Britain's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent

From Before the V-Bomber to Beyond Trident

Robert H. Paterson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136310447
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Having served opposite Warsaw Pact forces in the 1950s and on Embassy duty in the 70s in Europe, the author offers a reasoned assessment of Britain's role in the so-called "nuclear club". He asks whether Britain really needs to be a member.

CHAPTER ONE

The Historical Background to Britain’s Deterrent 1938–56: From Nuclear Fission to the V-Bomber

The year 1939 produced one of the most extraordinary coincidences of all history: the discovery of the result of splitting an atom of uranium (a material hitherto considered pretty worthless) and the outbreak of the Second World War.¹

THAT BRITAIN PLAYED a seminal role in defending Western liberal democracy between 1939 and 1945 is well understood and widely acknowledged. That it simultaneously played a critical role in developing the potential, and recognising the significance, of nuclear fission is comparatively unknown. Britain was a key actor in the conception of nuclear weapons and its technical expertise and political acumen were to have a profound effect upon the development of its nuclear policies.

The first step in the process towards the understanding of nuclear fission occurred in 1896 with Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity. Until then the atom had been regarded as indivisible. The next two crucial discoveries were attributable to teams of British research physicists led by the New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford who, in the two decades before the Second World War, held the post of Professor of Physics, initially at Manchester University and thereafter at Cambridge. In 1911 Rutherford published a paper announcing the discovery of the nucleus of the atom and identifying its positive electrical charge. In 1920 he demonstrated that the nucleus, like the atom, was also divisible, and he coined the term ‘proton’ for the basic building block. In 1932 James Chadwick, a Cambridge researcher, discovered the neutron. This provided a powerful new research tool for bombarding the atom to probe its structure. It rapidly became obvious that nuclei eagerly swallowed neutrons that came sufficiently close and, as a consequence, produced new kinds of nuclei, or even atoms, some of them hitherto unknown. Enrico Fermi, an Italian, led this area of research and one of the nuclei with which he and others experimented was that of uranium. Initially the results were baffling; however the puzzle was solved in December 1938 when two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered that a uranium nucleus, after swallowing a neutron, could split into two smaller nuclei of roughly equal size and that, in the process, some of the nuclear mass was transformed into energy. The discovery of nuclear fission was published in a scientific paper in January 1939 to coincide with the opening of the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics. Thus far these discoveries were largely academic. Nevertheless it was clear at that stage that some form of chain reaction could be a possibility. The two critical developments in that process were attributable to the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Bohr suggested that fission was not a characteristic of all uranium atoms but only of a certain kind known as uranium-235. His second proposition was that fission might be more likely if the bombarding neutrons could be slowed down. Bohr’s theories were confirmed simultaneously by distinguished physicists working under Professor Frederick Joliot, Professor of Nuclear Chemistry at the Collège de France in Paris and, at Columbia University in New York, by a team led by Fermi and Leo Szilard, a Hungarian. The discovery of the possibility of a chain reaction revived the potential for a bomb and, for the first time, caused some scientists, particularly Szilard, to ponder the dangers of what they were doing and to question the wisdom of the open exchange of knowledge within the scientific community. Despite this concern the French researchers published their findings and the possibility of achieving a chain reaction became public knowledge some months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Following the publication of the French paper, scientists in Britain, the United States and Germany alerted their governments to the military implications of nuclear research. President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Uranium on the advice of Szilard while, in Germany, a nuclear research office was set up within the Army Ordnance Department. The reaction in Britain was more dynamic, due largely to the efforts of refugee scientists. Sir Henry Tizard, Chairman of the Committee on the Scientific Survey of Air Defence, was persuaded to reserve stocks of uranium, should it prove possible to develop an atomic bomb. In early 1940, two refugee scientists working in Britain, Otto Frisch and Rudolph Peierls made an important theoretical breakthrough. They calculated that the amount of the rare uranium isotope U-235 needed to achieve a chain reaction was much smaller than hitherto supposed. They also proposed an industrial method for separating U-235 from U-238. This was the first practical proposal, in any country, for making an atomic bomb and it led directly to the establishment of the Military Application of Uranium Detonation (MAUD) Committee, a group of leading British scientists reporting initially to the Air Ministry and later to the Ministry of Aircraft Production. The MAUD Committee, unlike its United States counterpart, sought action. Professor Francis Simon of Oxford University was charged to examine the possibility of separating U-235 from U-238. He reported back in four months, a remarkable achievement. While the Oxford physicists were at work the British initiative was reinforced by the arrival of two of Joilot’s team from Paris, now in the hands of the Germans, bringing with them the total world stock of heavy water. At the time heavy water was the best known, and most efficient, means of slowing down neutrons to enhance the process of uranium fission using unseparated uranium in a nuclear reactor. The new refugees, Halban and Kowarski, joined the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge and, working with British colleagues, soon discovered a new element named plutonium which appeared to have the potential to be as fissile as U-235. The report of the MAUD Committee in the summer of 1941 showed that an atomic bomb was possible using U-235 and that it may also be possible using plutonium. Ministers were convinced that the project should go ahead. Britain had established an early lead in atomic weapons research and the legacy of this was to have a significant effect on future political decision making.

