British Nuclear Test Veterans Association
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Operation Grapple
Christopher Edward Noone - Born 16 June 1938, Royal Air Force service number 4200103
At time of the Grapple tests, I was a Senior Air Craftsman serving with 206 Squadron, Coastal Command as an Airframe Mechanic on Shackleton Mk 1 aircraft at RAF St Eval, then later St Mawgan, Cornwall.
I was posted three times to Christmas Island during the nuclear tests between 1957 and 1959, each for the duration of three months. I was present for one Hydrogen Bomb test that I believe to have been Grapple ‘Y’. I was one of the ground crew servicing the Shackletons of 206 Squadron. We had two tasks. Weather recognisance and keeping shipping clear from the ‘Test’ zone.
On the day of test, the only alteration to standing orders we received was to wear long trousers instead of shorts, long sleeve shirts with sleeves rolled down and collar pulled up behind neck. Also a floppy forage hat as there was ‘slight chance’ of sunburn from ‘H bomb’ radiation. There were three countdowns at time of test. The first to ‘release’ of bomb, the second countdown was to ‘explosion’.
There were several hundred personnel in the same clearing as myself. Progress was relayed to us over Tannoy speakers in the trees. Instructions were – to sit in the clearing with backs to palm trees and direction of explosion, close eyes, cover eyes with hands, then bury head in knees. The third countdown was after the explosion to the time we must uncover eyes, stand and race away from palms.
We had been assured this was a ‘clean’ test. It was explained a clean test was where the superheated core of the explosion did not ‘suck’ enough ground debris/water vapour for the rising column to meet the upper section in a mushroom shape, so causing contamination and radioactive fall out.
Several people in the centre of the clearing wore white suites and hoods with special goggles. When asked why, we were informed because this group had to watch the bomb explosion directly.
I think we all felt fear and uncertainty of the unknown as we covered our eyes.
At moment of test – despite eyes closed, hands over eyes and knees jammed against hands, the inside of the head became intensely white, heat building inside the body to an almost unbearable temperature appearing to radiate from inside. This along with a high pitched ‘fizzing’ sound. For seconds it was that way, then the light started to diminish along with the heat, leaving an impression of finger and knee bones like an x-ray inside the head.
The third countdown had already started. At thirty seconds, we stood and raced away, standing in the clearing to turn and look. It was as though the gates of hell had opened up, a curling mass of white and red-hot superheated cloud twisting and curling inside and out, covering a good percentage of the sky. It was still glowing red with heat up to half an hour later. I remember that we looked at each other blankly as though shocked at what we saw, having to crane the neck back to see the top of the object before us. Below the cloud that was constantly curling inward, the stem of ‘litter’ sucked from the ground was rising fast to form the mushroom we had been assured would not be. By the words of our own instructions, it was a ‘dirty’ bomb. Startled seagulls, terns and other birds circled in panic.
A corporal beside me was using a stopwatch. I think in our stunned state, most of us had forgotten what was to come. The trees lashed over almost touching the ground, then whipped back, I was thrown back then sucked forward as a double explosion deafened me. Several people unable to maintain balance were thrown to the ground as the shockwave struck. The corporal informed us that – by his watch, he judged the blast had traveled 32 miles. From previous talks, we all knew that was too close and the bomb bigger than we had been informed it would be. We found later, we should have been fifty miles from the blast for the size that it was.
No one spoke after that. The shock was such, we never gave the mushroom another glance all he way back to the airfield. When we did speak, it was of anything but, avoiding that which still towered above us. It was still there three hours later, the upper atmospheres beginning to disperse it. Some 45 years on, all I have to do is close my eyes to see, feel and hear it as though it had just happened.
The first of our aircraft to return after the test had its rear port observation window blown out, another indication the blast was bigger than forecast. The Canberra that collected the 'Core' samples from the explosion flew through the core of the mushroom cloud half an hour after the explosion once the heat had dissipated enough. So close were we, the aircraft was clearly seen entering the centre of the cloud.
