This programme examines how Britain discovered the world’s first atomic bomb only to lose it to the Americans when the US reneged on an Anglo-American agreement to share atomic research.
A dawn of two suns – the world’s first atomic bomb explosion tested in the New Mexico desert on 16th July, 1945 – inaugurated the atomic age, forever defining the global struggle for supremacy. At the time, the so-called ‘father of the atomic bomb’, J Robert Oppenheimer, famously quoted Hindu scriptures with the apocalyptic words ‘now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’.
This programme explores the little known story of British involvement in the top secret Manhattan Project to make an atomic bomb and how the UK, once the leader in nuclear weapons, was eventually marginalised. It’s a story of a British/American rivalry which ended in the UK being squeezed out of the project. But it’s also the story of Churchill’s failure to secure a position on the global high table of nuclear powers, a failure many regard as a betrayal.
While Britain may have rued the loss of their atomic leadership, this programme also examines the view that one of the reasons for Britain’s isolation – American fears about the security risk of UK participation – was justified. After all, Klaus Fuchs, a member of the British delegation, was arguably the most significant of the wartime atomic spies.
But speaking to the widow of a formerly unknown American atomic spy, the programme also uncovers evidence that the so-called ‘best kept secret’, the Manhattan Project, was far more deeply penetrated than previously thought.
Produced by Kati Whitaker for Kati Whitaker Productions
https://1drv.ms/f/s!ArrWZcg2lV80hTT7Tf1VAWPDIZ1x
Size 52MB. Length 57 minutes. Bitrate 128kbps
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