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Sydney Morning Herald
09-08-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Those left behind: The long shadow of Britain's nuclear testing in WA
A son, a daughter and a grandson of Australian servicemen exposed to nuclear testing have made an emotional pilgrimage up to the remote Montebello Islands to capture details of an era with – literally and metaphorically – enduring fallout. Paul Grace, Maxine Goodwin and Gary Blinco recently stood together in the ruins of a bomb command centre overlooking the scene of three British nuclear tests in the 1950s that few younger Australians have ever heard of. As the world commemorates Japan's wartime nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the trio say Australians should not forget the impact of atomic tests conducted on West Australian soil in the 1950s, starting with Operation Hurricane in 1952 and followed by two more tests in Operation Mosaic in 1956. Other atomic tests at Emu Field and Maralinga bookended the Montebello series. Grace, Goodwin and Blinco all know the tests left a family legacy of death or ill-health – and lingering contamination 70 years later on several islands. On a recent expedition up to the Montebello archipelago, 80 kilometres offshore from Onslow, the trio gathered documentary and archival material while filling gaps in their own family histories. For Grace and Goodwin, the most poignant moment was when they stood on the tarmac at Onslow airport in the exact spot where his grandfather and her father posed for a photograph with No 86 Transport Wing Detachment RAAF, to commemorate the successful test of Britain's first ever nuclear bomb detonation on October 3, 1952. 'My grandfather Flight Lieutenant Ron Grace is seventh from left back row, and Maxine's father Leading Aircraftman [later Sergeant] Max Ward is third from left front row,' says Grace. 'They performed what they called 'coastal monitoring sorties' after testing, but that was code for looking for fallout – the British had promised that no fallout would reach the mainland.' Grace's grandfather wrote later: 'As pilot of the aircraft, I would have been the most exposed crew member, being shielded only by the Perspex of the front and side windows. The navigator, radio operator and Mr Hale being in the body of the aircraft had, presumably, more protection. 'Further to the above, after leaving the atomic cloud, we spent approximately two more hours in a radioactive airplane (as proved by the Geiger-Counter check) during the return to Onslow, landing, parking and shut-down.' Maxine Goodwin's father died of lymphatic cancer aged 49, when she was 16. 'He would have been servicing contaminated aircraft, so my mother and I do believe his illness was the result of his participation in the nuclear tests,' she says. 'When Paul and I looked across at the original runway where the Dakota planes would have been taking off and landing, I could visualise the busy scene from that time, and it was very emotional.' Gary Blinco's father Allen made several trips to the Montebello Islands during the test years, working as a navy diver recovering moorings in a lagoon and monitoring radiation levels. 'I knew as a young guy that my father had been there, but I didn't really know what it meant,' he says. 'I had a burning need to connect.' By the time Blinko was able to sit down with his estranged father to discuss it, the older man had been diagnosed with dementia. But he vividly recalled diving on the site of Royal Navy frigate HMS Plym, which had been detonated by one of the explosions; he recalled a depression in the seabed and 'a shiny base'. 'I'm told there was high stress about being a navy diver there,' says his son. 'I was able to swim in the water where my Dad had dived, and I walked on the beach where he guided scientists to do their monitoring. They were fully protected; he was wearing sandals and shorts.' 'The British did a very good job of keeping things under wraps and applying pressure on the Australian government to do the same.' Allen Blinko died of old age, but a 2006 DVA study of Australian participants in British nuclear tests in Australia showed an increase in cancer deaths and cancer incidence (18 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) than would be expected in the general population. 'They tried to explain these figures away, but they are really quite damning,' says Paul Grace, an author whose book Operation Hurricane gives a detailed account of the events and personnel involved in UK nuclear testing in Australia. The three descendants of nuclear veterans describe the Montebello Islands as haunting but beautiful. 'Within the landscape, you've got an incredible number of Cold War artefacts lying around, what the British referred to as 'target response items',' says Grace. 