The Royal Engineers Museum, Gillingham, UK
Until 12 March 2023
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From flying through mushroom clouds collecting radioactive samples to waking up in a tent covered in aggressive crustaceans, a new series of films is lifting the lid on what it was like to take part in the UK鈥檚 nuclear testing programme in the 1950s and 1960s.
Four short films mix animation with images taken during operations from the 1950s onwards and voice-overs are provided by the veterans themselves.
Made by the independent production company Squeaky Pedal for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, the films feature in a new exhibition, Plym to Pamlico, which chronicles the UK鈥檚 nuclear testing history. It opened in October to mark the 70th anniversary of the UK鈥檚 first test, Operation Hurricane, which took place on the Montebello聽 Islands, off the coast of north-western Australia.
The exhibition鈥檚 title refers to the HMS Plym, the ship that was deliberately blown up during this test. Pamlico was the codename of one of the bombs detonated during Operation Dominic, a series of tests, led by the US but backed up by British troops, that took place 60 years ago on Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island), an atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
Dominic veteran John Lax, an air wireless mechanic in the Royal Air Force (RAF), was just 20 when he arrived on Kiritimati and witnessed 25 detonations. As he explains on film, he and others were given dark goggles and badges to measure radiation levels and told to sit with their backs to the blast.
Lax, now 81, says: 鈥淓ven with these dark goggles on, when the flash went at the moment of explosion, the sky turned from black to blue. There was an extremely loud, sharp crack. About 2 minutes after that, we felt the blast, which was like a very strong wind. Then we were allowed to turn around and look at the fireball, which was quite spectacular.鈥�
That first bomb, codenamed Adobe, had a 190-kiloton yield 鈥� dwarfing the 15kt yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. But the largest yield from a British thermonuclear device was to be 13 years later, with a 3-megaton blast that occurred during Operation Grapple Y in 1958, also on Kiritimati.
Service personnel were routinely issued little, if any, protective equipment, and this was often inadequate, as Lax recalls: 鈥淚 had strong faith in this little badge around my neck, which I later found out was completely useless because that particular one they issued us with was no use in humid conditions. We were 150 miles north of the equator, the highest point being 5 feet above sea level.鈥�
鈥淎pparently humidity melts the emulsion off the film,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o it didn鈥檛 record anything.鈥�
The films also feature the voice of former RAF airman John Folkes, who聽was tasked with flying through the nuclear bomb clouds to collect samples, and staring down into the fiery inferno left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The veterans also reminisce about day-to-day life on Kiritimati, sharing tales of waking up to find crabs in their beds and the common practice of posting whole coconuts home to perplexed loved ones.
Lax says he feels proud to lend his voice to the films to help educate the public. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of people who have never heard of Christmas Island, have no idea what it鈥檚 all about and what we went through as part of the testing programme.鈥�
