GREAT BRITAIN: Million-Degree Heat

In matter-of-fact fashion, Winston Churchill last week told the House of Commons as much as he thought it should know about Britain’s first atomic explosion, set off Oct. 3 off the Monte Bello Islands north of Australia. The bomb (he called it that for the first time) was detonated inside a warship — the 1,450-ton frigate, H.M.S. Plym—in order “to investigate the effect of an atomic explosion in a harbor.”

Churchill continued: “Thousands of tons of mud and rock from the sea bottom were thrown many thousands of feet into the air, and a high tidal wave was caused. The effects of the blast and radioactive contamination extended over a wide area. H.M.S. Plym was vaporized except for some red-hot fragments which were scattered over one of the islands and started fires in the dry vegetation . . .

“The weapon behaved exactly as expected and forecast in many precise details by Dr. W. G. Penney, whose services were of the highest order . . .

“To give some idea of the character of the explosion, perhaps I might say this. Normal blood temperature is 98⅔ degrees. When the flash first burst through the hull of Plym, the temperature was nearly 1,000,000 degrees.”

For his part in constructing the bomb and handling the test explosion, Physicist Penney (TIME, Oct. 13) will be knighted. He first learned this on a news broadcast; Churchill had tried to reach him beforehand but the telephone operator refused to give out Dr. Penney’s unlisted home telephone number even when told that the Prime Minister was calling.