I know there’s a few geeks on here who’ll love this.

Me included.

I’m pretty sure that we watch that first time around (or something similar); it was very interesting.

As I recall, despite everything we went through as allies in WW2, the americans were holding onto their technology and weren’t going to help us out with our bomb.

Well our ambitions were never really to develop and retain our own bomb as the costs were prohibitive for a bankrupt Britain…we just needed to demonstrate our ability to get a bomb so the Yanks could sell us an off the shelf system and we become a significant part of NATO. The bomb was just the tool to access the club and get us to a seat of power around the table. Without it we would have been edged out, but instead we were an instrumental part in fighting, and ultimately ending, the Cold War.

americans were holding onto their technology and weren’t going to help us out with our bomb.

All’s fair in love and war and global politics. We kept the Americans out of our intelligence and code breaking abilities through the war and played the Americans as and when it suited us, so we’re just as devious when we need to be.

When this programme was first shown something I noticed about all the soldiers on Chrstmas Island, who were going around with bare torsos because of the heat, was how very thin they all were comparied to today’s squaddies. The effects of a crap post war diet no doubt.