The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 58

conclusions,” with a “fair number” of negative results among the 72 toxic
runs. 40 Brucella suis and Francisella tularensis were used as the test agents,
although there had been some discussion among Porton's scientific advis-
ers to include a virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE). In their dis-
cussion of the preliminary results of Hesperus, BRAB members noted
that tularemia had proved to be a major disappointment, with very few
organisms surviving dispersal in trials over longer distances. The scien-
tists also reported that their trials using spraying techniques produced far
better results than those with prototype bombs. In the BRAB annual re-
port for 1953 a briefer assessment attributed the poor success of the long-
range trials to bad weather and nearby cliffs. The report remarked, how-
ever, that there was evidence to “suggest that organisms are less damaged
by half a mile travel than by explosive dispersal.” 41 This passing remark
appears to be an early endorsement, albeit tentative and conceptually
embryonic, of the idea that spraying a cloud of organisms toward a target
might show more promise than using a bomb directly against that target.
Operation Ozone
Following Operation Cauldron the prime minister, Winston Churchill,
had approved a decision to return to the Bahamas for trials. Following a
three-week delay, due to damage to the pontoon, Operation Ozone com-
menced early in 1954 some 60 miles south of Nassau. The thinking be-
hind these trials had changed, according to the scientific report on Opera-
tion Ozone, which noted that this shift had been guided by changes in
policy that will be discussed later in this chapter:
In accordance with higher policy, and with the co-ordination of our
work with that of our North American allies, the emphasis of these sea-
borne operations has continually shifted away from ad hoc trials of weap-
ons to more fundamental experiments on the behaviour of pathogens in
natural conditions. There is an intentional distinction between terms in
this statement: we are no longer concerned with “trials” which may
amount to no more than a demonstration that a contrivance works, but
with “experiments” similar in kind and quantity to those done in the
laboratory . . . The most interesting question which the field team has
been asked is: what happens to an airborne infective particle? 42