The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  The Admiralty tried again a year later. In April 1952 the Foreign Office approved another operation on the condition that the CO of the submarine observe certain safeguards. He was instructed ‘to keep well clear of territorial waters claimed by the Soviet Union and, as far as possible, of Soviet shipping’.170 The Naval Attaché in Moscow was also informed in case something should go wrong.171 On 30 August 1952, HMS Alcide sailed from Rothesay for the Barents Sea under the command of HMS Venturer’s former CO, Commander Jimmy Launders. The patrol was codenamed Operation ‘Adamaston’ and Alcide was ordered to proceed north of a large island off the Russian mainland known as Novaya Zemlya (Russian for ‘New Land’), which was used as a testing facility for Soviet weapon systems. Alcide’s CO was ordered to remain unseen and undetected, to carry out communication reception trials and obtain data on water conditions, anti-submarine operations, navigational data, ship-to-shore communications, and physiological data as well as testing material and equipment. Launders was also ordered ‘to sight and subsequently report on ships, both Naval and Mercantile, to the East of NOVAYA ZEMLYA’.172

  The risk of detection was considered to be very small. A 1952 assessment by the Director of Naval Intelligence concluded that:

  Such Soviet A/S equipment as is known to exist is elementary in design by modern standards. Some asdic-type sets are fitted but multi-unit hydrophones are thought to be in use by a number of surface vessels. A limited number of ‘Hedgehog’ type ahead throwing weapons [an anti-submarine weapon which fired a small number of motor bombs which exploded on contact] may be in service, but the main A/S weapon is still the depth charge. A/S tactics and operating skill are likely to be poor, as may also be cooperation of ships in a hunt. Attacks are likely to be more ferocious than accurate, large numbers of depth charges being used.173

  The Royal Navy’s first operation in northern waters was a failure. Launders was forced to abandon any attempt to pass north of Novaya Zemlya after a number of Alcide’s fuel tanks were damaged during the operation and he had forgotten to fill the submarine’s emergency fuel tanks prior to departure. The Flag Officer Submarines, Rear Admiral Simpson, was so angry that he considered taking ‘disciplinary action with regard to the Commanding Officer and Engineer Officer … for the lack of seamanlike judgment and professional knowledge they displayed in this matter’.174 Launders incurred Simpson’s ‘severe displeasure for … the curtailment of this important operation’.175 The Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Sir Anthony Buzzard, was also disappointed and wrote of ‘the need for further operations of this nature since our knowledge of this area is not otherwise covered’.176

  In February 1953, the Admiralty tried again, this time with an operation specifically aimed at collecting intelligence about a Soviet Fleet exercise. But the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, refused to authorize the operation after taking scientific advice that a submarine stood little or no chance of getting anywhere near the exercise undetected.177 The Chief of Staff to Flag Officer Submarines, Captain Arthur Hezlet, disagreed and ordered a submarine to conduct surveillance against the Royal Navy’s Combined and Home Fleets based in Gibraltar in order to convince the Prime Minister that ‘there was little risk in allowing a submarine to undertake a similar operation in the Barents Sea during Russian fleet exercises’.178

  HMS TOTEM – ‘A SLIPPERY CUSTOMER’

  Hezlet selected the wartime submariner and CO of the recently converted ‘T’ class submarine HMS Totem to conduct the operation, now codenamed Operation ‘Cravat’. By the mid-1950s the modified ‘T’ class were proving far superior to the ‘A’ class such as Jimmy Launders’ HMS Alcide and Coote had made a number of unauthorized modifications to Totem that greatly increased its capabilities. The most valuable was a prototype S-band receiver antenna that Coote had obtained while visiting a scientist friend who worked at the Admiralty Signal and Radar Establishment in Portsdown Hill.179 After a good lunch in a nearby pub, Coote persuaded the scientist to part with the prototype and later drove out of the establishment with it in his raincoat pocket. Once it was fitted to Totem’s radar periscope, the intercept equipment granted Totem immunity against specific airborne and shipboard S-band search radars.180 It also provided Totem with a considerable range advantage. ‘We certainly ran rings around various destroyer flotilla captains who dominated night exercises by ordering X-band silence, then easily detecting and putting down snorkeling submarines by using their S-band radars,’ remembered Coote. ‘In this manner we were never caught napping by surface or air forces, and my “luck” became a byword.’181

