British nuclear testing in the United States would be foregone, and the Americans were under no obligation to make the test site available for subsequent tests. Also, as Lord Cherwell noted, an American test meant that "in the lamentable event of the bomb failing to detonate, we should look very foolish indeed." In the end, Monte Bello was chosen, and the first British atomic bomb was tested there in Operation Hurricane on 3 October 1952. The next British test series, Operation Totem, was conducted at Emu Field in South Australia, but at their conclusion, the British government formally requested a permanent testing site from the Australian government,
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