Daughter says RAAF sergeant died prematurely from radioactive fallout of British nuclear test

The daughter of a Royal Australian Air Force sergeant has demanded access to top secret government files to prove the impact from the radioactive fallout led to his untimely death.

Former RAAF sergeant Max Ward, pictured third left from the bottom, at the RAAF Camp in Onslow, died aged 49 from cancer. He was posted to Western Australia, with the 86 Transport Wing, to help prepare for Britain’s first nuclear weapons test in 1952.

The daughter of a Royal Australian Air Force sergeant has demanded access to top secret government medical files — that veterans claim were illegally withheld — in a bid to prove the impact from the radioactive fallout from Britain’s first nuclear test led to his untimely death.

Leading aircraftman Max Ward was 20 when his Dakota A65-99 flew through the atomic cloud monitoring aerial radiation from Britain’s first atomic weapons test at 9.30am on October 3 in 1952.

As a mushroom cloud billowed up above the Monte Bello Islands, 130 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, Ward and his fellow Australian servicemen deployed as part of RAAF 86 transport wing detachment, and British personnel, had no idea of the full fallout from Operation Hurricane. The radio technician from Tempe, in Sydney’s Inner West, was diagnosed with lymphoma when he was 43.

The father of three died, aged 49, in 1981.

His late widow Delphine had applied for compensation from the Australian government in 1982 but was unsuccessful, having been told his was “a lead case” and his illness was a result of radiation exposure. An appeal in 1986 closed without a result.

Maxine Goodwin has written to the British Government to access top secret files documenting blood test results on her late father Max Ward and fellow Australian servicemen involved in “Operation Hurricane”. Pictured together at Bonnie Vale Beach in 1973.

Several class actions along with other veterans and their families through lawyers Stacks Goudkamp also failed due to a lack of medical evidence. Now UK military veterans who took part in nuclear weapons tests have launched legal action against the MOD to gain access to blood and urine samples taken from them as young men at the Cold War weapons trials.

They discovered in 2023 documents had been reclassified as “scientific data” and placed at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, an agency of the MoD, meaning they cannot be publicly accessed.

Maxine Goodwin, the daughter of late Royal Australian Air Force sergeant Max Ward. Picture: Supplied

The British Government had admitted to housing more than 250 papers on blood and urine testing. Debates in the British Parliament forced a minister to declassify 151 files last May, revealing 4000 pages about monitoring programs and medical records of officers and the effects on named Australian personnel.

In November the Ministry of Defence was ordered to find the medical records of nuclear veterans that were hidden for 70 years and insisted the files are not withheld but some may have been lost. Survivors report the only parts of their medical records missing were pages relating to their tests, and say the files have been doctored.

Some say they have had cancer, suffered blood disorders and lost children through miscarriages — and descendants have spoken of being born with disabilities.

Max Ward, pictured left at the RAAF Camp in Onslow, Western Australia in October 1952.

Maxine Goodwin, 51, who was 16 when her father Max Ward died, has written to the MOD to demand her father’s files, saying: “My father told us that he was on board the Dakota at that time when it flew through the cloud.

“He was diagnosed with lymphoma 23 years later. My mother at that time was 42-years-old and was left a single mother and sole carer for three ageing grandparents. I was still in high school.

“I am closely watching the nuclear veteran’s class action in the UK focusing on the MOD and AWE’s withholding of blood screening documentation.

“If UK government authorities have had this information and knowingly withheld it from individuals impacted by the nuclear testing program, they have failed the veterans, their widows and families,” she said.

She added: “This is the last jigsaw puzzle I need to find out what really caused my father’s early death, it will give my family closure.

“It’s important to me that the full story of the impact of nuclear testing by the British Government in Australia is realised, and this includes having access to all information about my father that relates to his experience at Operation Hurricane, — not just the information that the UK government chooses to provide,” she said.

The lack of access to the secret files on mass medical monitoring of Australian troops has been blamed on a filing error. If troops were monitored without their consent and compensation denied when they fell sick, claims for damages could top $10 billion.

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Originally published as Daughter says RAAF sergeant died prematurely from radioactive fallout of British nuclear test