Winston Churchill: Atomic Warrior, Nuclear Peacemaker

At the dawn of the Cold War, Churchill was one of the west’s leading champions of the atomic bomb. But, as Britain found itself in the crosshairs of a Soviet attack, his attitude changed – and that, writes Kevin Ruane, set him at odds with the United States.

- Kevin Ruane

In 2013, a short royal family home movie came to light. Dating from early October 1952, it shows Queen Elizabeth II, eight months into her reign, enjoying a family fishing expedition at Balmoral. Also prominent is the unmistakable figure of Winston Churchill, returned as prime minister a year earlier and now, a month shy of his 78th birthday, the Queen’s honoured guest.

Churchill sits at the water’s edge, chatting amiably to a young Prince Charles. He is relaxed but he is not off-duty. His thoughts, we now know, regularly drifted from autumnal Scotland to a barren, windswept outpost of the Commonwealth called the Montebello Islands. There, 80 miles off the coast of north-west Australia, Britain’s first atomic bomb was about to be tested.

For Churchill, a great deal rested on the success of Operation Hurricane, as the test was codenamed, not least Britain’s admission to the exclusive A-bomb ‘club’ alongside the US and the Soviet Union. “Pop or flop?” Churchill asked his scientific advisors in the build-up to the test. “Pop!” came the reassuring reply.

On 3 October 1952, the Hurricane device exploded with a violence greater than either of the A-bombs used against Japan in 1945.

We have no record of what Churchill said to the Queen later that day. How did a former cavalry officer of the late Victorian era explain that now, at the dawn of the second Elizabethan Age, he had in his hands not a sword but a weapon containing the pulsing energy that fuels the stars? Did he dwell on the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Two bombs, two flashes, and 100,000 dead in an instant.

If he also thought to himself “At last!”, that would be understandable. Churchill had waited a long time for this moment.

NUCLEAR AMBITIONS