The 1958 US-UK nuclear agreement - some questions...

[Archibald]

I'm presently whacking my brain to try and understand the high and the low in the US - UK nuclear weapons relationship...

1946 - The McMahon act throw everybody not american (Britain, Canada, France...) out of the Manhattan project

1952 - Great Britain detonates its first A-bomb (Hurricane) all by itself

1957 - Great Britain detonates its first H-bomb (Grapple) all by itself

1958 - America, impressed, relax the McMahon act and grant GB access to all its nuclear secrets. YET they expressedly forbid GB to pass any secret to France or any other country (to De Gaulle great frustration all along the 60's !)

Now I was wondering one this. Basically: did the 1958 agreement forbade GB to pass *Hurricane* and *Grapple* knowledge to others countries ? I mean, GB had taken immense pain and money to do it ALONE so those designs BELONGED to them. They were not americans, by any mean...

I'm asking this question, well, because of this man... https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cook

Seems he used his British H-bomb knowledge to help the french in 1967, when Canopus was stuck in the wrong direction...

Frack, were the British that despaired to enter the EEC back then, they hoped to overcome De Gaulle staunch opposition by baiting him with nuclear weapon knowedge ? At the enormous risk of infuriating the Americans, over the 1958 deal ?

 

[alertken]

A: this is a minefield. No-one can give you answers that are manifest gold. Any position you may care to adopt on US:UK, special relationship, can be supported by acts or omissions of politicians: we wuz robbed of our Bomb. No.

You must either shrug this Q out of your mind...or spend a lot of time finding your own take.

On the French angle, you may care to read Vol.1, Matthew Jones, Official History, UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Routledge,2018: suffice here to say that some contacts, US:France occurred without UK knowledge, some UK:France occurred with US knowledge, and that neither the Force de Frappe nor UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent could have become operational as they did, when they did, without US assistance. Independence was a matter of operational sovereignty, and was true: Pres. of France, Cabinet of UK could have launched, solo (though might only have been able to find fixed targets). It was not true technologically: at such levels as inertial navigation, in-flight refuelling, we were inter-, not in-dependent. It was Sir W. Cook who told me, before I read it later, that UK SSBNs utilised hull molybdenum supplied by USSR.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

There’s a very relevant back story here of how the jointly U.K. & US side stepped the McMahon act;-

The US was desperate to know how the USSR nuclear program was progressing so they started Krypton 85 air sampling on the bases that this was released by nuclear material production and was easily monitored. But the problem was, where was it coming from I.e the U.K. or USSR both of which had weapons work on going. The U.K. offered to solve this problem by air sampling above their own shores and freely exchange the information with the US. Pretty swiftly the U.K. Kr 85 sampling effort (6 Canberra’s of 1323 flight fitted with an Hp compressor and storage cylinders in the bomb bay ) was taken into US project with a productive two way exchange. Now what happens to your sensitive monitoring when you intend to release a massive quantity of Kr 85 in the detonation an H Bomb? So this an invitation was given to the RAF to undertake air sampling at Operation Castle in the Pacific flying from Kwajalein. Thus Operation Dogstar got high quality samples of the Castle Bravo and others shots back to Aldermaston. (Ref Sniffing an Bottling by David Forster)

Renown physicist Hans Beth described air sampling as the key to unlock the details of the reaction.

Lorna Arnold has Penny bringing key data to the British H bomb development from then classified sources (micro barograph readings are speculated) and doesn’t mention operation Dogstar but my guess this is where it came from. (Ref Britain and the H Bomb by L Arnold)

The late sixties Anglo French connection is very plausible and I’ve heard bits’n’pieces of two way exchanges in the seventies. The three dimensional quartz fibre saga comes to mind.