FISSIONLINE 72

FISSIONLINE Issue 72

International Bulletin of Nuclear Veterans May/June 2024

SECRET PAPER EXPOSES BLOOD TEST SCANDAL OF UK'S NUCLEAR VETERANS Cold War hero signed his own death warrant Pgs 6,7

BBC 'ditched' Nuke Vets Pg 9 US back to 'duck and cover' pg 8

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This scandal will dwarf all others

I'm assuming defence minister Dr Andrew Murrison (pictured) is neither ignorant nor a fool. So what possessed him to stand up in parliament recently to declare

that there was “no evidence” that any of the thousands of servicemen who took part in Abomb tests were harmed by radiation.

This, as we have so often pointed out, flies in the face of all sense and reason.

Take the cases we have highlighted in this edition and the last, of two heroic RAF pilots who died of leukaemia after exposure to nuclear bomb tests Nobody with a brain could in all justice deny that radiation caused their illnesses.

But in the shameful spirit of denial that has been its hallmark, the Ministry of Defence flatly refuses to accept that the bomb tests were responsible.

When is the British Government finally going to admit the blindingly obvious that if you expose thousands of unprotected

men to fallout there will be inevitable health consequences?

If, as the evidence uncovered by Fissionline suggests, the reason for this obstinacy is a desire to protect the public purse from paying compensation, the repeated denials border on criminality.

One day the government will be forced to accept that the jig is up. Servicemen WERE harmed by radiation as a result of their participation in nuclear weapons tests.

The more they deny it the more stupid they will look when the truth is dragged kicking and screaming into the open as it assuredly will be. When that day comes, the fallout will make other notorious cover-ups look minor by comparison.

THE EDITOR

Writers wanted for Fissionline. Submissions to the Editor.

Fissionline Print Editions available Contact

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FISSIONLINE

FISSIONLINE

Tony Davis and Ken Charney were heroic spitfire pilots who covered themselves in glory defending these shores from Nazi tyranny.

They were later killed --- but it wasn't the Luftwaffe that shot them down; it was their own side, the British, who finally did for them.

Both men died in another war, the Cold War, piloting Caberra aircraft in the front line of Britain's nuclear weapon tests.

They contracted leukaemia after confronting the mushroom clouds created by the H-Bombs that put Britain back on the top table of international politics.

Both were certainly exposed to fallout which doctors were as sure as anyone could be was the cause of their illnesses.

But instead of moving heaven and earth to help them, they were cruelly abandoned by the RAF and the Ministry

of Defence who, in the words of a senior RAF insider, were "scared stiff" about opening the floodgates to claims for compensation.

Of course these two (of the Few) were not the only ones who had their lives cruelly curtailed by death and illness. There were many more, legions of ordinary squaddies and sailors, who suffered every bit as much by witnessing nuclear bomb tests.

Yet obdurate MoD mandarins cling on to discredited surveys by an undoubtedly biased quango, financed by the Ministry of Defence, to cover up the truth.

But this entrenched postion is slowly crumbling. Documents, both official and unofficial, are revealing the full extent of the UK's perfidy in its conduct of the nuclear tests.

Just one of those documents is unveiled in this edition, and there are many more to come, including new evidence that discloses a significant flaw in the cornerstone of the MoD's position.

This new evidence is being assessed by some serious people and Fissionline, as always, will be the first to bring you the news. For forty years we have been battling away, but now at last a possible chink in the MoD's armour has been uncovered. We will let you know the details as and when they become available

Tony Davis

Ken Charney fissionline@gmail.com

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Top brass refused blood tests on nuke servicemen because they were afraid of leukaemia legal claims

AVM JOHN GRANDY MILITARY commanders overruled calls by scientists to administer blood tests to 4,500 servicemen taking part in Christmas Island nuclear bomb tests, according to a declassified document.

They were worried that if someone was given a blood test and who later developed leukaemia it would be difficult to disprove claims that this was due to radiation.

