WESTERN governments may have detonated a nuclear bomb in a pristine area of
Australian tropical rainforest at the height of the cold war.
Declassified documents reveal that in 1963, Britain, the US and Australia set
off a 50-tonne bomb in the rainforest at Iron Range in north Queensland as part
of a secret military experiment codenamed Operation Blowdown. That is about 25
times more powerful than the explosion Timothy McVeigh triggered six years ago
in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
The blast tested how the rainforest would react to such an impact. Iron
Range, a haunt for parrots, cockatoos and cassowaries, is the largest area of
lowland rainforest in Australia.
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Australian documents describe it as a nuclear explosion, but the British
government claims it was a conventional bomb designed to simulate an
air-detonated nuclear device.
Britain鈥檚 Ministry of Defence insists it was a conventional bomb made of TNT.
It was detonated close to the ground to simulate the effects of a 10-kilotonne
nuclear explosion in the air, an MoD spokeswoman says. 鈥淭here was no radiation
丑补锄补谤诲.鈥�
However, declassified records in the National Archives of Australia in
Canberra describe Operation Blowdown as 鈥渁n investigation into the effect of
nuclear explosions in a tropical forest鈥�. And a medal citation for an Australian
sergeant in charge of the operation explicitly refers to it as 鈥渁n airburst
nuclear device鈥�.
Brian Stanislaus Hussey was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1965 for
supervising army equipment during Operation Blowdown. Three years later he died
from multiple cancers, aged 45. His daughter, Marie Strain, blames the operation
for her father鈥檚 death. 鈥淚 want to know why the nuclear tests had to be done,鈥�
she says.