Operation Grapple

Operation Grapple was an operation that the British Military was involved with at Christmas island.  It was dealing with nuclear testing.  Now that last sentence is probably one of the most important ones in this story. It was the British military looking at nuclear weapons. This puts it right in my sweet spot. An investigation about nuclear weapons.  So, to give some more details:

“On the 2nd September 1958, a Valiant from 49 Squadron, Bomber Command, dropped the second most powerful Hydrogen Bomb, detonated by the UK, close to Christmas Island”

So why am I bringing his to you?  Well, we looked at the planes involved in the previous blog, so why not bring the whole of the mission to you now?  Under the FoI act we can find out a lot about what is going on and what has happened since. We can find out all about what has happened in that mission plus a lot of cool stuff, to boot!

So what were the operational procedures involved in the case?  Well, here they are. These are a list of documents which allow us to see what the testing was for and what it was being used to get (Look down the documents and see the attachements).  Makes for some interesting reading.  In fact, one australian man wrote this article about the whole affair.  It good to see how much information was being held and does give us a pretty good idea of what they were up to.

Here is some of the operations that the HM Ships Scarborough Cavalier and Ulysses had when they were involved in this test. Again interesting reading.  It also shows what we can dig up if we ask the right questions. It also shows that we can use small FoI requests to build a bigger picture. Here we also see more information about how the flights were operating (You have to look at the response and look at the links in the response too).

Again, a quick thought about all of this makes you think why we are looking into one specific operation of this whole nuclear test.  Its because this one went wrong…  This specific mission may have affected the health of many service men at the time of the mission.  This is something, again, which shows how the FoI can shed light on a very difficult issue and shows what people actually know.  So, here is some of the information based upon the court investigation and some of the guidance given to the sips as part of their wash down procedures.

I have only given you some of the main points, with regards to this issue. You can find out here all the other things that people have found out about Operation grapple.  The reasons that I am bring this to you is because these men and women, who have been affected by radiation, have used this to show what has happened and what they can do to help. Good init?