11-08-2025
Cork artist inspired by uncle who was on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki
Patrick Penney's installation at the Crawford College of Art & Design's Degree Show in June took an unusual subject; his granduncle William Penney's involvement in the Manhattan Project and the deployment of the first atomic bombs in August 1945.
William Penney, born in 1909, was a British professor of mathematical physics at the Imperial College London when he was invited to help devise what became known as the Mulberry harbours during World War II. These were two prefabricated harbours used to facilitate the unloading of cargo during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
Penney was then asked to join the Tube Alloys project, the British nuclear weapons programme. 'Originally, the British, the Americans and the Canadians worked separately on developing nuclear weapons,' says Patrick Penney. 'Then they agreed to co-operate, and William was seconded to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He helped mainly with the construction of the Fat Man plutonium bomb, the one that was dropped on Nagasaki.
'He was the only British member on the committee for selecting targets, and he was a scientific observer on the flight over Nagasaki when they dropped the bomb on August 9, 1945.'
The bombing of Nagasaki came three days after that of Hiroshima, eighty years ago today. Although William Penney did not witness that incident, the first ever deployment of a nuclear weapon, he visited Hiroshima shortly after the Japanese surrender on August 15.
'I used copies of his handwritten notes from Hiroshima in my Degree Show installation,' says Patrick Penney. 'The photographs and prints in the installation were based on photographs he took in the city. Then he went back and gave a lecture in Los Alamos on what he'd observed of the effects of the atomic bomb.'
Part of Patrick Penney's installation, showing his granduncle William Penney.
Patrick Penney never met his granduncle. He first learned of William Penney's achievements when he came across a folder of obituaries his father was given when he began working at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire.
'One of the things that sparked my interest is that William burned all his papers shortly before he died of thyroid cancer in 1991, which was probably down to the effects of radiation. Everything that exists is only a copy. Copies made by the government or by secretaries or by other third parties.'
William Penney had hoped to return to academia after the war, but he was persuaded to continue working on nuclear research at Aldermaston. 'William was the director of the weapons programme. He had a really pretentious title; he was called the CSAR, the chief superintendent of armament research. He finally retired from Aldermaston in 1967 – it took him 20 years to get away - and became the Director of Imperial College in London. But, even then, he was retained as a consultant. He 'held an office at AWRE,' was how they put it.'
Although Patrick Penney's aunt and uncle, as well as his father, all worked for AWRE at Aldermaston, 'they didn't have much of a relationship with William. I think my father would have met him, when he came to visit the building, but William had already retired by then. He lived in East Hendred, thirty miles away.'
William Penney married twice and had two sons. 'It's one of those weird quirks; he was eventually made a lord, and then he was made Baron Penney before he died, but the titles are not passed down through lineage. I know his children attended his funeral, but then they became private again. They would be in their 80s now, and may well have children and grandchildren of their own. I haven't really tracked his family. That would be something to look into.'
Patrick Penney grew up in West Cork. 'My father is English, and my mother is Irish. They moved back in the 1990s, and I was born here. We live just outside Bantry.'
He is almost surprised to find himself pursuing a career as an artist. 'Originally, I intended studying automotive technology and management in MTU. But then I applied for the Crawford and got in. A lot of this has been completely unexpected.'
Much of his Degree Show installation was based on material he discovered in the National Archives at Kew.
'I was there for four days last summer. I had a look at 18 files that referenced William's name, but there were 80 in total. I'll be starting a master's in contemporary art practice shortly, and I hope to carry on my research. I'm going back to the archives this month, and there's a couple of more places that I'd like to try and get into. The photographs and some of the files in my installation were only declassified in 2010. There's more stuff that is still technically classified, but this is up for review.
'I'm hoping that, if I can say I'm a postgraduate researcher, and put in the freedom of information requests, I might be able to get access to more information. I'm hoping to be able to establish for a fact that William was at Aldermaston at the time of the big CND anti-nuclear marches in the 1950s and '60s, for instance. It'd be interesting to compare one side to the other.'
Part of Patrick Penney's installation, based on photographs his granduncle took in Hiroshima.
Penney believes his granduncle must have had mixed feelings about his role in the nuclear arms race. 'In my Degree Show installation, there was a barrel with a book on the top of it. That had a quote was from what he wrote after he witnessed the Nagasaki bomb. He said, we have contributed to a monster that will consume us all.
'What he did was objectively terrible, there's no getting around the fact of that. But there's still an argument over whether dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was worth doing. It's conservatively estimated that if the Americans had had to land in Japan, then at least a million people would have been killed, if not more. So it's complicated, but I think the overall consensus is that it was not good.' Penney plans to exhibit his Degree Show installation again next month.
'I've talked to Mich Moroney at the Swerve Gallery in Skibbereen, and I hope to show it there on Culture Night, September 19.'
He has other exhibitions planned as well. 'At the Degree Show, I got an award for GOMA, the Gallery of Modern Art, in Waterford. I think there'll be a group show there with me and Danny Foley, another artist who was in my year, and probably a couple of more from SETU. And then there'll be an MTU STEAM exhibition during Science Week at the James Barry Centre at MTU Bishopstown in March or April. So hopefully there'll be chances to show the material again.'
