Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom
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.
Operation Hurricane was the first test of a British atomic device. A plutonium implosion device was detonated on 3 October 1952 in Main Bay, Trimouille Island, in the Montebello Islands in Western Australia. With the success of Operation Hurricane, Britain became the third nuclear power, after the United States and the Soviet Union.
The mud-laden cauliflower explosion
Clement Attlee (left) with the Leader of the Australian Federal Opposition, Dr H. V. Evatt in 1954
HMAS Karangi was used as a survey ship.
HMS Plym in 1943. The atomic bomb was exploded in her hull.