On my final trip to the Island, I was assigned as part of the ground servicing crew to fly with a Shackleton returning with radioactive samples from the explosion. It took five days to fly home in the Shackleton Bomber I was in, stopping at Honolulu, San Francisco, Edmonton(Canada), Goose Bay(Alaska) then home, staying overnight at each stop.(All other trips to and from the Island had taken ten days across the states, but it was insisted the samples needed to get back to England as quickly as possible, so we were diverted through Alaska.) The 'core' sample was stored in a black container resembling a service thermos flask. It was about eighteen inches in height and six inches across its circumference. It was stored - not in the storage panniers in the bomb bay as one would expect, but behind the main spar in the corridor, with me sitting with my back to it and everyone else having to clamber over it when traversing the corridor. It was less than one foot from my back for in excess of forty hours flying time. (The Shackleton aircraft had only two seats spare for the seven ground crew required for servicing it at each stop, and we had to sit where we could in flight.) It was at Goose Bay in Alaska that I felt the first irritations on my back and reported sick to the station medical officer on landing at St Mawgan, Cornwall with shoulders and back covered with white raised blisters. (Eighth of an inch wide) At least two dozen! This on top of the radiation I had received during the explosion with my back to the bomb. These extended with time into boils and cysts covering most of the back and neck.
From that moment, I was excused collar and tie and had to have special permission to get my hair cut at the Barbers on camp. I later spent up to a year in Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Hospital, Halton with the problem and was even transferred to a posting at Halton Airfield afterwards so I could keep attending the hospital as an In Patient. This continued into the sixties, in and out of hospital for operations and treatment.
The specialists I was under while in hospital were Wing Commander White (Skin Specialist) and Air Commodore Morley (Surgeon) who I believe was Surgeon to the Queen at that time. I can remember at least seven operations on the back, three under deep anesthetic in the main operating theatre.
The condition of my back reached its peak in mid sixties when I left the service. Pain became an every day occurrence, and I was never free of it. Retreating from pain, I became a recluse inside with understandable personality changes. If I went out to socialise, I would have to return early, my shirt having to be pealed from my back covered in blood and matter. The smell at times was revolting. My teeth developed twisted roots making it very difficult to extract them and their deterioration was such that, in the late sixties, all but six lower teeth were removed in one go.
Since the test, I have short-term memory problems with difficulty in association, which destroyed, along with the time spent in hospital, any chance of a career path either in the service or outside.
In the early eighties (I believe 1983), I received £1,800 compensation for an assessment of 6 –14% disability for Acne Conglobata, a condition stated to be ‘Aggravated by Service.’ All medical documents dealing with my blisters and hospital treatment were missing from the files they allowed me to view, and the MOD tried at this stage to state I had never been to Christmas Island. They backed down on my appeal and admitted I was. Eventually in 1992, after yet another appeal, this assessment was raised to 30% disability and I received a pension. I tried to push this further, requiring an admittance of the cause for my complaints, but was informed as I had received a pension, this effectively disposed of the grounds of my assessment appeal.
My eldest son developed similar boils, cysts and abscesses on the back and elsewhere when he was twelve and still suffers to day, as did my youngest daughter with abscesses in all parts of the body imaginable. My eldest daughter was operated on for a massive cyst in her leg with twisted roots when she was a child, my youngest daughter suffering from twisted roots to her teeth as I did, making extraction most difficult. Also, her spine has been operated on several times and is deteriorating. She has been told nothing more can be done for it and is now on Morphine for the pain at the age of 36. Her own daughter, my granddaughter, is showing signs of bone problems at the age of 13.
It is my belief that a ‘War Crime’ was committed by the MOD during these tests! Further concealment can only be ‘Complicity’ in that War Crime. If not resolved, I pity, and pray for, any child that has been - or will be born, who will come into future contact with the Ministry Of Defence by serving ‘in trust’ with the Armed Forces.
Christopher Edward Noone
54 Hampshire Court
Upper St James’s street
Brighton
BN2 1JZ
Date: 21/11/02