'It means stuff that they planted around the place to see whether it could withstand a nuclear blast, like World War II-era bomb shelters constructed out of corrugated iron and sandbags.' Another relic is the metal framework of the command centre on Hermite Island, which Grace, Goodwin and Blinko visited. 'It's where the scientists triggered all three bombs,' says Grace. 'It's on top of a hill with an extraordinary view over the entire island group, the only site during the tests that was still manned but evacuated afterwards.' The nuclear fallout was not limited to those servicemen involved. Still affected 70 years later are large tracts of land and seabed across the Montebello archipelago. New research into plutonium levels in sediment on some islands have found elevated levels up to 4500 times greater than other parts of the WA coastline. The research by Edith Cowan University, released in June, was supported by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. Visitors are urged to spend no more than an hour on some islands. Grace says the Montebello story is a cautionary tale of Australia's over-eagerness to host Britain's nuclear test series, and of UK authorities' lack of safety and casual attitude toward radioactive drift. 'It forces you to question the wisdom of tying Australia's defence to powerful allies, especially in the context of the current debate over AUKUS, where the benefits are vague and shifting and the costs will only become clear decades in the future,' she says.
The Age
09-08-2025
- General
- The Age
Those left behind: The long shadow of Britain's nuclear testing in WA
A son, a daughter and a grandson of Australian servicemen exposed to nuclear testing have made an emotional pilgrimage up to the remote Montebello Islands to capture details of an era with – literally and metaphorically – enduring fallout. Paul Grace, Maxine Goodwin and Gary Blinco recently stood together in the ruins of a bomb command centre overlooking the scene of three British nuclear tests in the 1950s that few younger Australians have ever heard of. As the world commemorates Japan's wartime nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the trio say Australians should not forget the impact of atomic tests conducted on West Australian soil in the 1950s, starting with Operation Hurricane in 1952 and followed by two more tests in Operation Mosaic in 1956. Other atomic tests at Emu Field and Maralinga bookended the Montebello series. Grace, Goodwin and Blinco all know the tests left a family legacy of death or ill-health – and lingering contamination 70 years later on several islands. On a recent expedition up to the Montebello archipelago, 80 kilometres offshore from Onslow, the trio gathered documentary and archival material while filling gaps in their own family histories. For Grace and Goodwin, the most poignant moment was when they stood on the tarmac at Onslow airport in the exact spot where his grandfather and her father posed for a photograph with No 86 Transport Wing Detachment RAAF, to commemorate the successful test of Britain's first ever nuclear bomb detonation on October 3, 1952. 'My grandfather Flight Lieutenant Ron Grace is seventh from left back row, and Maxine's father Leading Aircraftman [later Sergeant] Max Ward is third from left front row,' says Grace. 'They performed what they called 'coastal monitoring sorties' after testing, but that was code for looking for fallout – the British had promised that no fallout would reach the mainland.' Grace's grandfather wrote later: 'As pilot of the aircraft, I would have been the most exposed crew member, being shielded only by the Perspex of the front and side windows. The navigator, radio operator and Mr Hale being in the body of the aircraft had, presumably, more protection. 'Further to the above, after leaving the atomic cloud, we spent approximately two more hours in a radioactive airplane (as proved by the Geiger-Counter check) during the return to Onslow, landing, parking and shut-down.' Maxine Goodwin's father died of lymphatic cancer aged 49, when she was 16. 'He would have been servicing contaminated aircraft, so my mother and I do believe his illness was the result of his participation in the nuclear tests,' she says. 'When Paul and I looked across at the original runway where the Dakota planes would have been taking off and landing, I could visualise the busy scene from that time, and it was very emotional.' Gary Blinco's father Allen made several trips to the Montebello Islands during the test years, working as a navy diver recovering moorings in a lagoon and monitoring radiation levels. 'I knew as a young guy that my father had been there, but I didn't really know what it meant,' he says. 