The revelation makes a nonsense of persistent UK Government claims that servicemen were not exposed to radiation during British nuclear teats in Australia and the Pacific in the 1950s.

By Alan Rimmer The document is the record of a high-powered secret meeting between the military, scientists and doctors at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, on July 15th 1958.

Just weeks earlier, on April 28, 1958, Britain had exploded a huge H-Bomb off the coast of Christmas Island where thousands of servicemen cowered in the open wearing just normal khaki fatigues.

The document “Radiological Safety Precautions at fissionline@gmail.com

Christmas Island,” is the minutes of the meeting, chaired by the Grapple Task Force Commander Air ViceMarshal John Grandy.

He told the meeting that blood examinations for servicemen had been under consideration ‘for some time.’

But the problem was now more pressing because Britain was planning a further series of four nuclear tests, codename Grapple Z. AWRE scientist Dr J. Lynch said he was concerned about the “political repercussions” if charges of negligence “however unfounded” could be proved.

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He added: “People with

blood count was of any use

But because the scientists at

counts habitually above or

because, according to the

AWRE insisted on them for

below normal or those with

minutes:-

their people a compromise

any blood abnormality must

“If a person was examined

had to be reached.

be excluded from the

and found to be normal

He proposed that only

possibility of radiation.”

before posting to to

servicemen working in the

He said for this reason it was

Christmas Island and who

forward areas where they

an integral part of the medical

later developed leukaemia, it

might be subjected to

examination given to all

might be difficult to refute the

radiation hazards should be

AWRE employees.

allegation that this was due

given blood counts before

Dr Lynch was convinced that

to radiation received at

the commencement of the

a blood count was of value

Christmas Island.”

tests.

because it would prejudice

AVM Grandy said it was

The question of whether all

the case if no blood count

“clearly impossible” to

service replacement

was taken and a person

subject all service personnel

personnel posted to

became ill later.

at Christmas `Island for

Christmas Island should be

Air Commodore R.H. Stamm,

Grapple Z, a total of over

given blood samples was

who ran an RAF hospital said

4,500, to be given blood

shelved and referred to the

he was not convinced that a

counts.

Air Ministry.

Countdown to Doom! Christmas Island squaddies cover their eyes seconds before the Grapple Y blast fissionline@gmail.com

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The hero who signed the minu THE MAN who signed the surrounded by earth and and all around him. minutes of the secret meeting sandbags, the force of the Suddenly the air was rent by refusing blood tests to nuke explosion caused the the biggest bang he had ever servicemen was Squadron reinforced structure to creak heard in his life, so loud that it Leader Ken Charney, RAF and groan like a live thing. forced him to the ground as personal assistant to Task Just 15 seconds after the though slapped with a giant Force Commander John blast, and following hand.

Grandy As he A highly-decorated struggled to WW2 Spitfire ace, stand, he was one of the another bang, most experienced this time not pilots on the isle so loud, but it and well knew the still forced him dangers he faced. to his knees He later said that as the air he always felt like shook once 'a dead man again. walking' since the The final huge Grapple Y scene in this explosion when he apocalyptic was required to production witness the arrived within awesome might of seconds: a the bomb from a blast wave so small steel bunker powerful it positioned just 15 swept him off miles from ground his feet zero. flinging him Cocooned in the backwards in Squadron Leader Ken Charney metal shell he a dazed heap observed its power through a instructions, Charney forced onto the hard unforgiving coral pinhole aperture in the wall open the heavy metal door of terrain. which allowed him to view an his bunker and went out into Asked later to describe the inverted image of the the open. blast, Charney said it wasn’t explosion.

He described it as like so much the wind but the And even though the bunker, stepping into a vacuum such deep-throated seismic growl with its inch-thick sides, was was the stillness of the island accompanying it that seemed fissionline@gmail.com

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utes of his own death warrant to shake every molecule in his body.

Soon after, the bright sunshine was obliterated by a sudden squall which deluged him in a hard-stinging gust of rain that

coral reef leaving a deep gash which never seemed to properly heal.

