Heligoland (28 page)

The person selected to obtain readings was Major F. Taggart of the innocuous-sounding ‘Explosive Storage and Transport Committee’, based at Woolwich in an enclave codenamed B43. Contrary to press claims, not quite all of Heligoland’s tunnels had been blown up in April 1947. One area remained: the only civilian air-raid shelter, known as the Spirale. Situated in the centre of the eastern side of the rock, it was a deep double spiral tunnel which led up to the surface of the Oberland. The tunnels were fitted with three tiers of bunks all the way up, and there the whole civilian population used to shelter when the island was bombed. A now declassified (but hitherto unopened) Foreign Office document (FO 371, German General Economic, 1947) reveals that on 5 November 1947 Taggart wrote a letter in which he clearly stated that it was desirous ‘to obtain detailed information about the area covered by a radius of 200 yards from the Spirale which is adjacent to the north-east harbour’. He then went on to request a large-scale map, ‘25 inches to the mile at least’.

During the summer of 1947 the Explosive Storage and Transport Committee (which seems to have been an integral part of Penney’s HER) became determined to keep this new seismic data from other scientists. The ‘Big Bang’ on 18 April had been a fairly high-profile event, and the Royal Society had been allowed to take its own seismic observations (as they had at some other large demolitions at Soltan on the German mainland). Their agent, in that respect, which had obtained permission for them, was the Department of Geodesy and Geophysics at the University of Cambridge. That department’s Dr Edward Bullard had also attended the April ‘Big Bang’. Having heard that Major Taggart was intending to conduct some unusual experiments on Heligoland in early September 1947, both the Royal Society and Dr Bullard wrote to the Foreign Office in London to ask them to forward their request to attend that autumn’s test explosion. The letter of recommendation, dated 14 August 1947, from the Foreign Office’s London headquarters to the German Section, is particularly illuminating because it revealed for the first time that German experts under Allied protection were cooperating in these test activities in Heligoland.
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It stated: ‘You will remember that valuable scientific observations were made on Heligoland early this year by British scientists from the Royal Society, with the cooperation of Research Branch CCG and German experts.’ With regard to the demolitions which it understood were due to take place in September 1947 it said that the Royal Society again wished to be present to undertake extensive seismological observations of its own: ‘We presume the Research Branch will make the necessary arrangements as before. Please ensure that the British and German scientists engaged in this operation receive all the facilities necessary to make that a success.’

However, in sharp contrast to their cooperativeness earlier in the year, the Research Branch were now utterly unwilling to encourage witnesses to the unusual explosions that Major Taggart was preparing to conduct. In a rather disgruntled letter of 29 August 1947, responding to the Foreign Office request, it refused to cooperate, claiming that such visitors could not be allowed because there was an acute shortage of rations! The author of this letter was clearly harassed, and in the course of his annoyed ramblings let slip that the department already had enough to do with other ‘Matchbox’ projects on which German boffins were employed. These were technicians who were brought over to the British side immediately after the end of the war. Some of them were atomic scientists who became involved in Britain’s own atomic bomb-making project.

Sir Geoffrey Taylor, chairman of the Civil Defence Research Committee, had been influential in another respect. It was he who, having realised how invaluable was Penney’s special knowledge of the behaviour of shock waves, earlier recommended he be appointed Chief Superintendent of Armament Research; and so, in effect, the head of Britain’s A-bomb programme. Penney was fascinated by a phenomenon called ‘base surge’ which he had witnessed at Bikini Atoll. In an Atomic Weapons Research Establishment report, written in January 1948, he defined it as: ‘When a column of spray and mist is thrown into the air by an underwater explosion it subsequently collapses under gravity and spreads over the water surface, giving a so-called Base Surge.’
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In the early years of Britain’s A-bomb research development Penney envisaged the most likely targets for such a weapon in wartime as being estuaries and harbours full of enemy shipping. With that in mind on 19 May 1948 he had written to Vice-Admiral Daniel, the Controller of the Navy: ‘Recently I have been trying to work out the minimum depth of water which will give a base surge for an atomic bomb of present design.’ Describing the need for the research, he had admitted in his January report: ‘It is of importance to know the laws governing the collapse and spread of the column, and for this reason Trial Charybdis was devised.’