'I had a burning need to connect.' By the time Blinko was able to sit down with his estranged father to discuss it, the older man had been diagnosed with dementia. But he vividly recalled diving on the site of Royal Navy frigate HMS Plym, which had been detonated by one of the explosions; he recalled a depression in the seabed and 'a shiny base'. 'I'm told there was high stress about being a navy diver there,' says his son. 'I was able to swim in the water where my Dad had dived, and I walked on the beach where he guided scientists to do their monitoring. They were fully protected; he was wearing sandals and shorts.' 'The British did a very good job of keeping things under wraps and applying pressure on the Australian government to do the same.' Allen Blinko died of old age, but a 2006 DVA study of Australian participants in British nuclear tests in Australia showed an increase in cancer deaths and cancer incidence (18 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) than would be expected in the general population. 'They tried to explain these figures away, but they are really quite damning,' says Paul Grace, an author whose book Operation Hurricane gives a detailed account of the events and personnel involved in UK nuclear testing in Australia. The three descendants of nuclear veterans describe the Montebello Islands as haunting but beautiful. 'Within the landscape, you've got an incredible number of Cold War artefacts lying around, what the British referred to as 'target response items',' says Grace. 'It means stuff that they planted around the place to see whether it could withstand a nuclear blast, like World War II-era bomb shelters constructed out of corrugated iron and sandbags.' Another relic is the metal framework of the command centre on Hermite Island, which Grace, Goodwin and Blinko visited. 'It's where the scientists triggered all three bombs,' says Grace. 'It's on top of a hill with an extraordinary view over the entire island group, the only site during the tests that was still manned but evacuated afterwards.' The nuclear fallout was not limited to those servicemen involved. Still affected 70 years later are large tracts of land and seabed across the Montebello archipelago. New research into plutonium levels in sediment on some islands have found elevated levels up to 4500 times greater than other parts of the WA coastline. The research by Edith Cowan University, released in June, was supported by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. Visitors are urged to spend no more than an hour on some islands. Grace says the Montebello story is a cautionary tale of Australia's over-eagerness to host Britain's nuclear test series, and of UK authorities' lack of safety and casual attitude toward radioactive drift. 'It forces you to question the wisdom of tying Australia's defence to powerful allies, especially in the context of the current debate over AUKUS, where the benefits are vague and shifting and the costs will only become clear decades in the future,' she says.
Daily Mirror
22-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Nuclear troops given unnecessary x-rays in Britain's first atomic bomb test
A hidden document has revealed that troops were given unnecessary x-rays on their way to take part in Britain's first atomic bomb test in the 1950s Troops were given potentially harmful x-rays in a secret biological monitoring programme as part of Cold War weapons tests. Hundreds of Royal Engineers were ordered to submit to the medical examinations without any clinical reason or benefit. The evidence has emerged from a medical officer's journal, hidden for decades at the Atomic Weapons Establishment behind top secret security classifications. Thousands of servicemen were subject to similar orders as Britain developed its nuclear arsenal over the decade that followed. Pam Hill, whose dad Jim Stephenson took part in Operation Hurricane in 1952, said: 'He was sent to do his duty and he did it. Afterwards he had serious gut problems, and 40 years of a severe lung disease which eventually killed him. Seven months are missing from his medical records. It was always on his mind that the whole lung thing was caused by being out at Montebello. If he had chest x-rays at the time, it might have answered all our questions.' Jim's lung condition, bronchiectasis, can be caused by radiation. His children have also suffered unexplained illness, with miscarriages, coeliac disease, and spinal issues. His teenaged grandson has almost no adult teeth. While the cancer risk of an x-ray is small, it increases if done repeatedly. It can be justified only if there is a therapeutic benefit - and for healthy troops already examined and found to be A1-fit, there was none. The Mirror 's three-year investigation of the Nuked Blood Scandal has already uncovered thousands of blood and urine tests given to troops, with the results withheld from their medical records. Now we can reveal there was a