Abstract
Whose task was it to produce the H-bomb? The government’s ‘general instruction’ was given, as we saw, to the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA), newly set up in July 1954. The Atomic Energy Authority Act removed atomic energy from the Ministry of Supply and placed the project — research, production and weapons R&D — in a novel body outside the civil service. Its governing board was chaired by a chief executive, Sir Edwin Plowden, a senior civil servant — ‘the chief of planners’1 — from the Treasury and Cabinet Office. Cockcroft, Hinton and Penney were board members, while continuing to manage their respective groups. Cockcroft’s group at Harwell would still provide research assistance to Penney’s group, and Hinton’s factories would go on producing the fissile and other special materials for it. But the main weapons task would fall on Aldermaston2 and Penney.
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Notes and References
Edwin Plowden (now Lord Plowden) worked in the wartime Ministries of Economic Warfare and Aircraft Production, then at the Cabinet Office, and as Chief Planning Officer in the Treasury before being appointed as Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, a post he held for five years, 1954–59.
For convenience, the name Aldermaston is used to refer to the main site, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment itself (AWRE) or to the Weapons Group as a whole, especially as we are most often concerned with what was happening at the main site.
He worked on bombing effects during the Blitz and then on the design of the Mulberry harbours which played such an important part in the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944.
See M. Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, vol. 2, p. 218 and ch. 13 passim.
B. Cathcart, Test of Greatness, p. 130.
Penney wrote of him ‘… a most capable man with excellent personal qualities … He is very self-reliant and not perturbed by a job, however heavy and complex it may be’. He ‘imbued his team with an excellent spirit of co-operation’, B. Cathcart, op. cit., p. 68.
In 1952, Penney’s own salary was £3,400; those of Hinton and Cockcroft were £4,500. The Director-General of Works, Ministry of Works, was paid £3,250.
M. Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, vol. 2, p. 72.
These included James Tuck and Ernest Titterton.
At Los Alamos, Peierls and Fuchs provided two-thirds of the team which made the implosion development possible and contributed to all phases of weapon development (including the Super). The solid implosion gadget invented by Peierls and Christy is commonly called the Christy gadget but was Peierls’ idea. Tuck, independently and with the US scientists Neddermeyer and von Neumann, suggested the lens system for implosion and worked with Bethe on the initiator. Frisch made many contributions, especially to critical mass assembly studies. Bretscher made considerable contributions to Super feasibility studies. Titterton did outstanding work, particularly on electronic circuit developments. Rotblat worked with several others in the field of experimental nuclear physics. See F. Szasz, British Scientists and the Manhattan Project, pp. 148–51.
As in, for example, N. Dombey and E. Grove, ‘Britain’s Thermonuclear Bluff.
In early 1950, a collection of his papers was sent from Harwell to Aldermaston (see Chapter 4, n. 40). In 1963, when Corner asked to look at the catalogue he had made, he discovered that they had been transferred to London and later destroyed.
L. Arnold, A Very Special Relationship, ch. 4.
Senior posts vacant included deputy director, assistant director (science), two deputy chief engineers and head of radiation division.
One was Ernest Titterton, the telemetry expert, who decided to go to the new Australian National University (ANU).
This refutes the idea, sometimes suggested, that Cook was imposed by Whitehall on an unwilling Penney.
Transcript of interview Cook/Gowing, 10 March 1976 (now in AWE historian’s office).
Interview Curran/Arnold, 21–2 February 1995 (now in AWE historian’s office).
See P. Hennessy, Whitehall Chapter 3 passim.
See n. 18.
Interview Corner/Arnold, 18 Sept. 1992.
Lord Penney and V.H.B. Macklen, ‘William Richard Joseph Cook 1905–1987’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 34, 1988.
Seen. 17.
See n. 18.
Seen. 21.
See n. 18. A study of family and educational backgrounds would be interesting. Most of the nuclear scientists and engineers, like Penney, were ‘scholarship boys’, unlike many of the politicians, military men and civil servants involved.
Also called, at various times, the radiation division or the radioactive measurements division.
Though Cook thought highly of Egon Bretscher’s work at Harwell.
Seen. 21.
A. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 84.
Reasons suggested are extreme security-consciousness, lack of time and overload, or even a desire to protect ‘under the counter’ information. Corner said that he did not get data on foreign weapons debris until 1956. We were told that Cook organised ‘a raid’ on Penney’s safe in 1955 or 1956.
See n. 18.
Interview Roberts/Hendry, 21 Sept. 1981.
Under E. F. Newley (later Director of AWRE) and J. W. High.
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Arnold, L., Pyne, K. (2001). Aldermaston and the Weaponeers. In: Britain and the H-Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599772_6
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