Project Red Admiral

Abstract

The rapid expansion of the British biological warfare research programme was, in part, a response to the perceived threat of a similar attack against the nation coupled with the broader position of the Chiefs of Staff on their preparedness to use weapons of mass destruction. Growth was also driven by a more proximate Air Staff requirement, dating from immediately after the Second World War, for an anti-personnel biological bomb to be in operation by 1955. This programme of research, code-named ‘Project Red Admiral’, was carried out mainly at the renamed Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment (CDEE) at Porton.¹ Much of the work at MRD was intended to underpin the quest for a biological weapon. In this respect, sea trials and the mass production of agents were most directly related to this task, but not the only pertinent activities. Nonetheless, under the ‘offence for defence’ regime which had emerged in the late 1940s, these three components of the UK programme, namely Red Admiral, the experimental fermentation plants and outdoor pathogen trials commanded a prominent role in plans for the future of British biological warfare.