Hurricane was the culmination of many years of nuclear research conducted by Great Britain, the start of which dated back to 1940 when Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls made the first theoretically sound critical mass calculations. The site chosen for the test was at the Monte Bello Islands off the West Coast of Australia. In September 1950, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies made an agreement with Great Britain to use Australia as a nuclear test site in exchange for nuclear technology.
 |
The Hurricane device was very similar to the U.S. Mk-3 “Fatman” plutonium implosion bomb. Since the Windscale nuclear plant was unable to manufacture the necessary plutonium needed by August 1, 1952 for the test, some Canadian plutonium was also used in the core of the atomic device. The device used a levitated pit, which not only increased the power of the bomb, but also served as a safety precaution as the core could be inserted into the device shortly before the firing. At Woolwich the high explosives assembly was prepared for the implosion device.
It was decided to fire the bomb inside the hull of the River-class frigate HMS Plym. This was done so that the effects of a nuclear detonation on board a ship could be understood, simulating the scenario of a nuclear device being smuggled into a harbor and detonated. While a tower detonation would be more adequate for the collection of diagnostic data, a ship detonation was used because it presented a more 'realistic' option in terms of information gathered for civil defense purposes.
While this was Britain’s first atomic test, it was mainly a weapons effects test. Due to the small size of the expedition force organized to conduct the test the majority of data obtained as for weapons effects, only limited technical date on weapons development was gathered. The first true weapons development tests would be carried out a year later during Operation Totem.
 |
The Landing Ship Tank (LST) HMS Tracker set sale for Monte Bello ahead of the main convoy to prepare the test site. She would later serve as the hospital ship for the operations and a radio collection point for various diagnostic data. An advance party of 200 Royal Engineers cleared the land to make room for the necessary buildings and diagnostic instruments that would record the explosion and all its effects. Hundreds of miles of underground cabling was installed connecting all these instruments to underground detection units. Other cables ran underwater to nearby islands and to the HMS Plym, which connected the bomb to the firing circuits which would remotely detonate the bomb. Two high speed cameras were made especially for Operation Hurricane to record the early stages of fireball development. Each camera recorded 100,000 frames per second.
The Royal Australian Air Force assisted the British workers, setting up a makeshift jetty for boats. A variety of structures were built to study their effects to heat, blast, and radiation for civil defense purposes. Rockets were to be fired into the radioactive cloud. The data collected by these rockets would assist in determining the yield of the explosion by taking radiochemical samples. One civil defense experiment involved the use of vegetables and fruit, grown on the convoy ships during the journey to Monte Bello. These were exposed to the explosion to measure how much radiation would be absorbed. Other food stuffs, such as tea, butter, and flour, were also exposed to the explosion. These experiments also served the measure the degree of protection various food containers offered.
| The following are recently declassified images of the assembly of the actual Hurricane nuclear device. These pictures show the arrival of the wooden case containing the two plutonium hemispheres and neutron initiator on the HMS Plym, the insertion of the plutonium core and installation of the detonation caps. The lowering of the plutonium core was controlled by means of hand powered winch, at all times monitored for neutron emission. For safety reasons, the plutonium core was inserted into the device prior to detonation in the hull of the HMS Plym. Two firing circuits (one back-up) were installed for the 32 detonation caps.
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
|
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}