Political leaders gather for a portrait atop the Citadel of Quebec during the second Quebec Conference in 1943. Clockwise, from top-left are: Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; the Earl of Athlone, Governor General of Canada; and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Vickers Valiant bomber
Handley Page Victor bomber
Avro Vulcan bomber
Operation Buffalo nuclear test at Maralinga
Blue Streak
A Polaris missile is fired by HMS Revenge
The Trident nuclear submarine HMS Victorious departs HMNB Clyde
Yellow Sun, Britain's first production thermonuclear bomb
WE.177A sectioned instructional example of an operational round

In 1952, the United Kingdom was the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons, after the United States and Soviet Union.[1] and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.[2]

The UK initiated a nuclear weapons programme, codenamed Tube Alloys, during the Second World War.[3] At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was merged with the American Manhattan Project.[4] The British contribution to the Manhattan Project saw British scientists participate in most of its work.[5] The British government considered nuclear weapons to be a joint discovery,[6] but the American Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) restricted other countries, including the UK, from access to information about nuclear weapons.[7] Fearing the loss of Britain's great power status, the UK resumed its own project,[8] now codenamed High Explosive Research.[9] On 3 October 1952, it detonated an atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands in Australia in Operation Hurricane.[10] Eleven more British nuclear weapons tests in Australia were carried out over the following decade, including seven British nuclear tests at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957.[11]

The British hydrogen bomb programme demonstrated Britain's ability to produce thermonuclear weapons in the Operation Grapple nuclear tests in the Pacific,[12] and led to the amendment of the McMahon Act.[13] Since the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement, the US and the UK have cooperated extensively on nuclear security matters. The nuclear Special Relationship between the two countries has involved the exchange of classified scientific data and fissile materials such as uranium-235 and plutonium.[14][15] After the cancellation of the Blue Streak in 1960,[16] the US supplied the UK with Polaris missiles and nuclear submarine technology.[17][18] The US also supplied the Royal Air Force and British Army of the Rhine with nuclear weapons under Project E in the form of aerial bombs, missiles, depth charges and artillery shells until 1992.[19][20] Nuclear-capable American aircraft have been based in the UK since 1949,[21] but the last US nuclear weapons were withdrawn in 2006.[22] In 1982, the Polaris Sales Agreement was amended to allow the UK to purchase Trident II missiles.[23] Since 1998, when the UK decommissioned its tactical WE.177 bombs, the Trident has been the only operational nuclear weapons system in British service.[24]


1913

H. G. Wells coins the term "atomic bomb" in his novel The World Set Free.[25]

1932

1933

1938

1939

1940

1941

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

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1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1956