A released Foreign Office paper, FO 371, indicates that Heligoland’s Dune isle was the first choice of site for the experiment. On 13 August 1947 it stated that ‘Major Taggart is conducting experiments on Dune in September of this year’. That was confirmed in a September 1947 Atomic Weapons Research Establishment report of the ‘Charybdis’ trial, the stated purpose of which was to monitor the outward movement of a falling vertical column of water which had been ‘formed by atomisation’. This AWRE report, now available, clearly states: ‘It was considered that the trial might be carried out with surplus naval depth charges and the possibility was examined of carrying one or more experiments on the 20,000lb scale near the island of Heligoland during the progress of other trials for the Explosive Storage and Transport Committee.’ But instead, for undisclosed reasons, it was decided to do the test detonation in shallow waters 1,800 yards off Foulness Island on the northern edge of the Thames estuary. The apparatus used in the first Charybdis detonation consisted of conventional naval torpex depth charges together with cordex fuse-wire (for instantaneous detonation), elements of which – other than the precise hexagonal lattice pattern in which they were closely packed – were most similar to those used by Woosnam on Heligoland just a few months earlier. The first such test explosion occurred at Foulness on 3 October 1947.

Although notionally just an ‘enclave’ within the Army’s Shoeburyness range, as early as November 1945 the Foulness range adjacent to that had been prepared for Penney’s HER team to use for experimental work on bombs and shells. By 1947 Foulness was effectively an AWRE range with its own blast measurement group. In 1950 actual radiation explosions were being carried out there. On 2 May of that year the Superintendent of Armament Research at Foulness wrote a letter to the Admiralty’s Director of Physical Research, claiming ‘we would be happy to agree’ to it being used for the Admiralty’s ‘next series of radiation measurement experiments’. Heligoland seems to have be lucky, insofar as it was never used for actual radiation tests.

Irrespective of whether or not Britain was contemplating using Dune as a shallow-water site for a base surge test explosion, there is no doubt that on at least two occasions after the war chemical weapons tests were carried out on Heligoland. One type was white phosphorus, which was dropped at low level by RAF bombers. The evidence for this comes from Heligoland fishermen. One night rough seas in the Bight forced several Heligoland lobster boats to seek shelter in the harbour there – although the island was deserted and access to it forbidden. The fishermen heard the drone of approaching aircraft, and then several waves of bombers roared overhead at low level. As the first wave passed they heard a whistling sound as bombs fell through the air on to the already ruined Unterland. Then the pitch-black night sky was suddenly illuminated by numerous interlocking flashes of blinding light as the phosphorus bombs exploded, throwing off enormous heat and showers of cascading offshoots which fell all around the open, wooden lobster boats. Even now the surviving fishermen can readily recall their fear during that bombing trial. One, Karl Bloch, claims: ‘When the next wave of bombers came in they were flying so low, and the light was so intense, I could actually clearly see the face of the pilot of one of them as it approached and sped over.’ It seemed the Air Ministry was prepared to try out almost any type of weapon on the defenceless island.

Another hitherto unknown incident recalled by some older islanders occurred in the late 1940s. They make the astonishing claim that Britain had planned to explode a 100-ton ammonium nitrate bomb on the island. This scheme came to light when the ship carrying the chemicals for that trial exploded in the English Channel. Even so, they believe, other chemicals were saved and did reach Heligoland. Far-fetched it might seem but in fact compelling written evidence does exist in the Public Record Office in Kew, verifying the truth of their account. The declassified document AVIA 6/18589, written in February 1949, shows in words, diagrams and photographs that a huge chemical apparatus
was
assembled and burnt off on the island by British technicians. Since the early 1930s, when it became known that ammonium nitrate exploded when rapidly heated, it had been used as a constituent of various explosives. It was often described as a ‘fertiliser bomb’, but it had rarely been exploded on a large scale by itself. This February 1949 Royal Aircraft Establishment report,
Analysis of Gas Samples from the Heligoland Nitrate Trials of Ammonium Nitrate
, shows that a working party had been sent to the island to use specially constructed instruments to obtain gas samples of the atmosphere around fires burning in a bunker.

