2025/05/27 by Daniel Leach · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/1031461x.2025.2500935
openalex publication_date 2025/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article explores Exercise Alphabet, held at the School of Army Health, Healesville, in 1954. Situating this ‘atomic readiness exercise’ within the context of British A-bomb testing in Australia and the development of thermonuclear weapons, it is argued that its ultimate objective was to pressure the Commonwealth to establish effective civil defence. In pursuit of this aim, the Army’s Major-General Kingsley Norris sought first to allay popular anxiety regarding atomic destruction and lingering effects of radiation, then to conduct a concerted public relations campaign in the press. Most likely unbeknownst to Norris, Canberra and the states had already decided against taking action on civil defence only months earlier. Employing contemporary press, Commonwealth archives, autobiographies and unit histories, this article investigates the Army’s preparations for atomic attack in the mid-1950s, including its forays into public relations efforts designed to pressure Canberra in policy areas the latter had in fact already quietly abandoned.