Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Orford ... - English Heritage

programme, the development of the WE177 series of freefall bombs. It was specially
designed to test their resilience to hitting the ground before detonation. This facility
was constructed in late 1963 or early 1964 and was active until the late 1960s. The first
two variants were deployed for service use in 1966 and the final type for the Royal Navy
became operational in about 1971.
The technological context for the second Centrifuge E1 is more difficult to ascertain. It
was constructed in 1966, by this date the main design work on WE177 was complete,
and the focus of AWRE’s attention was the development of the ET317 warhead for
the first generation of Polaris missiles. One source, however, claims that the ET317
warhead design was sufficiently advanced for an underground firing at the Nevada Test
Site in October 1965, and that production began in 1966 (Norris et al 1994, 62, 404).
As discussed above the Centrifuge E1was designed to handle components containing
explosives charges, and may have been used to refine the design of explosive triggers, or
to verify the effectiveness of existing systems.
International connections
From the beginning AWRE Orford Ness was part of an international network of nuclear
testing sites. By August Bank Holiday 1956 Laboratory 1 F3 was operational and ready
to simulate the conditions a Blue Danube atomic weapon would be subject to during
transport and flight. This work was critical to the success of the autumn 1956 Buffalo
trials at Maralinga, South Australia. After the completion of the Buffalo series AWRE’s
attention quickly shifted to the Grapple test series on Christmas Island, which ran from
May 1957 to September 1958, in which Britain exploded her first megaton weapon.
Smaller trials continued until 1963 at Maralinga, and from the early 1960s the United
Kingdom also had access to the United States’ Nevada Test Site. None of these sites
have facilities comparable to Orford Ness, at Maralinga and Christmas Island, temporary
infrastructure was erected for the trials work, and that which wasn’t destroyed was
either removed or abandoned. Further clearance work has also taken place in the last
few years to remove the last traces of these activities. The Nevada Test Site is a vast
area, roughly equivalent to the area of Cambridgeshire. It comprises a small township to
support the range’s activities and remote firing areas, again with temporary infrastructure
constructed for each trials series. If comparable facilities to those at Orford Ness exist
overseas they are likely to be within nuclear weapons laboratories, which due to their
character are highly secretive.
Throughout this period the Orford Ness bombing range continued to play a vital role in
investigation of the aerodynamic properties of nuclear bomb casings. It was also used
for practice by the RAF Valiant aircraft crews, based at RAF Wittering, who made the
first live air drops of British atomic and thermonuclear weapons (Hubbard and Simmons
1985, 33).
Internationally, Orford Ness has the distinction of being the only former atomic weapons
testing site that may be freely visited. At the Nevada Test Site, due to its large size,
security and safety concerns access is restricted to guided bus tours. Accompanied
tours of the former Soviet test range at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, may also be arranged
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