SZ/BUF - Operation Buffalo

SZ/BUF

Series

Operation Buffalo

1943-1985

2 boxes

BUFFALO was the code name given to a series of tests of atomic weapons carried out at Maralinga, South Australia, in the autumn of 1956. Some eighteen months earlier, on 3.5.55, an informal meeting was held in SZ’s office in the Treasury to discuss research into the physiological effects of long-duration blast. The meeting had before it two papers, one from the War Office giving its reasons for "sponsoring" such research and the other a report by SZ on "results achieved to date in this research". SZ was already directing a programme of blast research on behalf of the War Office that was being carried out by a group in the Anatomy Department at Birmingham University, using facilities at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Foulness and at a former army camp at Wolverley.

In his report, SZ had made the point that, whereas his wartime research indicated that the primary effects of blast were insignificant compared to the other ways in which injury could be inflicted by high-explosive weapons, "It is impossible to exclude duration as a factor in wounding in long duration blast". He went on to state that "The damaging effect of a blast wave depends, at least partly, on the slope of the shock front". The duration of the blast from a nuclear weapon was well outside the range studied in World War II, and the slope of the blast wave from a nuclear explosion differed from that from conventional high explosives.

At the meeting it was agreed that, in addition to continued work using the shock-tube facilities at Foulness, SZ would recruit a team to conduct laboratory-based research into the effects of long-duration blast using an atomic blast simulator, to be constructed and installed at Wolverley. In the light of the research that the Birmingham team was conducting it was decided that Peter Krohn, who headed the team, and two of his colleagues, James McGregor and A.P.D. (Sandy) Thomson, would participate in the Maralinga tests as the War Office representatives in the BUFFALO Biological Team. Krohn, McGregor and Thomson were responsible for the design and conduct of experiments in which goats, rabbits and mice were exposed to the nuclear explosions. SZ and the Birmingham team also advised on the design of articulated dummy human figures to be used in the tests to assess the displacement effects of blast from a nuclear weapon.