third and potentially-harmful form of monitoring, using x-rays. If men had damage as a result of inhaling radioactive particles, it could show up as dark shadows on their lungs. What happened to healthy people living amid fallout was unknown, but since 1947 human experiments have needed informed consent, full communication of the risks involved, and the right to withdraw. A consultant radiologist told the Mirror: 'There was a clear understanding at the time that radiation caused tumours. From a military standpoint you'd probably get ethical approval because it's an unknown and there were civil defence concerns. You would want to know what proportion later developed a problem, what the damage was, whether it rectified itself or led to longer term damage. There would always be a duty of care to the patients. 'To not keep those records long-term would be considered a massive breach of research protocol. There would be redress, and punitive fines. Perhaps more importantly for the veterans, someone would have looked at all these x-rays and made an assessment, written a report on the outcomes. Where is that now?' READ MORE: Video emerges of Defence Secretary saying nuke veterans scandal "shames us as a country" The medical journal covers the weeks shortly before Operation Hurricane in 1952, Britain's first nuclear bomb test, which detonated in the hull of an old warship off the Montebello Islands in Australia. Just over 200 Royal Engineers were ordered to join the fleet, to build jetties, camps and laboratories near Ground Zero. The journal states: 'They came aboard only a few hours before we sailed, and I did not discover until after that it is not a routine in the army to have the chest x-rayed at yearly intervals. Accordingly I had them all done at Royal Naval Hospital Malta.' The log was discovered on a top secret database at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, locked on the grounds of national security risks. Labour ministers have ordered the entire archive to be published, but have not commented on why it was a state secret, or why it is not one any more. The Ministry of Defence has spent decades denying it experimented on troops. Few survive from that first operation, and government studies have found they have increased risks of bladder, skin, stomach and 'unspecified' cancers. They also have elevated rates of suicide. Jim's former comrade, Dixie Kidd, 92, said: 'At one point after the bomb we were ordered on to shore to collect things the scientists had left behind, tins of food, raw vegetables. Others were picking up dead sea birds. After we left, I was in a contingent ordered to take readings from the things we had found, two hours on, two hours off. The numbers were to establish the radioactive half-life. 'On the way home, our pay books were taken off us and they put into each one we had been exposed to 5 rads of radiation. All of us the same. I wondered how that was possible, and why I never got ill when so many of my mates did.' Documents seen by the Mirror state that anyone with a dose over 5 rads could no longer be employed on the operation. A higher recorded dose may also have led to war pensions. Another ex-sapper, Eric Waterfield, from 71 Field Squadron, has seen his daughters suffer reproductive issues. He said: 'Three years after Hurricane, a surgeon found a growth in my lung. He said it was better in the bucket than in my chest, so he had it out, and that was the last I heard of it. If there were chest x-rays, it might explain things.' The bogus classification of information about the experiments is now the subject of a criminal complaint to the Met Police, which is considering further action. The missing medical records are being sought in a civil suit estimated to cost the MoD up to £5bn in aggravated damages. Campaign group LABRATS has asked the Prime Minister for a meeting to find a cheaper, quicker route to truth and justice, but has received no reply. Founder Alan Owen said: 'This biological monitoring was done to see what would happen to the British civilian population if attacked. Troops were the only people who could be ordered into fallout and told to stay there, under threat of a court martial. 'We have found veteran after veteran has medical records that are missing this vital data. Without it, medical diagnosis and treatment are harder and war pensions next to impossible. 'All we want is for the most mistreated veterans in British history to get a fair deal - to be heard, to get justice, and to get an apology.' A spokesman for the MoD said: 'The Minister for Veterans and People has commissioned officials to look into unresolved questions regarding medical records as a priority, and this is now underway. This work will enable us to better understand what information the department holds regarding medical testing of service personnel.'