Mrs Charney, who was at his side throughout his long illness said: “He always believed the wound was the entry point for the radiation that killed him.

"He said the lagoons were poisoned by that bomb and that hundreds, June and Ken Charney in Andorra if not thousands, disappeared no sooner than it must have been affected." arrived.

"Not long after he left the RAF, But strangely enough several Ken began to lose weight and he years later as he was stricken began to lose his hair. But he with the first signs of the blood would never go to the doctor cancer that would eventually because he said he was kill him, it wasn’t his close frightened about what they might proximity to Grapple Y that find." stuck in his mind.

As his health continued to It was the recreational swim he deteriorate, the couple retired to later took in one of the warm the small principality of Andorra, lagoons that dotted the island. 3,000-feet up in the Pyranees.

As he left the water his right He died several years later aged leg caught a sharp outcrop of 62. fissionline@gmail.com

An inept local doctor signed the cause of death as heart failure.

But when Mrs Charney returned to England an RAF colleague, who was by then a Harley Street physician, reviewed the case and established that Mr Charnet had in fact died from leukaemia.

On the strength of that Mrs Charney was able to apply for a war widows pension.

She said: "At first they turned me down, but after I wrote a letter to the Times, they relented and awarded me the pension.

But it was a hard fight and Ken would have been mortified. He gave his life for his country, and it was no way to treat a hero."

ROLL OF HONOUR Spitfire Ace Charney wreaked havoc with the luftwaffe over France in 1941 for which he was awarded a DFC. He earned another citation for his skill in the 'Battle of Malta' when he shot down seven enemy fighters. Later, flying over Falaise in 1943 he was the first to spot the German 7th Army and his dramatic call to "send out the entire airforce" resulted in a massacre that helped cripple Hitler's war machine.

Churchill sent him a personal note of congratulation.

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US to bring back 'Duck and Cover' policy to protect schoolkids from nuclear attack Faced with growing concerns about a nuclear attack from terrorists or bombs smuggled from places like North Korea the Americans are considering bringing back a 'Duck and cover' policy to protect schoolchildren. according to the Atlantic newspaper.

In the 1950s there were concerns that in the event of a surprise atomic attack, it would be difficult to identify the millions of children killed while at school.

The US government solved the crisis by issuing militarystyle identity ‘dog tags.’ The areas the dog tags were distributed, Utah and Arizona, were already being used for a

'duck and cover' policy whereby children were given drills on how to duck under their school desks in the event of a nuclear attack.

The locals strongly supported the continental atomic testing program taking place just a few score miles away.

Their pride was reflected in their children who were encouraged to treat the dog tags like ‘medals of honour.’

Some towns celebrated the close proximity of the testing sites by dressing up their children in A-bomb outfits during pageants.

There were rumours that some livestock and possibly a few people in fallout areas had developed lesions or sores, but

fissionline@gmail.com

the public remained unconcerned enough that children played in the grey and pink “snow,” writing with their fingers on the windshields of cars.

This enthusiasm, however, soon turned to disillusion.

Farmers reported more cattle becoming sick; in some areas whole herds were wiped out.

The grisly toll extended to their calves hundreds of which were born deformed. It wasn’t long before the human population began to suffer.

Scores of ‘Downwinders’, those living downwind of the A-bomb blasts, were hit by leukaemias and other cancers.

Some are still fighting for compensation.

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Riddle over reason BBC ditched Britain's nuclear veterans IN THE early 1980s the media, and principally the BBC, became involved in fighting for justice for Britain's nuclear veterans.

Hundreds of exservicemn came forward with complaints of cancers and other crippling illnesses. Compelling evidence supporting the veterans was produced by various experts like Birmingham university's Alice Stewart and America's Rosalie Bertell.

Politicians became involved and the pressure mounted as more and more men came forward. Then it was discovered the veterans' children were suffering from a range of illnesses that could be linked to radiation.

Powerful follow-up programmes by the BBC, including broadcasts like Children of the Bomb, and The Truth of Christmas island ratcheted up the pressure until it looked as though the Government would finally cave in to demands for a full public inquiry.

