During the Second World War , Britain had a nuclear weapons project , codenamed Tube Alloys , which was merged with the American Manhattan Project in August 1943 . Many of Britain 's top scientists participated in the British contribution to the Manhattan Project . After the war , fearing that Britain would lose its great power status , the British government resumed the atomic bomb development effort , now codenamed High Explosive Research . The successful test of an atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane in October 1952 represented an extraordinary scientific and technological achievement , but Britain was still several years behind the United States in nuclear weapons technology
Operation Hurricane
Operation Hurricane
Operation Grapple