28 April 1995 : Ministry of Defence has lost details of munitions and chemical weapons ships dumped in the sea around Britain between 1945 and 1963

The Ministry of Defence has lost records of more than one million tonnes of munitions and details of 24 chemical weapons ships dumped in the sea around the British Isles between 1945 and 1963.

The disclosure follows the Guardian’s revelations last month about Operation Sandcastle in 1955, the scuttling in the Irish Sea of three ships containing German nerve gas and arsenic, which have never been monitored by the ministry.

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The ministry says 24 ships containing chemical weapons were sunk between 1945 and 1957. It has lost the names of two ships scuttled in 1956 and 1957. Another 14,000 tonnes of the poisonous gas phosgene were “loose dumped” in Beaufort’s Dyke in the Irish Sea in 1946 and 1947.

The fresh details have come to light in letters and parliamentary answers to David Clark, Labour’s defence spokesman, who yesterday renewed his demand for monitoring of the sea bed.

“I am extremely concerned that as well as never monitoring what has happened to these arms and chemicals, the ministry now admits it has lost most of the records,” he said.

“This means that they can have no idea what has happened to these weapons, which could be in rusting containers.”

Details of both exercises have been released in a letter from a Ministry of Defence official.

He says that the ministry cooperated with the Ministry of Agriculture to select sites to dump the surplus munitions and chemical weapons.

“We estimate that over one million tonnes of conventional munitions were sea-dumped by all three services during 1946 to 1963. Regrettably, few records of the disposal programme now exist. Beaufort’s Dyke was the UK’s main sea dump site during this period, with Hurds Deep (1,000 miles off Land’s End) being used to a lesser degree. Other sites were used for small scale dumping operations, but it is difficult to identify these from the records that survive.”

The munition types dumped ranged from small arms ammunition, through large calibre artillery and naval shells, to heavy aircraft bombs.

The smaller sites include the Firth of Clyde; the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth; the sound of Mull; sea around Alderney and Guernsey; Orford Ness, Suffolk; Loch Linnhe, in Highland and Strathclyde; Whitesand Bay, off Plymouth; and the sea near Milford Haven, Dyfed. Further sites are shown on the accompanying map.

The ministry also discloses that there was a programme of dumping chemical weapons involving 24 ships - most of them former merchant vessels.

They were sunk in depths from 500 to 4,200 metres, but the ministry is unable to provide details of the chemical weapons in each ship.

The earliest record is the sinking of three ships, the Empire Fal, Empire Simba and Empire Cormorant. The ministry has lost the names of two ships sunk.

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It says two ports, Barry in South Wales and Cairnryan near Stranraer in Scotland, were used for all the chemical dumping operations.

It also reveals details of Operation Dismal in 1946 and 1947 where captured German chemical weapon stocks, including the nerve gas tabun, were stored in Llandwrog, Gwynedd, before disposal. The operation paralleled one 10 years later to dispose of chemical weapons.

The last munitions dumping took place between 1973 and 1993, when Hurd’s Deep was used to dispose of redundant arms, according to an answer from Nicholas Soames, minister for the armed forces, to Mr Clark.

“No records are available to cover more distant international waters,” he says.