  Totem was also one of the fastest ‘T’ conversions in the Royal Navy, if not the fastest. This was thanks to yet another unauthorized modification. On most of the ‘T’ class the streamlined fin was broken by an inverted tub-shaped protrusion at its top, known as the ‘bird bath’, which was meant to house an antenna from another new radar. ‘As soon as I reached the depot ship away from the prying eyes of the Admiralty I had it cut away and replaced with a perfectly faired plating,’ explained Coote.182 The result was an extra 0.75 knots on Totem’s maximum dived speed. ‘It was like money for old rope,’ he said, ‘we’d just pop under … wind on 18 knots and we would clear a mile in four minutes. Follow that with ten minutes’ silent running … at 12 knots and we would be 3 miles from the escort.’183

  Coote was a highly competent submariner and during the 1953 Summer War Exercise he had earned a reputation for unconventional thinking by coming up with an innovative means of intercepting ‘enemy’ submarines entering or leaving a bay near the Outer Skerries lighthouse just off the Shetland Islands. The lighthouse had an excellent view of the approaches to an area that had been designated as an enemy base. Seeing an opportunity, Coote launched a folboat with two officers armed with a portable voice radio, several bottles of Scotch and a haversack full of 1.25 lb charges. He told the men to paddle ashore to the lighthouse, capture it and persuade the keepers not to report their presence by bribing them with Scotch and cigarettes. For two days the officers kept a lookout over the surrounding area while Totem patrolled nearby. Whenever an enemy submarine approached the bay the officers would toss a signal charge into the water. This was the signal Totem needed to raise her VHF antenna and listen on a prearranged frequency to one of the officers: ‘Customer for you, outward bound in position Alpha Lima Four Seven. Course 135 degrees at 15 knots.’ Totem would then move in for the kill and Coote was able to maintain a watertight blockade of the enemy base throughout the rest of the exercise. ‘I did not get the roasting I expected and probably deserved,’ he later wrote.184 Flag Officer Submarines was forced to accept that the ploy was a realistic possibility.

  Totem also had a first-rate crew. Coote’s second-in-command was the future Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant John Fieldhouse. Known as ‘Snorkers’ after the Australian First Lieutenant of Compass Rose in The Cruel Sea with whom he shared a love of sausages, Fieldhouse was regarded by Coote as ‘without equal’ on personal and professional grounds.185 Totem was also one of the first submarines in the Royal Navy to put to sea with an Electrical Officer. This was Lieutenant Peter Lucy, who arrived on his first morning to find a distinctly unimpressed Coote nursing a terrible hangover and in no mood to pass the time of day with anyone. ‘We’ve managed in submarines for half a century without specialist Electrical Officers,’ remarked Coote. ‘The First Lieutenant has always been responsible. When something goes wrong he just gives it a kick and it re-starts. What do you have to offer that’s so unique?’ ‘Ah yes, sir,’ Lucy replied, ‘but I went to University for three years to learn where to kick it.’186

  Coote’s brief for Operation ‘Cravat’ was to act independently, as if Totem were a Soviet submarine, and obtain as much information as possible about Royal Navy activities in the vicinity of Gibraltar. The operation was so secret that only the Commanders-in-Chief, Home Fleet and Mediterranean, and their Chiefs of Staff knew that it was taking place. A small party from the Radio Warfare Section of HMS Mercury,
the Royal Navy’s Signals School near Petersfield in Hampshire, embarked on board Totem.187 These men were radio communications operators, specially trained in signals intelligence, and they were responsible for the ‘special fit’ communication and intercept equipment that was installed in the submarine.188 To make the operation realistic, Totem was only allowed to act on information that was available in publicly accessible sources, such as the press. The Hampshire Telegraph provided Coote with an outline of the Home Fleet’s Spring Cruise programme, as well as the dates and venues of the various Combined Fleet sporting fixtures, with finals to be contested in Gibraltar. The Times of Malta was also a useful resource as it listed the departure dates of many of the heavy units in the Mediterranean Fleet. To maintain operational secrecy, Coote even went as far as chartering HMS Dolphin’s yacht and sailing off for an overnight stop at Bosham Harbour just outside Chichester in West Sussex, after too many shore staff at the base started asking questions. On 4 March 1954, the yacht quietly slipped back into Haslar Creek in Gosport.