Britain’s pre-eminence, however, was relatively short-lived. Dr Vannevar Busch, President of the Carnegie Institute, persuaded President Roosevelt to establish a National Defence Research Council with himself as chairman. Busch received a copy of the MAUD Report in July 1941 and realised that British scientific thinking was well ahead of anything that the Americans were undertaking. Busch used the British findings to convince the President of the importance of the need for nuclear research and was given authority to discover whether a bomb could be made and at what price. Busch, realising the British lead, persuaded Roosevelt to write to Churchill to suggest that there should be a joint Anglo–American project. The British response was cool. Britain wished to retain control of its own programme and was willing only to share information with the Americans. This situation changed dramatically in December 1941 when the United States entered the war, following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Within six months the United States atomic weapons programme had outstripped the British and, when the United States Army took control of the project, now called Manhattan, the free exchange of information ceased. The British quickly realised that entry into the Manhattan Project was their only chance of staying in the forefront of nuclear development. Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to let Britain back in, basing his case on Britain’s key initial role. In August 1943 at Quebec, after a year of hard diplomacy, Roosevelt signed a secret agreement reinstating the interchange of atomic energy information between the two countries.

The Quebec Agreement marked Britain’s ‘foot in the door’ as far as nuclear weapons development was concerned. At the time Britain fully expected that the door would be opened and that the breakdown in Anglo-American collaboration was a bureaucratic inconvenience arising largely from the militarization of the Manhattan Project. In retrospect, however, it became clear that without the belated intervention of Churchill with Stimson, the United States Secretary of War, the United States was intent on proceeding on its own. The explanation of the situation is multi-causal. The key issues were the United States’ suspicion of Britain’s post-war intentions whereas Britain failed to understand the concerns of the United States Administration in relation to post-war accountability to Congress. Britain also failed to comprehend the rate of scientific progress that the Americans were achieving.²

The wording of the Quebec Agreement made the pre-eminence of the United States position quite explicit. Indeed the reluctance of the United States to enter into the Agreement is clearly visible ‘between the lines’ of the text.³ Nevertheless the Quebec Agreement marked the formal recognition of a nuclear partnership that has survived the last 50 years.

The immediate effect was that some 50 British scientists and engineers moved to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project. Their work was confined to the uranium separation process as the British had no experience of plutonium production. The outcome, however, was practical co-operation in the race to develop a bomb. Historians differ about the importance of the British contribution but it certainly helped in solving the operational problems in the separation process that continued throughout 1944. The first test took place on 16 July 1945, just six days after the required amount of fissile plutonium became available, and gave a yield of 20 kilotons. A 13 kiloton, U-235, untested, bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and, on 9 August, a 19 kiloton, plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered five days later.

While the Quebec Agreement probably had little direct effect on the outcome of the Manhattan Project it was an event of considerable importance for Britain. It transformed Britain’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons. It moved the special Anglo–American relationship into the nuclear field and, for both these reasons, it had major implications for British post-war policy making. At its simplest the Quebec Agreement moved the development of British nuclear weapons out of the field of scientific research and munitions production and into the arena of international relations. From then on political factors were to be of increasing importance in the development of Britain’s independent nuclear capability.

In September 1944 Churchill reached an ‘agreement’ with Roosevelt aimed at retaining close post-war co-operation in the development of nuclear weapons. There is no documentary evidence of this agreement. It seems to have been no more than an understanding between the two heads of state. With Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 and Churchill’s fall from power shortly afterwards, this ‘agreement’ lapsed and when Attlee discussed nuclear cooperation with Truman in November 1945 no material progress was achieved. What evidence there is suggests that Truman, although Roosevelt’s deputy, was not party to all the nuclear information given to the President. His unwillingness to co-operate with Attlee may have been due, at least in part, to his lack of knowledge of the Roosevelt–Churchill ‘agreement’. Much more significantly, on 22 June 1946, the United States government passed the McMahon Act. This was the first formal move towards nuclear non-proliferation, and it effectively stopped co-operation on nuclear matters with all other states, including Britain. Wartime partnership had ceased and, of necessity, Britain embarked upon an independent nuclear programme.

