AGREEMENT ENDED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26776, 20 May 1948, Page 5

AGREEMENT ENDED

DETAILS OF ATOMIC RESEARCH

BRITAIN AND AMERICA

Rec. 8 p.m. LONDON, May 19. The United States is reported to have ended the agreement to ex-, change details of atomic defence research with Britain. No British observers were invited to attend the recent tests of new American atom weapons, the Ministry of Supply told the Daily Express last night, and the British authorities, according to the paper, do not expect that reports of the explosions will be made available to them. At the previous American atom bomb tests off Bikini, teams of Navy, Army, and civilian technicians represented Britain. The Defence Minister, Mr A. V. Alexander, recently announced that Britain is developing her own atomic weapon. A Honolulu message states that Lieu-tenant-general John Hull, commander of Task Force Seven which conducted the latest atomic tests at Eniwetok Atoll, said to-day: “It can be said that the bombs worked.” He added that none of the explosions was underwater or aerial. General Hull and his assistants returned by plane to-day. Dr Darol Froman, scientific director of the tests, said: “ They involved a series of nuclear explosions carried out under conditions as close to laboratory control as we could make them and with very extensive instrumentation. One of the most gratifying results of the entire ope’’ation has been the confirmation of a large body of ideas, theories, and methods which had grown out of theoretical and experimental work done since the war at the Los Alamos project, New Mexico. General Hull said a small garrison would be kept at Eniwetok for future tests when ' they become necessary.