United Kingdom and Weapons of Mass Destruction - Biological Weapons

Biological Weapons

During the Second World War, British scientists studied the use of biological weapons, including a test using anthrax on the Scottish island of Gruinard which left it contaminated and fenced off for nearly fifty years, until an intensive four-year programme to eradicate the spores was completed in 1990. They also manufactured five million linseed-oil cattle cakes with a hole bored into them for addition of anthrax spores between 1942 and mid-1943. These were to be dropped on Germany using specially designed containers each holding 400 cakes, in a project known as Operation Vegetarian. It was intended that the disease would destroy the German beef and dairy herds and possibly spread to the human population. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. Operation Vegetarian was only to be used in the event of a German anthrax attack on the United Kingdom.

Offensive weapons development continued after the war into the 1950s with tests of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses (the latter as a relatively safe simulant for smallpox).

In particular five sets of trials took place at sea using aerosol clouds and animals.

• Operation Harness off Antigua in 1948-1949.
• Operation Cauldron off Stornoway in 1952. The trawler Carella accidentally sailed through a cloud of pneumonic plague bacilli (yersinia pestis) during this trial. It was kept under covert observation until the incubation period had elapsed but none of the crew fell ill.
• Operation Hesperus off Stornoway in 1953.
• Operation Ozone off Nassau in 1954.
• Operation Negation off Nassau in 1954-5.

The programme was cancelled in 1956 when the British government renounced the use of biological and chemical weapons. It ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in March 1975.