1957

1958

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1961

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1963

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1984

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2006

2016

Notes

  1. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974b, p. 498.
  2. ^ a b c d e Self 2010, p. 195.
  3. ^ a b Gowing 1964, pp. 106–111.
  4. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 277.
  5. ^ Gowing 1964, pp. 226–227, 250–258.
  6. ^ Goldberg 1964, p. 410.
  7. ^ a b Gowing & Arnold 1974a, pp. 106–108.
  8. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974a, p. 184.
  9. ^ Cathcart 1995, pp. 24, 48, 57.
  10. ^ Goldberg 1964, pp. 409–429.
  11. ^ a b "Key events in the UK atmospheric nuclear test programme" (PDF). UK Ministry of Defence. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 October 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2009.
  12. ^ Botti 1987, pp. 199–201.
  13. ^ Botti 1987, pp. 234–236.
  14. ^ Baylis 1995, pp. 75–76.
  15. ^ Aldrich 1998, pp. 333–339.
  16. ^ Moore 2010, pp. 48, 99–100.
  17. ^ a b Moore 2010, pp. 236–239.
  18. ^ a b Jones 2017, pp. 413–415.
  19. ^ Stoddart 2012, pp. 109, 313.
  20. ^ Moore 2010, pp. 132–133.
  21. ^ a b Young 2007, p. 130.
  22. ^ a b Borger, Julian (26 June 2008). "US removes its nuclear arms from Britain". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  23. ^ a b Stoddart 2014, pp. 197–199.
  24. ^ a b "WE 177 Type B (950lb), Training". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  25. ^ Farmelo 2013, pp. 15–24.
  26. ^ Clark 1961, p. 9.
  27. ^ Gowing 1964, pp. 17–18.
  28. ^ Cockburn & Ellyard 1981, pp. 52–55.
  29. ^ Clark 1961, p. 5.
  30. ^ Clark 1961, p. 11.
  31. ^ Bernstein 2011, p. 240.
  32. ^ Zimmerman 1995, p. 262.
  33. ^ Wheeler, John A. (1 November 1967). "The Discovery of Fission – Mechanism of Fission". Physics Today. 20 (11): 49–52. Bibcode:1967PhT....20k..43F. doi:10.1063/1.3034021.
  34. ^ Rhodes 1986, p. 310.
  35. ^ Gowing 1964, pp. 41–42.
  36. ^ Clark 1961, p. 65.
  37. ^ Gowing 1964, pp. 77–80.
  38. ^ Gowing 1964, p. 439.
  39. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 327.
  40. ^ Gowing 1964, p. 372.
  41. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 372–373.
  42. ^ Gowing 1964, p. 379.
  43. ^ a b Wynn 1997, p. 577.
  44. ^ Goldberg 1964, p. 417.
  45. ^ Paul 2000, pp. 80–83.
  46. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974a, pp. 105–108.
  47. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974a, pp. 40–41.
  48. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974a, pp. 181–184.
  49. ^ Young 2007, pp. 120–122.
  50. ^ Wynn 1997, pp. 46–48.
  51. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974a, pp. 248–252.
  52. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 587.
  53. ^ a b c Self 2010, p. 194.
  54. ^ a b Wynn 1997, p. 588.
  55. ^ Botti 1987, pp. 74–75.
  56. ^ Botti 1987, p. 61.
  57. ^ Grant 2011, pp. 58–62.
  58. ^ Cathcart 1995, p. 253.
  59. ^ Gowing & Arnold 1974b, pp. 497–498.
  60. ^ Baylis 1995, pp. 160–163, 179–185.
  61. ^ Arnold & Smith 2006, pp. 124–128.
  62. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 603.
  63. ^ Self 2010, pp. 50–55.
  64. ^ Pringle, Peter (24 March 1994). "Britain's H-bomb triumph a hoax: Patriotic scientists created an elaborate and highly secret bluff to disguise dud weapons". The Independent. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  65. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 605.
  66. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 607.
  67. ^ Arnold & Pyne 2001, pp. 160–162.
  68. ^ Botti 1987, pp. 234–238.
  69. ^ Arnold & Pyne 2001, pp. 189–191.
  70. ^ Boyes 2015, p. 170.
  71. ^ Moore 2010, pp. 64–68.
  72. ^ Epstein 1966, p. 145.
  73. ^ Baldwin, Jessica (28 April 1991). "Cold War's End Chills Town in Scotland: Economy: An American submarine base will be shut down and thousands of jobs and millions of dollars will go with it". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  74. ^ Baylis & Stoddart 2015, p. 221.
  75. ^ Middeke 2000, p. 76.
  76. ^ "Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes" (PDF). Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009.
  77. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 362.
  78. ^ Wynn 1997, p. 627.
  79. ^ Doyle 2018, p. 6.
  80. ^ Doyle 2018, p. 11.
  81. ^ "Politics 97". BBC. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  82. ^ Stoddart 2014, pp. 211–217, 236.
  83. ^ History of the British Nuclear Arsenal, Nuclear Weapons Archive, 30 April 2002, retrieved 29 July 2018
  84. ^ "Last U.S. Sub Leaving Scotland for Home". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  85. ^ "House of Commons Debate, Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Bill, Hansard, 6 November 1997 : Column 455". Retrieved 4 June 2022.
  86. ^ "MPs approve Trident renewal". BBC News. 18 July 2016. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  87. ^ Tom Peck (18 July 2016). "Theresa May warns threat of nuclear attack has increased ahead of Trident vote". Independent. Retrieved 18 July 2016.

References

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