Page 24 - CAMPAIGN Summer 2021

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CAMPAIGN Summer 2021
to sail his ship, the HMS Diana, and crew, through the radioactive plume.
Captain Gower was more than astonished to partake in this surreal activity with his crew, who were shut down below deck at the time. He described being in normal uniform and didn’t witness the blasts of G1 or G2 due to being below deck. He wrote an article, called the “Pierhead Jump – Some Jump”, where he described what happened aboard at these tests. Captain Gower had already experienced a remarkable Naval career, particularly during WW2, took part in the Arctic Convoys, assisted at the bombing of the
German Tirpitz off Norway in 1944, shielded men at the Normandy Landings, amongst many other feats, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
However, what happened on the HMS Diana at Operation Mosaic stayed with Captain Gower. He writes, “How much radioactivity could a ship with-stand and remain operational? HMS Diana and her crew was made available to provide the answers” and described the upcoming tests as an ordeal.
As part of the 11-day training before the two tests, the crew were shown films of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and given reassurances of safety by a young scientist, rather than the reality of what could go wrong.
The men were shut down below in two citadels – one of 207 men and one of 95. Captain Gower reported them as experiencing “fatigue, faintness, headache, respiratory distress, abdominal discomfort and claustrophobia.” On speaking to the Commodore of the Task Force 308, scientific staff stated that they could not “assume any direct responsibility for the radiological safety of the Diana as this is outside our terms
of reference.”
Andi Jones has shared the details
of what happened on the HMS Diana in earlier editions of the Campaign magazine, so I won’t touch on this aspect for the moment. Six days following the G2 blast, The Argus published the following article entitled “Fear in the wind”,
“QUESTIONS that trouble the minds of ordinary Australians AND the atomic experts:
(1) How did the rain that fell in central Queensland on Friday become abnormally radioactive?
(2) What safeguards, if any, will prevent radioactive fallout over populated areas after the forthcoming atomic tests at Maralinga, South Australia?
THE PLAN
The contaminated cloud from last Tuesday's "successful" atomic blast at Monte Bello, off the West Australian coast, was SUPPOSED to drift seaward. Instead, on Wednesday,
it moved inland over Marble
Bar - causing a Geiger count of 500 instead of the normal reading of 15.