by James Jinks
During any normal period in the early 1970s, the Royal Navy estimated that there were two ‘Charlie’, one ‘Victor’, one ‘Juliett’, ten ‘Foxtrot’ and two ‘Whisky’ class Soviet submarines operating in the Mediterranean. These submarines, in particular the ‘Juliett’ class, were thought to lurk in the basin between Crete and Libya/Egypt, waiting for a US Carrier Group. They were also reported as operating within thirty miles of the coasts of Crete, Libya and Egypt, where the bottom was recognizable, making navigation easier, the sonar sea state was higher, and counter-detection by active sonar was very unlikely. In times of tension NATO expected the Soviets to reinforce their Mediterranean submarine force by the covert passage of submarines from the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Sea. In order to locate and quantify these reinforcements NATO deployed air, surface and sub-surface ASW forces on surveillance and barrier operations in the chokepoints off Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and eastern Crete as well as the Straits of Gibraltar and the vicinity of the Dardanelles through which the Soviet submarines had to transit.106 To find the submarines, there was a coordinated ASW effort employing US P3 Maritime Reconnaissance Aircraft, flooding the area with radar, as well as submarines using overt active sonar.
In July and August 1978, HMS Dreadnought was ordered to establish and maintain an active trail of Soviet ‘Juliett’, ‘Tango’ and ‘Foxtrot’ conventional submarines and Soviet nuclear submarines, and to conduct surveillance of high-interest Soviet surface ships and exercises.107 Dreadnought had considerable difficulty locating its primary target, the ‘Juliett’ submarine. A coordinated radar flood from a US P3 Orion Maritime Patrol Aircraft and an active search using Dreadnought’s sonar on 25, 26 and 27 August revealed nothing and Dreadnought’s CO, Sam Salt, took his submarine into the Sollum anchorage to conduct surveillance of a number of Soviet vessels. As conditions in the anchorage were ideal, Salt decided to conduct hull surveillance on a Soviet modified ‘Kashin’ class destroyer, making two underwater passes during which Salt’s observations through the periscope were recorded as detailed sketches, recording in-line sonar arrays on the under-hull and a main sonar dome suite, which reinforced the impression that this modified ‘Kashin’ class possessed a very-low-frequency active sonar capability. Dreadnought remained undetected throughout the operation.108
Trailing Soviet submarines sometimes led to incidents. In 1977, HMS Valiant, under the command of John Coward, was trailing a Soviet ‘Echo II’ class submarine off the coast of Syria. Coward was in Valiant’s Control Room when the Engineer entered and said: ‘I think you ought to come and see something.’ Coward went back to the reinforced tunnel over the top of the reactor compartment in the bottom of which was a glass window that could be used to see into the unmanned reactor compartment. ‘It looked like a huge cathedral of machinery, brightly lit, lovely and quiet, but you can’t get in it because of the radiation,’ recalled Coward. ‘But we couldn’t see any of that because five feet below the window was the shimmering surface of the Mediterranean. We had embarked god knows how many hundreds of tons of sea water into the reactor compartment.’109 A salt-water services pipe situated in the reactor compartment had fractured, causing sea water to flood into the compartment. Coward returned to the Control Room and slowly reduced Valiant’s speed, which created problems with the trim of the submarine as the extra weight began to take hold. ‘If we’d have slowed down without knowing that we were several hundred tons heavy, we could have sunk it,’ said Coward. ‘But fortunately we were going extremely fast, so we hadn’t noticed the stuff coming in.’110
Valiant was surfaced and with the reactor shut down the diesel generators were started to provide power and limited propulsion. As Valiant’s engineering team pumped water out of the reactor compartment Coward was instructed to wait for further instructions once a technical analysis had been carried out, and the arrival of a chemist from Rolls-Royce and Associates, who was later flown out and winched onto the submarine by a helicopter from a County Class Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Fife. However, the noise of surfacing and the diesel engines alerted the Soviet submarine to Valiant’s presence. With the possibility of Soviet warships detecting Valiant on the surface, Coward made the decision, backed up by the advice from his own engineering staff, to restart the reactor. At the subsequent Board of Inquiry into the incident Coward was heavily criticized for restarting Valiant’s reactor after only a limited clean of the salt-water-drenched pipework. The Flag Officer Submarines, John Fieldhouse, became increasingly irritated by the committee’s patronizing tone and intervened in the proceedings: ‘Gentlemen, those of us who serve in submarines live closer to the consequences of our actions than any of you could possibly imagine.’111 In the end the Board of Inquiry condemned Coward’s decision on engineering grounds, but a top-secret annex to the Board’s report acknowledged that Coward had faced a bleak choice between possibly serious engineering problems in the submarine, many months, if not years later; or causing grave political embarrassment if Valiant was found on the surface surrounded by Soviet forces. The Admiralty accepted the Board’s conclusion and Coward went on to have a highly successful Navy career, becoming an Admiral and Flag Officer Submarines.
