Red Beard
While he was Chief Engineer at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment Dolphin worked (initially at Fort Halstead) on the first British tactical nuclear weapon codenamed Red Beard. In 1959 he requested a financial award for his work on the weapon, but was turned down. His claim was that although it was not his job to do so, he invented the device that eventually became the trigger for the British thermonuclear bomb. In rejecting his claim, the report written by a retired High Court Judge stated that Dolphin's actual job responsibilities were primarily in designing and building the infrastructure of the newly created AWRE on the Aldermaston site, not primarily weapons engineering. His claim was refused partly on the grounds that it was within the scope of his duties. The report also rejected Dolphin's claim that the Red Beard device became the trigger for the British thermonuclear bomb, and stated that the original Red Beard Mk.1 warhead design that had failed to fully trigger the British thermonuclear test devices at Christmas Island in 1957, was considerably modified using American information made available after signing of the Anglo-US Bilateral Treaty of 1958. Production examples of the Red Beard tactical nuclear weapon never used Dolphin's ideas, and after the 1958 Treaty no British thermonuclear weapon ever used Red Beard as the primary or trigger. Red Beard used a barium-based HE composition (baratol) at a time when British nuclear scientists had not yet understood fully that the primary ignition mechanism of a fusion device was by X-rays, the Teller–Ulam theory. Barium blocks X-rays, so Red Beard could never function effectively as a trigger. It was the Report's conclusion that Dolphin's claim should be rejected, as it was made some time after he left AWRE and had no knowledge of these later developments.