In 1942, British scientists from the Porton Down science park
tested an experimental bioweapon in Scotland's remote and picturesque Gruinard Island.
A highly virulent anthrax strain was chosen to
analyze its side effects and potentially slow down Germany,
but the trial spun out of control and threatened the entire United Kingdom for half a century.
While most of the tests were kept in the utmost security, a film declassified in 1997 showed the
horrific lengths to which the British government was willing to go in order to defeat the Nazis…
Operation Vegetarian
As Adolf Hitler terrorized the world in the early 1940s, many European nations were either
neutral or under his control. With a seemingly impending invasion, the British brainstormed
every conceivable way to defeat him, including the possibility of resorting to biological warfare.
Thus, in 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill contacted the top-secret military research
facility of Porton Down and was referred to Dr. Paul Fildes, its Biology department director.
Churchill then assigned Dr. Fildes with a particular task:
finding a new chemical innovation to hinder the thriving German industry.
Fildes immediately got to work and soon developed a plan to deploy a chemical weapon
against ordinary German civilians. It involved an anthrax-contaminated cattle dietary supplement,
called cattle cakes, that would be airdropped by British aircraft onto German fields.
With Operation Vegetarian, the cakes would destroy the meat supply chain, and the ingestion of said
meat would cause a nationwide anthrax outbreak, spiking the mortality rate insurmountably.
Anthrax
Anthrax, first used as a weapon in World War 1 by Nordic rebels against the Imperial
Russian Army in Finland, is one of the most known and feared biological warfare agents.
Classified as an infectious disease, the horrible and painful symptoms of
anthrax poisoning in humans can take up to two months to appear.
When left untreated, anthrax spreads rapidly throughout the body,
with a very high mortality rate.
The Prime Minister loved the idea and ordered the execution of Dr. Fildes' plan as soon as possible.
The scientists then began making the linseed-based laced cakes,
with a production goal of 5.3 million by April of 1943.
If successful, the plan could even end the war and Germany itself, as anthrax spores remain
alive in the soil for up to a century, rendering the territory uninhabitable for generations.
Knowing that the anthrax bacteria were highly resilient, the War Office needed to find a
remote and uninhabited lot of land to test the cattle cakes. They found the ideal location in
the North-West Highlands of Scotland, with vast mountainous terrain and deep harbors.
Gruinard, a small, oval-shaped island, was known for its remarkable nature and beauty,
and has been described by many fiction authors as the loveliest of all the highland lochs.
As far back as the 1920s, the island had belonged to the Eilean Darach estate, whose heir's husband,
Colonel Peter Dunphy, was a close friend of Churchill. The fate of the beautiful
island was now sealed, and the government subsequently acquired Gruinard for 500 Pounds.
Base X
The last stage of Dr. Fildes' research was to test the weapon's lethality,
its resiliency under heat and pressure detonation, and its effect on livestock.
Consequently, from 1942 to 1943, the British team of scientists tested the effects of anthrax-laced
cattle cakes off the coast of Gruinard Bay, which soon became known as Base X.
Assisted by the Royal Navy, the first test subjects arrived on Gruinard island in close to
a hundred ships, where the animals were tethered down in groups and placed into exposure crates,
covered in cloth to prevent direct contact infections.
The results were unequivocal, the virus worked quickly,
and it was also concluded that the anthrax spores would remain in the Gruinard soil for decades.
More tests were performed within a year with a total of 22 anthrax bombs
that released 300 thousand billion anthrax spores.
Some of Operation Vegetarian's experiments were captured in 16-millimeter color film
by American observer Lieutenant Calderon Howe of the United States Navy, then serving
with the Special Projects Division of the Army Chemical Warfare Service at Porton Down, England.
The Biological Research Department at Porton Down then created a film,
which was declassified in 1997, making the length of the experiments available to the public.
Fortunately, the weapons were never deployed.
Pushback
The idea was for Operation Vegetarian to be used only if Germany made the first move in
terms of biological warfare. However, by the spring of 1944, when the 5 million
cattle cakes were finally ready, the war had turned decisively against the Nazis.
With Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944, the Normandy landings finally
allowed the Allied forces to take the advantage in the European Theater.
Additionally, after a much-needed assessment on the dissemination of anthrax spores,
the English scientists determined that the
risk of the virus spreading back to their own soil was too significant.
As such, Dr. Fildes' operation was shelved, and in 1945, millions of
produced cakes set to be disseminated around Germany were destroyed using an incinerator.
Despite Operation Vegetarian never being greenlighted,
the tests proved so effective that they caused irreversible damage in the country.
Quarantine
After World War 2 ended in 1945, and life slowly returned to normal,
the previous Guinard owners asked for their island back.
However, the War Office admitted that the contamination was so severe
that the entire island had to be quarantined,
and the government would own the territory until it was fit for life and habitation.
From 1946 to 1968, Porton Down's Microbiological Research establishment tested the island for
contamination, initially believing the anthrax spores could remain dormant for ten years.
That turned into 20, and then some more.
After years of continuous testing, the researchers never detected a significant
reduction in contamination levels, and in 1971, they determined that while there were no longer
live anthrax spores on the surface, the soil was still infected six inches underground.
As such, trespassers were forbidden from entering the island,
and the government placed signs on the coast warning visitors about the virus.
Still, the signs were not precisely effective, and in 1981, an anonymous group of rumored locals who
were tired of living near a dangerous site demanded that the island be decontaminated.
The group, which used the term Operation Dark Harvest, suggested that the British government
should decontaminate the island by burying the infected soil under concrete and other materials,
or else remove it from Gruinard and bury it somewhere else.
Other suggestions included soaking the entire territory in a potassium permanganate solution
or raising the temperature to 1,000 degrees Celsius for two minutes
in order to extinguish the remaining live spores.
Claiming to have 300 pounds of soil from the island, the anonymous group threatened the
government with purposely distributing it in critical locations around the country,
blurring the lines between protest and bioterrorism.
Dark Harvest even sent one 10-pound package to Porton Down,
and, when tested, the soil was found to contain anthrax spores. Meanwhile,
another package was delivered to a Conservative Party event, but that was not contaminated.
Whether by choice or by pressure from the anonymous group, the British government finally
started a formal clean-up effort in 1982. Thus, 196 hectares of topsoil were removed,
and the remaining dirt was sprayed with a formaldehyde solution diluted in seawater.
To test the long-term consequences, a flock of sheep was left behind in Gruinard,
and four years later, they were found healthy and breeding.
After a 48-year-long quarantine, Gruinard Island was officially
declared decontaminated in April of 1990, and the warning signs were removed.
Thank you for watching our video! Don’t forget to hit the bell icon
to be the first to know about our newest content. And for more intriguing historical anecdotes,
please follow our Dark Documentaries channels. Stay tuned!