Dronfield Eye Issue 221 May 2024

dronfield EYE
Teenager Ted witnessed
The widow of a Dronfield veteran has received a
medal for his involvement in nuclear weapons
testing on Christmas Island. Deborah Wain reports
Ted Cockbaine pictured on Christmas
Island and, main picture, one of the
explosions of the kind he witnessed
T
ED Cockbaine was enlisted for National Service in the
RAF aged 18 and spent nine months working at a
radar station on the island, in the Pacific Ocean.
He witnessed five nuclear explosions; two involved atomic
weapons, suspended from balloons, and three were Hydrogen
bombs dropped by Valiant bombers.
Ted, who sadly died in 2021, wrote an account in 1983 of what it
felt like to experience the horror of a nuclear blast.
His time on Christmas Island had such an effect on him that, not
long after returning home, he joined the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament and in 1960 took part in one of the anti-nuclear
Aldermaston Marches.
The Grapple H-bomb nuclear test series was an attempt to
demonstrate that Britain had the technology to influence the
Cold War, after the atomic bomb was invented by US physicist
Robert Oppenheimer.
Hydrogen bombs were much more powerful than atomic
bombs.
Veterans and campaigners have spent decades seeking
recognition for their service during Britain's nuclear test
programme between 1952 and 1967.
Last autumn, The Nuclear Test Medal began being issued and
Ted’s widow, Ann, encouraged by the couple’s son, applied for
the medal.
Ted grew up in Oxford and did the first part of his National
Service at RAF Bempton, in
the East Riding of Yorkshire.
In 1958 he was posted to
Christmas Island, which lies
about 350km south of Java,
and was then under British
colonial control.
Ted and his colleagues
were billeted in tents in
which, on the face of it, must
have seemed like an idyllic
setting.
However, they were soon
beleaguered by land crabs
and extreme heat, and
something much more
sinister.
Said Ann: “I don’t think Ted
initially knew anything about
Ted’s Nuclear Test Medal
the purpose of him going to
Christmas Island and they certainly didn’t realise how dangerous
it was. They were guinea pigs, at the end of the day.”
Ted worked on ‘X’ site, a radar station at the north of the island,
while testing took place at South East Point, about 20 miles away
on the island’s southern tip.
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