Operation Mosaic Captain Hugh Martell would be in charge as commander Task Force 308, with the temporary rank of commodore. Charles Adams from Aldermaston, who had been the deputy technical director to Leonard Tyte for Operation Hurricane and to William Penney on Operation Totem, was appointed the scientific director for Operation Mosaic, with Ieuan Maddock as the scientific superintendent. Group Captain S. W. B. (Paddy) Menaul would command the Air Task Group. Menaul was also a nuclear test veteran, having been an observer on board Vickers Valiant WZ366 when it had made the first operational drop of a British atomic bomb during
Test No. 6 so great that the Soviet Union ceased all assistance to China. Thus, the Number 6 test was indeed an independent endeavor, after the induced military and economic sanctions enacted by the superpowers at the time, the United States and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, a comparison of other fission-to-fusion timespans may be instructive. The time between the U.S.'s first atomic test and its first hydrogen bomb test was 86 months, for the USSR it was 75 months, for the UK 66 months and later for France, 105 months. The goal of China was to produce a thermonuclear device of at least