Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom the year. During Operation Hurricane, an atomic bomb was detonated on board the frigate anchored in a lagoon in the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia on 3 October 1952. Britain thereby became the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons. This led to the development of the first deployed weapon, the Blue Danube free-fall bomb. It had a diameter, 32 explosive lens implosion system with a levitated pit suspended within a natural uranium tamper. The warhead was contained within a bomb casing measuring diameter and long, and it weighed approximately , of which about was high explosive. The
Operation Sandstone delivered to San Pedro, California, and loaded on the weapon assembly ship USS "Curtiss", in February 1948, but the Atomic Energy Commission only gave permission for the expenditure of three cores in the tests. The naval forces were organized as Task Group 7.3. It consisted of: Source: Berkhouse "et al", "Operation Sandstone", p. 40 In September 1947, Hull, Russell, who was designated test director on October 14, and Joint Task Force 7's scientific director, Darol K. Froman from the Los Alamos Laboratories, set out with a group of scientists and military officers to examine various proposed test sites in the