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
British nuclear testing in the United States which led to the agreement on the use of the Maralinga test site in August 1954. The first of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga was held in September 1956. While British atomic bomb development represented an extraordinary scientific and technological achievement, hopes that the United States would be sufficiently impressed to restore the nuclear Special Relationship were dashed. In November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful test of a true thermonuclear device or hydrogen bomb. Britain was therefore still several years behind in nuclear weapons technology. The Defence Policy Committee, chaired by Churchill and consisting