Britain secretly carried out a series of biological warfare tests off Caribbean islands in the late 1940s and 1950s, placing the population at risk of contact with deadly bacteria and other toxic agents.
The experiments were concealed from the people living close to the Antigua and Bahamas test sites but have now been revealed in files released by the Ministry of Defense.The governor of Antigua, then a British colony, agreed to the first tests of biological agents in 1948, provided "there will be no danger to the local population." But the Ministry of Defense failed to consult local people and suggested that if the press became curious officials should lie.
British military officials saw the biological bomb as a "novel weapon of great potency" and as effective "weight for weight against unprotected human beings as atomic bombs," according to the files.
Other recently released documents show that in 1952, simulated biological warfare tests were carried out in secret at Salisbury, in southwest England. The Ministry of Defense says the substance released on the city was smoke.
The official position has been that biological warfare was studied to defend Britain against a biological attack. However, a Chiefs of Staff memo dated March 1952 argues that it could be used offensively after a nuclear strike.
"The possibility of employing biological agents immediately following an atomic attack should not be overlooked. (Biological warfare) attacks on a highly disorganized population, of greatly lowered morale and diminished physical resistance, could be devastating," it says.
The British military was restricted by the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of most types of biological and chemical warfare. This moral code was described, grudgingly, as "the problem of the international commitments."
The chiefs of staff saw biological warfare as having a "moral advantage" over the indiscriminate destruction of nuclear war, while being as effective against unprotected humans as atomic bombs.
The research program into this "very economical" and "humane weapon" rapidly accelerated. Gen. Kenneth Crawford, head of the ministry's Biological Warfare Subcommittee, said there was "no time to lose."
According to the files, the British government feared that the Kremlin could develop an "absolute weapon" using biological agents. The chiefs of staff could "not be complacent" because the USSR would not hesitate to "carry out biological warfare trials on humans."
The British program examined both the defensive and offensive capabilities of biological agents - which are recorded as including anthrax, "Bacterium dysenteriae," "polypeptides," "Bacterium typhoseum" and the tubercle bacillus - even though the 1925 Geneva Convention explicitly forbade bacteriological methods of warfare.
The chiefs of staff saw the "international commitments" as a "problem" but not an obstacle and insisted that "further field trials must be done."
U.S., British and Canadian experiments began in August 1948 at Parham Sound off the coast of Antigua. Called "Operation Harness," the tests were organized by Dr. David Henderson, who had directed the 1942 anthrax tests that contaminated the Scottish island of Gruinard. "Clouds of toxic agents" were released to drift across animals in a dinghy being towed behind the Royal Navy transport ship HMS Ben Lomond.
Although the 22 experiments were considered a success, proving that the "toxicity of agents" was "many times greater than that of any known chemical agent," the operation had significant safety flaws which the government attempted to play down.
The Ministry of Defense had obtained approval for "toxic trials in the open sea," but the documents show that secret experiments were conducted "under the lee of a neighboring island which raised additional safety problems."
Furthermore, despite a statement that there were "no unfortunate incidents," the declassified sources reveal that at least one man was infected by toxic bacteria.
Meanwhile, the British military was preparing for domestic germ-warfare trials. After preliminary experiments in Shanklin Bay on the Isle of Wight, the "highly infective" brucellosis and "Pasteurella pestis," the ancient Black Death, were used in tests off the Scottish coast.
Between June and September 1952, "Operation Cauldron" tested toxic agents on monkeys "about half a mile off the Hebrides," according to the files. But the carefully planned experiments very nearly ended in disaster. At least one file, entitled "Incident during Operation Cauldron," is still classified.
In that "incident," just as spraying began in one of the final experiments, Royal Navy officers were horrified to see the trawler Carella rounding a nearby island, ignoring the notified safety zone. The Carella steamed straight into the path of a cloud of plague bacilli and continued on its course towards Iceland. A destroyer was hastily dispatched with supplies of vaccine.
Pneumonic plague takes four to six days to incubate and up to 100 hours more to kill, so the destroyer spent the incubation period following the Carella and tuning to its radio for distress calls. Fortunately, the aerosol plague droplets dispersed over very short distances and the crew was not infected.
Other released documents reveal that in 1952 the Porton Laboratory in Wiltshire secretly tested the "travel of (biological warfare) clouds in built-up areas."
One document states: "Large-scale experiments in a built-up area (Salisbury) have proved that the dosage received inside the buildings is roughly similar to that outside, and that little protection is afforded by houses."
The Ministry of Defense claims that smoke was the substance used. In 1963, Porton Down scientists conducted secret germ-warfare tests in the London Underground using spores of a "harmless" bacterium.
In 1952, Operation Hesparus repeated the Hebridean experiments and expanded the project to include "Bacterium tularense," but the focus of Porton's work shifted back to the Caribbean.
In 1954, the Bahamas, then a British colony, provided an ideal location for further Ministry of Defense waterborne trials. Between February and May of that year, "Operation Ozone" experimented on several thousand animals to test the potency of the brucellosis bacterium and also of "Bacterium tularense" and Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis, a highly infectious disease producing crippling pain, nausea and vomiting. This pathogen was to be tested in Vietnam in 1964.
From November 1954 until April 1955, scientists secretly tested smallpox and the closely related but more effective "Vaccinia" virus.
British military officials reported that the Bahamas tests had maintained operational security and had not been revealed to local residents, confessing that they would have been seen as a "most embarrassing intrusion."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)