Operation Grapple
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Operation Grapple was a set of four series of British nuclear weapons tests of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions were initiated, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons, and the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the United States in the form of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement.
Grapple 1 test in May 1957. Hailed as Britain's first hydrogen bomb test, it was in fact a failure.
The survey ship HMNZS Lachlan
Royal Engineers assemble huts on Christmas Island
HMS Warrior, a Colossus-class light aircraft carrier, was the headquarters ship for Britain's atom hydrogen tests on Christmas Island.
Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom
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In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Poynting Physics building at the University of Birmingham, where Peierls and Frisch wrote the Frisch–Peierls memorandum
James Chadwick (left), the head of the British Mission, confers with Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr. (right), the director of the Manhattan Project
President Harry Truman and the prime ministers Clement Attlee and Mackenzie King boarding USS Sequoia for discussions about nuclear weapons, November 1945
William Penney, Chief Superintendent Armament Research, was in charge of atomic bomb development.