In April 1947 the fortifications and U-boat shelters had been destroyed and thus the Potsdam terms fulfilled. This then was surely the time for Britain to stop all its military activity on Heligoland. Yet in some respects its involvement with the island was increasing. A memo in the secret Foreign Office file FO 371 (German General Economic), dated 1 December 1947, reported that: ‘The Explosive Storage and Transport Committee’s
series of explosives trials
[author’s emphasis] on Heligoland and Dune has now been completed and all naval and military personnel and equipment were evacuated to Cuxhaven on 27 November 1947. The islands are required by the Air Ministry for bombing practice from 1 December 1947.’

The public were never informed that the RAF’s 10-ton Grand Slam bombs only achieved spectacular successes against a few U-boat shelters; on others where the concrete was thicker – as at Heligoland, Farge and Bergen – they had virtually no effect. With a perceived need to urgently develop a better and ‘tropicalised’ version of this weapon against Japan, the war in Europe having been won, the Chiefs of Staff initially met on 3 June 1945 to consider an RAF proposal for using Heligoland as a live bombing range at which to improve it. Seemingly Heligoland’s U-boat pens were of interest because they were the first Germany built with the especially heavy roofs. For the Air Force the unfortunately named Sir Douglas Evill said use of the island as a bombing range was urgently required until the defeat of Japan. Discussing the matter again on 14 June the Chiefs were persuaded by Sir Charles Portal to accept their argument on the grounds that there were ‘increasing difficulties in retaining existing ranges, and of obtaining new ones’. Two days later the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, informed the Air Ministry that he had no objection to the island being used as a live bombing range.

Peace had already been declared in the Far East when Project ‘Harken’ went ahead. Poor visibility over the Bight prevented it commencing until 1 January 1946. Modified Lancasters of 15 Squadron flew from Suffolk to drop various types of 12,000lb Tallboys from various heights.
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In 1945 it involved American forces based in Britain: the 8th Army Air Force using B-17s. In March 1946 Project ‘Ruby’, their name for dropping experimental earthquake bombs on Heligoland, was joined by B-29 aircraft which had just arrived in the UK and were stationed at Mildenhall – the same base as 15 Squadron. Declassified photos now show that even if dropped from 20,000ft the earthquake bombs scarcely had any effect on the U-boat shelter. Nevertheless the Anglo-American trials continued until July 1946, and it was during the course of the last of them that Captain Skipworth’s reconnaissance team was nearly wiped out.

On 9 August 1946, just a fortnight after the Heligoland trials ended, the Air Ministry sent Penney detailed specifications for Britain’s envisaged free-fall atomic bomb – which was to be called ‘Blue Danube’. Those design requirements were much influenced by the capacity of the Lincolns (modified Lancasters) which might need to convey the bombs until June 1953, when the V-bombers were expected to enter service. Thus Penney was told: ‘The bomb should not exceed 290 inches in height, 60 in diameter; its weight must not exceed 10,000lb; and it must be suitable for release between 20,000ft and 50,000ft, at 150–500 knots.’ In October 1947 it was added that, in order to produce an effective underwater explosion, the bomb would need to withstand the shock of impact with water.
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Meanwhile, despite the bombing range being temporarily closed while Woosnam rigged Heligoland for the ‘Big Bang’, the development of the Tallboy bomb continued. By September 1946 15 Squadron had been switched to dropping trial versions of it on the U-boat assembly shelter at Farge, near Bremen. At the Shoeburyness experimental establishment ballistic trials were conducted on models of the fuselage; and static conventional explosions of the Tallboy were done on the mudflats there, near the AWRE’s Foulness range.
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Design and prototype production was now shifting away from Tallboy’s originators, Vickers-Armstrong, towards the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) working on an agency basis for Penney’s team. This meant that even Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the Grand Slam, was largely sidelined, although his views were sought. His diaries – now open at Imperial College, London – reveal that on 19–21 July 1945 he visited bomb-damaged Cuxhaven, and might have gone to Heligoland; on 26 October 1945 he had a ‘Meeting at Thames House – official introduction to the [Secret Intelligence] Service’; on 30 October 1945 he attended a ‘Tallboy Panel (Experiments)’; and as late as 7 February 1952 he was corresponding with the RAE at Farnborough who had requested Tallboy and Grand Slam technical data from him.
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