclear testing experimented with.

Pictured next page is Britain’s fifth thermonuclear test called Grapple Z/Flagpole which exploded off Christmas Island with a yield of 2.5 megatons on September 2, 1958. The device was dropped by a Valiant bomber from 45,00 feet and hit within 95 yards of the

16 designated target area. Piloted by Bill Bailey, the RAF proved the most skilled of any air force in both navigation and accuracy.

From 1957 to 1959 Britain tested thermonuclear bomb technology on Christmas and Malden Islands in the central Pacific in nine tests called . Their first H-bomb is pictured below showing a blunt forward end which was designed to slow the bomb after being dropped from an aircraft and thus giving the aircraft time to evade the blast wave. This was a two-stage thermonuclear design called “Green Granite.” Such a device proved limiting for Britain’s smaller nuclear program. Bombs like this required 87 kilograms of U-235 at a time their yearly production was only 129 kilograms.

In 1958 Britain had forced its way into the elite group of thermonuclear nuclear super powers and the United States had to recognize this. Their close parity finally allowed a close, formal and official relationship in terms of nuclear weapons.

That year the U.S. U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement bilateral treaty took effect. The treaty's full name is “Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes.” Shortened to MDA, the treaty continues to this day to allow the United States and United Kingdom to exchange nuclear materials, technology, and information. The agreement was formally signed on July 3, 1958.

Two important meetings formally began this cooperation. The first took place from August 26 to 27, 1958 in Washington D.C. which concentrated on briefings on each country’s weapons technology to date. The second meeting occurred from September 15 to 17 that year in Los Alamos. That second meeting gave the British detailed design information about the Mark-28, 44, 45 47 and 48 U.S. nuclear bombs. The British in fact would soon utilize the American Mark-28 design. The meeting also covered the experimental designs due to come out called the TX-41 and 46. A third meeting took place in November in England in Aldermaston between Los Alamos and British nuclear project leaders.

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That meeting worked out the actual production in Britain of the American Mark-28 nuclear bomb (pictured left) which was then considered the most versatile nuclear weapon yet tested by the U.S.

The MDA was thus far reaching and represented a very close exchange of information. While the U.S. has had numerous nuclear cooperation treaties with NATO countries and France, MDA is the most extensive nuclear cooperation treaty our country has ever entered into. The treaty has been amended and renewed a total of nine times to date and currently remains in force until December 2024.

The MDA actually allowed America to supply nuclear weapons to the Royal Air Force and British Army through a project called “E.” The treaty also allowed the sale of one complete nuclear submarine propulsion unit and a ten-year’s supply of enriched uranium for that unit. From 1960 to 1979 the treaty allowed 5.4 tons of plutonium to be sent from Britain to the U.S. and in exchange for 6.7 kilograms of tritium to be sent to the United Kingdom from America for weapons use along with 7.5 tons of highly enriched uranium for Britain’s growing nuclear fleet. The treaty also allowed the sale of Polaris missile technology to the United Kingdom.

In 1958 Britain ceased its own, independent nuclear testing. By that point all British nuclear weapons were based on American designs. By 1962 The United Kingdom entered in to a joint agreement to allow Britain to conduct joint nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site which would come to involve 24 tests up to the end of nuclear testing in 1992. (Four additional zero-plutonium safety tests were also jointly conducted.) Britain consented to the use of Christmas Island by the Americans for the 1962 Dominic Operation which involved 25 large scale detonations which would have been too big to conduct at the Test Site. National Atomic Testing Museum volunteer and Foundation Trustee Ernie Williams was on the American team at Christmas island in 1962 and he is a great resource about that operation.

The United Kingdom also officially gained access to U.S. nuclear test data which reduced the number of joint tests they needed to do on their own. The last joint British full nuclear test, called “Julin Bristol,” took place at the Nevada Test Site on November 26, 1991.

Britain also cooperated with the United States on effects tests and may have jointly cooperated on the United Kingdom’s Chevaline Program. Chevaline began in 1970 with experiments intended to help improve the penetration performance of Britain’s Polaris submarine- launched ballistic missiles. The goal centered around ways to make them more resistant to Soviet anti-ballistic missile defenses deployed around Moscow.

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The United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 and ratified it in 1998. It is believed that the United Kingdom currently has about 160 nuclear weapons in their active stockpile. Most of those would be deployed in British nuclear submarines.

The National Atomic Testing Museum is very excited to be hosting an impressive 60th anniversary exhibit commemorating the 1958 U.S. and U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement, also known as MDA. There is a long history of joint cooperation in the nuclear field between our two nations that goes back to the very beginning of the nuclear age. The exhibit opens on Friday, September 21 in our new Area 51 Theater. This unique display will be on view for three months and popular daily theater shows will continue to play all through the period of the MDA exhibit. We thank the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for this outstanding exhibit and Steve Fisher’s tireless efforts to bring such an important display to our Museum.

We hope you visit this exhibit and help us to continue to show how lessons of the past help us better understand the present. An excellent resource to further study in this area is a recent book by Historian Kevin Ruane titled “Churchill and the Bomb in War and the Cold War.” There is also an excellent BBC documentary detailing Britain’s nuclear program titled “Britain’s Nuclear Bomb—The Inside Story,” https://youtu.be/9vAX7EujOYI. There is also an excellent documentary available on the German nuclear effort called “Hitler’s Atomic Bomb,” blob:https://www.youtube.com/20f52722-c77e-4e08-bc1c-bc67ec53295d.

Michael Hall Executive Director Smithsonian Affiliated National Atomic Testing Museum 755 E Flamingo Rd Las Vegas, NV 89119 Work Phone: 702-794-5140 Cell Phone: 305-505-5405 [email protected]

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