Britain's Nuclear Weapons After 1945

The British government tested its first atomic device on October 3, 1952, off the north west coast of Australia, becoming the third country after the United States and the Soviet Union to independently achieve this feat. Codenamed Hurricane, Britain’s atomic bomb test was ‘universally acclaimed as a triumph - a great scientific and technical success.’ But domestically, it was perceived as much more that. For the Britain it was the key to revive severed nuclear cooperation with the US, and a validation of it’s major World power status. Scholars have extended compelling rationales to explain why between 1946 and 1952 Britain developed its nuclear weapons ‘laboriously, expensively and alone;’ There was a political compulsion for Britain to renew its ‘special relationship’ with the US, there was strategic compulsion to have an independent nuclear deterrent to thwart Soviet aggression and there was a military need to have a nuclear-ready retaliatory force.
The essay will evaluate all these strategic, political and military factors and weave them into a coherent narrative to explain why the British Governments decided to develop nuclear weapons after