Ron Skinner has shared memorabilia with us of his extraordinary experience of seeing a mushroom cloud of a hydrogen bomb ascending to the sky.

The Wyke Regis, Weymouth resident was posted to Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1957 with the RAF where he bore witness to the hydrogen bomb test known as Operation Grapple.

Ron, 83, originally from the north east, was playing football in Northern Ireland when he received the call to go to Christmas Island as a 22-year-old in 240 squadron.

He said: "They wanted two squadrons out there. I didn't know anything about Christmas Island.

"It took us a long time to get out there, we had to go there by travelling through the US, through the Carolinas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Honolulu, Hawaii."

Conditions on the island were very primitive, Ron said.

"The conditions were terrible. We didn't have much fresh water. When it rained we would all come out of the tent naked to have a wash or we would wash in the sea."

Some of the men would go over to Honolulu for respite, Ron recalls, and to get fresh food.

"The food we had was so bad and it couldn't be kept fresh because of the heat - one time we had an egg box moving and it was because of the maggots," Ron said.

The only women on Christmas Island were two elderly ladies who were were about 60 or 70 and worked in the NAAFI," Ron said.

Ron's duties were to work in the office with the squadron and as a keen footballer he was in charge of organising football matches.

But the memory that sticks in his head most often was the day the first bomb was dropped over Malden Island, May 15, 1957.

Ron's squadron was told to look out for the Japanese who were believed to be sailing into the area.

Ron remembers: "When the bomb went off I was an observer. We flew out in a pattern and we were 200 miles away from where it went off. We were told not to look.

"The best way I could describe it was that it was like going into a dark room and someone behind you was turning the light on. It was so bright it felt as if the sun had suddenly been turned on.

"After the bomb had gone off we were told 'you can turn around'. There were two or three of us who turned back to see it and it looked like the sun was rising.

"When we got back to base we went into the cinema and were looking at footage of it."

When Ron returned to the UK he went to Northern Ireland and was then demobbed and came to Weymouth. He went to work for the Southern Electricity Board (SEB) and used to look after Weymouth's iconic fairy lights working with ex-councillor Ray Banham.

In 1963 Ron married Pam at St Paul's Church in Weymouth.

The pair became involved in many facets of local life, including dog training ability at Portland Dog Club with Ron appearing on the TV show That's My Dog. They are also keen ballroom dancers and bowlers taking part in bowls coaching at Wellworthy and bowling at Moonfleet.

Ron is also fond of spending time at his allotment.

But he will never forget the his extraordinary Christmas Island experience.

Many nuclear veterans who were present at the tests suffered health problems in later life.

Ron said: "I don't think anybody knew what was going to happen, they didn't know about radiation. I've never really talked much about what I saw at the tests.

"At that time I remember saying 'If anyone decides to use these they need their head looking at'."

*Thanks to Ron for sharing his extraordinary memories of Christmas Island with us. If you have old pictures and memories of any experience you'd like to share with Looking Back, get in touch using the details below.