Operation Grapple Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951. Fearing a resurgence of American isolationism and Britain losing its great power status, the British government restarted its own development effort, now codenamed High Explosive Research. The successful test of an atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane in October 1952 represented an extraordinary scientific and technological achievement. Britain became the world's third nuclear power, reaffirming the country's status as a great power, but hopes that the United States would be sufficiently impressed to restore the Special Relationship were soon dashed. In November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful test of a
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