Operation Hurricane were considered. The Admiralty suggested that the Monte Bello Islands might be suitable, so the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, sent a request to the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies. The Australian government formally agreed to the islands being used as a nuclear test site in May 1951. In February 1952, Attlee's successor, Winston Churchill, announced in the House of Commons that the first British atomic bomb test would occur in Australia before the end of the year. A small fleet was assembled for Operation Hurricane under the command of Rear Admiral A. D. Torlesse; it
Soviet atomic bomb project CIA. RDS-3 was the third Soviet atomic bomb. On October 18, 1951, the 41.2 kiloton device was detonated - a boosted weapon using a composite construction of levitated plutonium core and a uranium-235 shell. Code named "Joe 3" in the USA, this was the first Soviet air-dropped bomb test. Released at an altitude of 10 km, it detonated 400 meters above the ground. RDS-4 represented a branch of research on small tactical weapons. It was a boosted fission device using plutonium in a "levitated" core design. The first test was an air drop on August 23, 1953, yielding 28 kilotons.