HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- 1947 row on size of nuclear
deterrent
Public record office Cabinet told to acquire stockpile of 1,000 atom bombs by building one a day Owen Bowcott The post-war Labour government was
privately urged to build atom bombs at the rate of one a day so the UK could
accumulate a stockpile of one thousand by 1957 that would be sufficient to
destroy the Soviet Union, according to public record office files released
today.
Documents, many marked top secret, expose a row in Whitehall over the size of
the atomic weapons programme and the hasty calculations to set the UK's nuclear
deterrent.
According to letters from Viscount Portal of Hungerford at the Ministry of
Supply, in November 1945 (following the dropping by the US of atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki) the Cabinet initially agreed to construct bombs at the
rate of 15 a year - although, due to the difficulty of processing the requisite
plutonium, production could not begin until 1952 at the earliest.
In fact the UK exploded its first test bomb in October 1952, while the Soviet
Union had exploded one in October 1949. Until the UK test the weapons programme
was not publicly admitted - although in private Ernest Bevin, when foreign
secretary, reportedly told his officials (after he had been humiliated by the
US): "We have got to have this thing over here whatever it costs, and with a
bloody union jack flying on top of it".
In 1947 the defence research policy committee questioned the target set for
the number of bombs needed. Using arguments by Sir Henry Tizard, a senior
scientific adviser, the committee, a forerunner of the modern atomic energy
authority, called for a rapid escalation. "For atomic weapons to be a useful
deterrent," the committee's report said, "we must hold a stock of the order of
1,000 of such bombs, and we must have the means of delivering them immediately
on the outbreak of war.
"We have no reliable figures on the cost or time factor involved in the
manufacture and storage of atomic bombs. A very rough estimate based on
published American figures is that, with government backing, manufacture at the
rate of one per day could start in about five years from now."
An infuriated Lord Portal commented in a note to the Air Ministry: "These
estimates were included in the report without referring to the Ministry of
Supply [which was responsible for building them]."
In a letter to Air Marshal Lord Tedder at the Air Ministry, Lord Portal
expressed alarm. He wrote, "I am interested to learn how Tizard obtained his
figure of 1,000 bombs; but what concerns me is to know whether the chiefs of
staff accept that figure, because if they do ... the question arises whether the
task with which I am at present charged should be multiplied by a factor of 24
... or [be] abandoned, because it's entirely inadequate for the need it is
supposed to meet."
Sir Henry Tizard's figures were predicated on "a war beginning during the
period 1957-62", and his calculation of 1,000 bombs to destroy an enemy
presumably referred to the Soviet Union, although no foreign power was
mentioned. On August 30 1947, Lord Tedder wrote back: "I understand that Tizard
regards the figure of 1,000 as a reasonable estimate of what would be required
to constitute a valuable deterrent to war.
"This figure is based on the home defence committee's conclusion that some 25
would be required to knock out this country. The geographical area we have in
mind is some forty times the size of the UK, and 25x40=1,000. Tizard claims no
strategic basis for this, but argues this mathematical approach provides a near
enough approximation."
Either Sir Henry Tizard or another civil servant had written a short note by
hand pointing out that 1,000 warheads would not require a bomb each day, merely
for production to be doubled every year from 1952. If 15 were to be built in
that year and the number doubled until 1957, then 945 would have been built.
Lord Portal, however, dismissed this estimate of the UK's productive capacity
as "grossly inflated", observing: "It seems to me that it would be very long
time indeed before production at anything like this rate could be achieved".
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