But suddenly in the mid-1980s the BBC virtually stopped its coverage, for reasons that have never been explained.

Ken McGinley, founder and President of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans' Association was convinced that pressure was put on the BBC at the highest levels.

He said: "After being all over the story for months the BBC suddenly lost interest. No reason was given, but I have always thought pressure was brought to bear by the government.

"The producer, whom I became very friendly with, suddenly wouldn't discuss it.

In fact he said it was better if I fissionline@gmail.com

didn't contact them any more.

It was very strange."

Fissionline contacted the producer for comment, but he didn't reply.

It wouldn't be the first time the BBC was 'gagged'. In 1954 Winston Churchill banned the BBC from broadcasting any programme about nuclear weapons and the effects of fallout. According to declassified papers Churchill issued secret instructions to the postmaster general, Earl de la Warr, after hearing the BBC was preparing a programme about the H-Bomb. The ban was imposed in 1955 and continued under the 1960s Labour Government.

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"Shrill" British were kept over disastrous Cold War f At the height of the Cold War, the USA ruthlessly commandeered air bases all over Europe to accommodate its growing fleet of nuclear bombers.

Lakenheath in Sussex was just one of several bases in the UK, while other European countries, notably France, Germany and Turkey also played host to their powerful American allies.

But the US military was loathe to sharing information about what was happening at these bases, especially when it came to accidents involving nuclear weapons.

One of the most serious nuclear incidents which was covered up occurred in 1958 in Morocco which saw a B-47 bomber carrying a Mark 36 H-bomb erupt in flames on the runway.

Only heroics by a team off firefighters prevented a

disaster, but according to recently released classified documents US military chiefs kept the incident secret from the French, who had leased the base to the Americans, and the British, their principal ally.

One document from an official of the US Bureau of European Affairs dismisses the British as

“Considering how shrill our stolid British allies have been on the subject of nuclear accidents, albeit with political motivations…there is an understandable reluctance here to question the 16th AF (Air Force), or any other part of the SAC (Strategic Air Command.)

The documents also make

H-Bomb loaded B-47 takes off “shrill’ when he visited the base a few weeks after the incident.

Bureau Director, Mr B. Timmons, says in his report: fissionline@gmail.com

clear that France was not informed of the accident even though it granted the US territory in Morocco to build the airbase capable of

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in the dark by US military fire at NATO H-Bomb base deploying the B-36 and B-47 bombers.

By 1954, the US had secretly stockpiled nuclear weapons at the base, also without telling the British or the French.

The incident occurred at the US military base at Sidi Slimane, 70 miles north of Casablanca, when one of the wheels on a B-47 bomber carrying a four-ton Mark 36 atomic bomb caught fire on the runway.

The fire spread to the bomber’s fuel tank and the plane erupted in flames. Firefighters tackled the blaze but couldn’t prevent it reaching the bomb The commanding general at Sidi Slimane ordered that the base be evacuated immediately.

Fortunately, the explosives in the bomb burned out but did not detonate.

According to an accident report the Mark 36 hydrogen bomb and parts of the B-47 melted into “a slab of slag material weighing approximately 8,000 pounds (about 4 ton), approximately 6 to 8 feet wide and 12 to 15 feet in length with a thickness

B-47s strategic bombers parked at Sidi Slimane in August 1954

of 10 to 12 inches.”

The State Department preferred not to broadcast the news about the incident since “a public statement might be distorted by Soviet propaganda and create needless anxiety in Europe,” No one in Morocco knew of the incident at that time fissionline@gmail.com

except Morocco’s King Mohammed V. Timmons, who clearly had more faith in the Moroccans than America's NATO allies commented: “I was very impressed with our successful handling of the situation with the Moroccans, who are neither stolid or allied to us.

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"Nothing unusual" in nuclear bomb exercises involving Belarus, says Putin RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has said that there was nothing unusual in a planned exercise involving nuclear weapons in southern Russia.