  Totem sailed an hour later and ran south, diving by day but operating on the surface at night. At Cape St Vincent she turned east and started the 200-mile voyage into the Western Mediterranean. Between 10 and 20 March, Totem patrolled undetected between Gibraltar and Algiers, during which considerable radio, tactical and equipment intelligence was obtained from observing and monitoring ships, submarines and aircraft of the Royal Navy’s Home and Mediterranean Fleets. In total fifty-two recordings of radars and ultra-high-frequency (UHF) and very-high-frequency (VHF) circuits were taken and 497 high-frequency communication messages intercepted. Although Coote was ordered to remain undetected south of the 45th parallel, on a number of occasions he was forced to take Totem into ‘lethal proximity’ of surface ships conducting anti-submarine exercises in order to collect intelligence. Although Totem enjoyed a considerable advantage – Coote possessed detailed knowledge of the capabilities of air- and shipborne anti-submarine equipment which would have normally been denied to a foreign submarine – the prevailing natural conditions of unlimited visibility, anomalous radar propagation and calm, isothermal seas more than redressed the balance in favour of Totem’s targets.

  At 0730 on 11 March, Totem advanced towards what intercepted radio traffic indicated was a Submarine Exercise Area to observe an exercise between two submarines, the ‘A’ class HMS Artful and the ‘S’ class HMS Scorcher, and the units of the Royal Navy’s 6th Destroyer Squadron and 6th Frigate Squadron. At 0730 Totem was caught between two destroyers, HMS Battleaxe and HMS Crossbow, while they were engaged in an anti-submarine exercise, hunting HMS Artful. ‘In flat calm and alarmingly good asdic conditions, detection seemed certain,’ wrote Coote. ‘The two ships passed either side of Totem, which was at 175 feet trying to keep end on simultaneously to the two ships both apparently in contact at 2500 yards range. Perhaps the fact that the echo was outside the exercise area and inside Spanish waters saved us; at all events, on regaining periscope depth at 0840, both squadrons were busily engaged hunting their official targets. A series of excellent recordings were taken.’189

  Coote avoided detection (later analysis revealed that the two destroyers were in contact with Totem but they failed to classify the submarine correctly) and after recording and photographing enough of the 6th Destroyer Squadron’s exercise with Artful he moved Totem southwest to monitor the 6th Frigate Squadron’s exercise with HMS Scorcher. After recording the exercise Coote returned once again to observe the 6th Destroyer Squadron:

  The afternoon started with some useful ‘X’ and ‘S’ band radar recordings from Apollo and Artful whilst they waited for ‘Go’ time. They were photographed. From then till 1745 a most interesting recording was made of a complete [exercise] yielding all manner of tactical intelligence from the moment of the aircraft’s first contact till he handed over to the ships, their search and final kill.190

  The next morning, 12 March, Coote moved Totem to the southwest, near to Gibraltar airfield, in time to catch the Royal Navy fleet as it returned to harbour after completing weapons training. There, he gained yet more intelligence, especially about the Royal Navy’s latest operational fleet carrier, HMS Eagle:

  At 1337 EAGLE accompanied by the 4th Destroyer Squadron was sighted bearing 122° as she steamed towards EUROPA Point [the tip of Gibraltar]. At this stage TOTEM was a mile offshore to the east of La Linea where an apparently incessant stream of Neptunes, Shackletons, Skyraiders, Fireflies and S.51 Helicopters either orbiting whilst waiting to land or actually approaching the runway discouraged prolonged exposure of the masts needed to monitor EAGLE’s traffic. The sea was, as always, calm and translucent, however photographs were taken, together with a recording of the carrier’s ‘S’ band radar and a check of her rev-not ration [revs per knot].

  The three hours spent there were by no means wasted. The Rock’s air warning mattress arrays were plotted and noted to stop operating after the tenth Shackleton had landed soon after 1500. A very powerful ‘S’ band radar … was thought to be part of the fortress’s defence; it was heard out to 50 miles that night … 6 different frigates or destroyers were recorded … talking on UHF circuits as they entered harbour.

