The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 48

tional declassified material from the 1960s has revealed details of impor-
tant debates around policy and the future of the research program.
The Early Program
In Britain, concerns about BW predated research. The threat from a bio-
logical warfare attack, together with earlier well-publicized claims that
German spies had undertaken biological warfare trials on the London
Underground, had prompted the British government to establish an ex-
pert advisory committee in 1936. 5 Apart from requesting some research
on decontamination methods, however, the British authorities did not
sanction a formal research program on BW until after the outbreak of
war. In late 1940 a team of scientists headed by Paul Fildes, a renowned
bacteriologist, arrived at the new Biology Department Porton in Wiltshire
to commence covert research. They established close links with the Cana-
dian and US biological warfare efforts, and their research soon resulted in
trials of prototype weapons. 6 Over the course of the war, Fildes' team de-
veloped a stockpile of anthrax-contaminated cattle feed cakes, to be used
as an antilivestock weapon in the event of needing to retaliate in kind
against a German biological warfare attack. As their main aim, they also
tested an antipersonnel anthrax bomb, codenamed the N-bomb. Toward
the end of the war an order for a consignment of anthrax bombs was
placed with the US, but delays and then the ending of war prevented the
filling of the order. Possibly of more importance than these achievements,
the scientists had demonstrated that workable BW could be made. As Da-
vid Henderson, Fildes' deputy, wrote shortly after the war, “the overall
achievement in five years of experimental study has been to raise biologi-
cal warfare from the status of the improbable, where the difficulties in-
volved were believed by many (without experimental evidence) to be in-
surmountable, to the level of a subject demanding close and continuous
study.” 7
Policy, Strategy, and Advice: “BW Is of the Highest Priority”
This close and continuous research continued into the postwar period. In
September 1945 the Chiefs of Staff urged the Cabinet Defence Committee
to permit the BW research program to continue: “in the interests of Na-