In a statement released to Reuters he said the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons was part of a military exercise after threats from France, Britain and the United States.

"There is nothing unusual here, this is planned work," Putin said, state news agency TASS reported. "It is training."

Russia's defence ministry, in its announcement explicitly linked the nuclear exercise to "provocative statements and threats by certain Western officials against the Russian Federation".

Putin said last year that Moscow had transferred some tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, Russia's first move of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Putin said that he had suggested to Belarus that it take part in one of the parts of the nuclear exercise.

"We hold them regularly," Putin said. "This time they are held in three stages. At the second stage, Belarusian colleagues will join our joint

actions."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, speaking alongside Putin, said that this was the third such training exercise.

"There were probably dozens in Russia, so we synchronized.

strategic nuclear warheads, though there is uncertainty about exact figures for such weapons due to a lack of transparency.

There is still much uncertainty among arms controls experts about what weapons Russia has supplied to Belarus and the nature of their storage.

Typically, it would take some time to create the storage, security and barracks for such a deployment and Russian nuclear weapons are controlled by the Russian defence ministry's 12th Main Directorate (known as 12th GUMO). It is unclear if 12th GUMO is in Belarus, according to Western experts.

Nuke allies Putin and Lukashenko No power has used nuclear weapons in war And the general staffs, as the since the United States Russian defence minister told unleashed the first atomic me, have already begun to bomb attacks on the Japanese execute these instructions," cities of Hiroshima and Lukashenko said.Russia and Nagasaki in 1945. the United States were by far The Pentagon said recently that the world's biggest nuclear it had not seen a change to powers, holding more than Russia's disposition of its 10,600 of the world's 12,100 strategic nuclear forces, despite nuclear warheads. what it called "irresponsible China has the third-largest rhetoric" from Moscow nuclear arsenal, followed by detailing plans for exercises France and Britain. involving the deployment of Russia has about 1,558 nonnon-strategic nuclear weapons. fissionline@gmail.com

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COMING SOON! New revised edition

MAJOR SCREEN ADAPTATION!

Between Heaven and Hell

"Above him the blue heavens, clear and serene, below the bomb rose to meet him like fumeroles from the bowels of hell" Read the sensational true story of Britain's bomb by the award-winning journalist who was the first to break the news of its dreadful effects on thousands of servicemen and their children

ALAN RIMMER

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FISSIONLINE FOUNDING FATHERS Ken McGinley

Roy Sefton

Archie Ross

Barbara Penney

Albert Isaksen

Bob Wells

Mike Rubery

Fissionline is an independent newspaper with no official ties or affiliations. Got something to say? A story to tell? Contact fissionline@gmail.com Or phone 07801 184011

ADVISOR TO NUCLEAR COMMUNITY CHARITY FUND TO SET UP NEW 'BNTVA COLLECTION' COMPANY

NCCF Advisor Nigel Heaps

Nuclear 'fixer' Nigel 'Nige' Heaps MBE (pictured) is setting up a new organisation with the rump of the old British Nuclear Tests Veterans' Association (BNTVA) which has been mired in controversy after the departure of its highly respected former CEO Ceri Marsh.

Heaps, is helping four

former trustees of the BNTVA to set up an organisation whose aim is to preserve the legacy of the nuclear veterans for future generations.

To be known as 'The BNTVA Collection' they hope to establish an advisory board to help advise on the future direction.

Meanwhile the Nuclear Community Charity Fund (NCCF) has given the trustee remnants a home (albeit a small one) in its journal Exposure.

The NCCF was set up to manage £6 million in grants from the government to assist nuclear veterans and the wider nuclear community. fissionline@gmail.com

The trustees have delegated the day to day running of the charity to Heaps's company, BH Associates, who report back to the Board of trustees and are therefore deemed to be key management personnel.

In the 2022 financial year BH Associates invoiced £82,500 for their services.

Most of the money awarded to the NCCF has been invested with finance company Black Rock.

More than £1 million was used to pay for research by Brunel University while a figure well north of £3million is still with Black Rock.