The Strange Case of
Gruinard Island 1942

Biological Warfare

by David W. Tschanz, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

The history of biological warfare has created a lore of strange and bizarre stories, but few are as strange as those which surround Gruinard Island. A small island off the northwest coast of Scotland near the fishing village of Aultbea, it is not much as islands go. A mere three hundred feet high and covered in heather, the island is essentially an outcrop of rock a mere mile wide and one and a half miles long.

The island is now completely abandoned except for sea birds which nest along the shore line. They are its only inhabitants because no one is allowed to live or even land there.

In 1942 a military contingent arrived near Aultbea, establishing there camp on the mainland on the farthest side of the bay. Twenty five soldiers and nine civilians -- all of them bacteriologists -- were there on orders from the "Highest Authority," a wartime euphemism for Churchill, to test the practicability of a biological bomb.

The first victims were sheep. Thirty were bought from local herders and grazed near the base camp. When the date for the first experiment arrived, the sheep were herded into a landing craft and ferried across the half mile stretch of water to Gruinard Island. In one of the temporary structures, the weapon was prepared. A twenty five pound bomb, eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter was filled with brown thick gruel. Only the scientists knew that the mixture was a slurry of concentrated anthrax spores. Once primed, the bomb was ferried across to the island. The sheep were tethered around it in neat concentric circles. A fuse was attached. The sheep grazed contentedly as the scientists moved a safe distance away.

The bomb exploded. Billions of spores formed an invisible cloud which drifted over the terrified sheep, gradually dispersing over the testing site and out to sea. The next day the sheep began to die and the pile of carcasses grew steadily throughout the week. More tests continued throughout the year and into 1943. The climax came when a Wellington bomber low level run over the island and neatly deposited a biological bomb. The Gruinard tests proved that bacteria could be produced, transported, loaded into munitions and exploded over a target without necessarily destroying the fragile organism which spread infection.

The tests also highlighted the problems of biological weapons. A dead sheep floated across to the mainland during a heavy storm and an outbreak of anthrax occurred a few days later. The outbreak that followed sent a collective shudder down the spines of the British Bacteriologic Warfare committee.

Paul Fildes, the brilliant bacteriologist who headed up the British Microbiological warfare committee, tried to rid the island of its contamination by burning off the heather, which in some parts of the island was chest-high. Gruinard went up like tinder. A huge cloud of black smoke, heavily contaminated with anthrax drifted out over the sea, while the fires made a spectacular display in the gloomy northern night.

The attempt failed. The island remained contaminated and was sealed while attempts were made several times to decontaminate it. Dramatic signs rang its beaches at 400 yard intervals:

    GRUINARD ISLAND
    THIS ISLAND IS GOVERNMENT
    PROPERTY UNDER EXPERIMENT.
    THE GROUND IS CONTAMINATED WITH
    ANTHRAX AND IS DANGEROUS.
    LANDING IS PROHIBITED.

Gruinard was finally cleansed, after almost 50 years, of traces of anthrax spores in 1993. It required the removal of dumping of six feet of top soil from the entire island. Gruinard Island remains a startling testament to the power of biological weapons. It also serves as a warning of the ability of bacteriologic weapons to turn on their creators.

Related Biological Warfare

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© Copyright 1994 by David W. Tschanz.
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