Attlee authorised the development of nuclear weapons in January 1947. Both domestically and internationally it was widely assumed that Britain, as one of ‘The Big Three’, would develop its own nuclear capability. Attlee’s decision was essentially seen as a logical step that did not require justification υis à υis any specific threat. Indeed a ten-year no-war assumption had been adopted in the winter of 1946.⁴ Conversely, it would be simplistic to suggest that contemporary events were unimportant. The war had ended and United States forces had largely returned home. The Red Army remained in Europe, the communists took power in Hungary in 1947 and in Czechoslovakia in early 1948. There was no NATO, although the Brussels Treaty was signed in March 1948; nor was there any United States nuclear guarantee. The first wing of the USAF strategic bomber force did not become fully operational until 1947 and the United States possessed fewer than 50 nuclear bombs until 1948. Against that background Attlee’s decision could possibly be justified simply on the basis of Morgenthau’s theory that the irreducible minimum of state policy is the need to survive. On the other hand it can equally be argued that Great Powers, and those states that consider themselves to be Great Powers, have always sought to possess the ‘capital’ weapons of their time. In this respect Britain had no intention of renouncing its nuclear birthright.

While the background to the British decision to develop nuclear weapons was important, the events leading up to the first British test in October 1952 were equally significant in influencing the development of British nuclear weapons policy. That critical five-year period saw the transition of the wartime alliance of ‘The Big Three’ into the bipolar confrontation of the Cold War. While the origins of the Cold War are to be found in the post-war division of Europe (the outcome of Churchill’s famous ‘percentage’ agreement with Stalin in 1944) its development needs to be assessed against three key events: the announcement of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, the Berlin blockade, and the outbreak of the Korean War.

On 23 March 1947 President Truman gave a firm commitment to the political leadership of what the United States administration regarded as ‘the free peoples’: ‘I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.’⁵ Three months later Secretary of State Marshall unfolded a plan for financial aid in support of the new doctrine that was designed to ensure the recovery of the European economy: ‘It is logical that the United States should do what it is able to do to assist the return of normal economic health in a world without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.’⁶ Although the Marshall Plan claimed that, ‘Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos’, it nevertheless linked capitalist economic philosophy with Truman’s political ideology. Thus the ad hoc wartime ‘spheres of influence’ agreement ossified into two politico-economic camps with irreconcilable aims.

The Berlin blockade began on 30 March 1948 in response to currency reforms within the three Western zones of Germany. Initially the blockade was spasmodic. On 24 June, however, in response to the West’s decision to extend its currency reforms to West Berlin, all overland access to the city was denied. Rather than provoke a crisis on the ground, the West mounted a massive airlift which provided the city with all its needs until 12 May 1949 when the blockade was lifted. Soviet intransigence over Berlin had a profound impact in the West. In particular it reinforced the American perception that the Soviet Union was a belligerent, expansionist power. As a direct result of the crisis, the United States moved B-29 bombers to British bases and it was widely believed that these were armed with nuclear bombs. Although this was not correct it is significant to note that the bombers remained after the crisis and they were equipped with nuclear weapons by the middle of 1950. Although it was not an issue at the time it is of interest to recall that the decision to equip USAF bombers operating from British bases with nuclear, rather than conventional, bombs was a unilateral United States decision. From the summer of 1950, therefore, Britain became a United States strategic nuclear base not as a consequence of British or United States political policy but simply as a result of a change in the USAF’s operational capability. Britain was therefore involved de facto in the initial operational deployment of a nuclear deterrent from the outset, albeit passively.

In June 1950 troops from North Korea invaded the South. At the time it was widely believed that the North Koreans were acting on orders from Moscow. The analogies between Korea and Eastern Europe seemed obvious, especially to the Americans, who dispatched a large force under the aegis of the United Nations to support the South Koreans. By the autumn the United Nations forces had driven the North Koreans back over the 38th parallel and were intent upon the destruction of the North Korean regime. At that point the Chinese came to the aid of the North Koreans. Rather than escalate the conflict, the United States, to the relief of its European allies, chose to limit it and the war petered out in July 1953. The recourse to nuclear war was avoided. Although this eventuality was probably unlikely, the consequences of the conflict were important. The formation of the United Nation’s force ensured the reactivation of Western Europe’s military capability, albeit in many cases on an embryonic scale. More significantly it transformed the infant NATO into an operational military alliance.

In December 1950 Eisenhower was appointed the first Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) and was tasked with the creation of an integrated military structure for the Alliance. Four additional American divisions were deployed to Europe in the following year. In April 1949, when NATO was established it was estimated that the British, French and Americans could raise only four divisions in Germany compared with 175 Soviet divisions in East...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Historical Background to Britain’s Deterrent 1938–1956: From Nuclear Fission to the V-Bomber
• 2 The Development of Nuclear Strategy
• 3 The Decision to Deploy a British Nuclear Deterrent
• 4 The Decision to Replace Polaris
• 5 Arms Control: Problems, Progress and Proliferation
• 6 British Political Decision Making, CND and Public Opinion
• 7 The French Experience: A Comparison
• 8 Tomorrow’s World: The Post-Cold War Arena
• 9 The Past as Prologue: From the V-Bomber to Beyond Trident?
• Chronology
• Select Bibliography
• Index