  Coote withdrew Totem to the northeast and hugged the Spanish coast until the next morning. He had intended on moving southeast to intercept a convoy; however, he became suspicious of a Neptune search aircraft which was sighted intermittently between 1200 and 1325. ‘The very fact that an aircraft had been put out on an intensive patrol on a Saturday afternoon during a stand-off period was clear indication of the serious measures being taken to discourage uninvited spectators,’ wrote Coote. He decided to abandon his plan to intercept the convoy and instead withdrew Totem to the North African coast and to wait in the Gulf of Arzeu for the night.

  For the next few days Coote attempted to intercept the main exercises between the Royal Navy’s Home and Mediterranean Fleets, codenamed ‘Touchline One’, ‘Touchline Two’, ‘Touchline Three’ and ‘Touchline Four’, between Oran and Algiers. But with surface ships and aircraft participating in the exercises expecting to come under attack from submarines that were also taking part, Coote had to be careful. Totem was almost detected on 16 March while attempting to intercept a convoy escorted by the Royal Navy’s last operational battleship, HMS Vanguard. At 0914, two ‘Weapon’ class destroyers, escorting Vanguard, passed astern of Totem and one of them, HMS Venus, came perilously close to the submarine. ‘We went deep fine on her port bow, moving across and out, keeping stern on,’ wrote Coote. ‘At 0931 she pinged all over us, but moved on. There remained but one more source of transmissions to ping over the submarine at 0940, before I was able to regain periscope depth and see that the port wing destroyer, which must have passed nearly overhead, was one of the Daring Class.’ Coote continued to observe Vanguard from four miles away, advancing into the waters astern of the battleship’s starboard bow escorts, taking photographs of the battleship and two training carriers, and recording the accompanying destroyers’ radar and communication transmissions. He remained in the area until 1020, when a Shackleton Maritime Patrol Aircraft started patrolling astern of the convoy.

  For the next two days, 17 and 18 March, Totem attempted to intercept HMS Eagle, which was due to follow a convoy from a distance of twenty-five miles. However, the carrier proved elusive and the heavy presence of frigates and aircraft fully alerted to the presence of submarines participating in the exercise restricted Totem’s freedom of movement. Worse, Totem was suffering from a number of mechanical problems and at 1128 Coote was forced to withdraw his submarine after its remaining ballast pump became defective. As Totem withdrew, a sharp explosion in the Control Room, ‘like a baby volcano erupting from the dark recesses’, put the hydroplanes out of action, damaging the main vents and Totem’s snort air intake valve, which could only be shut by hand. Coote had little choice but to surface Totem as the main hydraulic system was spewing liquid onto the Control Room deck, something that only became apparent when ‘people s
tarted floundering like novice skaters all over the control-room’ floor as the room was in dimmed red lighting at the time. By the time the defect was repaired over 70 gallons of oil had escaped from the system.

  Despite these difficulties Totem was able to dive again and continue the operation. As night descended on 19 March, Coote moved his submarine towards the North African coast to recharge batteries. The next morning he dived Totem again and set course for Gibraltar Harbour to carry out close range photographic reconnaissance of the many ships that made up the Combined Fleet. Totem entered Algeciras Bay close to Carnero Point lighthouse, unobserved by either the powerful Gibraltar Rock Radar or by the lighthouse keeper, who as Coote recorded ‘chose that moment to answer nature’s call on the foreshore’. Totem spent the next hour and a half eavesdropping, collecting call signs and frequencies from the various ships in the harbour. At 1146 the submarine swept down past the entrance to Algeciras Harbour and photographed HMS Indefatigable, two cruisers, HMS Implacable, HMS Eagle and HMS Vanguard ‘in such a manner as to show the maximum detail of their antennas. It took 9 shots to get all Eagle’s aerials,’ recorded Coote.191 He then took Totem so close to the Combined Fleet that on one occasion he looked out of the raised periscope and found himself looking straight at the planking of an Admiralty 14-foot sailing dinghy. ‘No one sighted us, or if they did, they did not believe their eyes,’ he recalled.192 ‘I wondered whether any of the boats racing in the bay at the time would mistake the periscope for a mark on the course, particularly RN 688’s dinghy, which was nearly skewered by it.’193