Such incidents were rare and the fact that Valiant had continued to operate while under such conditions was a testament to the designers of the PWR1 nuclear reactor that powered the submarine. ‘It was so well constructed, so well insulated and so well clad that it didn’t mind running in sea water,’ said Coward. ‘We’d gone absolutely ape to stop any drop of sea water getting in there before, the smallest drop in a thousand gallons of beautiful fresh water we’d have ditched it and started again … And then we flooded the whole blinking thing with sea water!’112
These Cold War operations were very demanding on the crews. Once clear of a patrol area the submarine’s company would be a hive of frantic activity as the crew prepared for returning alongside for leave. Once back after an operation, the effects of a long patrol became all too apparent on the crew. Everyone smelt, their clothes were impregnated with the submarine odour of air conditioning, hydraulics, carbohydrates, sewage, the Galley, diesel and natural body odours. Married men on meeting their wives again were quickly told to get in the shower. Daylight also caused problems. The crew was used to fluorescent lighting and distance perception was very poor due to the maximum visual distance inside a submarine being about twenty or thirty feet.113
Prolonged patrols also took their toll on the fitness of the crew. The watch-keeping system messed up individual body clocks. If a crewman had been on the second watch, normally from 0100 to 0700 and 1300 to 1900, then at home he would be wide awake when everyone else was sleeping, or feeling tired in the morning when everyone else was wide awake. Knowledge of current events was also poor and if the weather had been bad on the way back with the submarine pitching about the crew would feel a rolling sensation for a couple of hours once back on land. The crew were also discouraged from driving for a day or possibly two as the levels of CO or CO2 and other gasses may have had an effect. This was compounded by the fact that most had not had anything alcoholic to drink for eight weeks. A couple of drinks ashore could have a powerful effect and most had built up enough money while away at sea to live like kings for a few days.
To alleviate the demands on their crews, SSN COs would try and make as many port visits as possible, but because of the complex safety regime surrounding nuclear submarines, obtaining a nuclear licence for berthing in various ports was complicated. On 2 May 1976, HMS Warspite was berthed in Seaforth Docks, Liverpool, for celebrations for the Battle of the Atlantic weekend. Warspite, then under the command of Terry Woods, had been heavily worked because of a shortage of SSN availability. While the submarine was alongside, with its nuclear reactor shut down, a serious fire erupted in her Diesel Generator Room. While in harbour, nuclear submarines usually received their power from a shore generator, but due to problems with the facilities in Liverpool Warspite’s own diesel engines were operating to generate power. The cause o
f the fire was a sudden spray of hot, high-pressure lube oil from the engine of one of the diesel generators and its ignition on hot exhaust fittings on the engine. The fire started as a violent conflagration giving off intense heat and vicious choking black smoke. By the time the diesel generators had been shut down, after about one minute, the blaze, akin to a flame inside an oil-fired boiler, had created extremely high temperatures in the higher levels of the Diesel Room on the port side of the submarine. Conditions were such that the compartment quickly became an inferno. Attempts by teams of firefighters from the ship’s company to locate and extinguish the fire were hampered by their inability to move freely around the Diesel Generator Room wearing the standard emergency breathing apparatus.114
Within seconds of the first report of the fire, Warspite’s Manoeuvring Room was filled with dense, choking black smoke and visibility was reduced to just a few inches. The effects of extremely acrid toxic smoke and heat, together with difficulties experienced with the emergency breathing system, made effective watch keeping of the machinery almost impossible and Warspite’s crew struggled to read meters and identify alarms. Electrical supplies began to fail and dense smoke quickly filled the after-end of the submarine. The civilian fire brigade was summoned as soon as the fire was reported and arrived within six minutes of receipt of the call. Woods returned on board at 1615 and found that the fire was beyond the stage of being extinguished by portable appliances. He asked the Chief Fire Officer of Liverpool’s Fire Brigade to fight the fire with members of the ship’s company available as guides. Four and a half hours later, the fire was out. It had caused severe damage to Warspite’s Diesel Generator Room; all electrical supplies aft were lost and the nuclear plant was reduced to emergency cooling. Four senior ratings, including a trainee reactor panel operator in the Manoeuvring Room, who remained at his post until he was eventually overcome by fumes, were treated in hospital for the effects of smoke.115
Woods was well aware that if the fire had not been controlled he would have had to face a very difficult decision. ‘I would have had to shut both doors and shut all the hatches,’ he said. ‘I had thought out what to do if we really started a nuclear incident. We had at least 20′ water beneath us and I was going to evacuate the submarine and use escape flooding valves forward and after.’116 Preparations were made for initiating a reactor accident signal but after discussion with the Chief Staff Officer Engineering and the Flag Officer Submarines it was decided that there were no indications that a reactor accident was likely to take place; those indications available demonstrated that the reactor was being cooled satisfactorily. Radiation monitoring, both internally and external to the submarine, gave no readings above background level and tests conducted after the incident showed no abnormalities, indicating that no release of fission products to the primary circuit had taken place. Later detailed analyses showed no sign of core damage. The Marine Engineering Officer, Lieutenant Commander Tim Cannon, was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his role in maintaining the reactor during the fire.117
This was the first major fire in an SSN or SSBN. No British nuclear submarine had previously had to deal with such an incident in terms of difficulty and complexity. Although there had been frequent exercises, realism was necessarily limited due to the possibility of accidents in poor visibility and the toxic nature of the smoke. Many valuable lessons were learned. The incident resulted in the upgrading of much firefighting equipment and systems on all British submarines and a revision of some of the procedures for fighting fires. In the long term, there was little impact on future port visits by nuclear submarines and at the end of 1983 HMS Courageous visited Liverpool.118
THE PERILS OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS
Aside from Cold War operations, the Submarine Service was increasingly involved in a number of other roles, stimulated by the Northern Ireland Troubles. The first was somewhat puzzling. During the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, in desperate need of radical solutions to break the blockade of the Ballylumford power station, asked the Ministry of Defence to report on the possibility of using nuclear submarines to power Belfast. Officials in the Ministry of Defence looked into the idea ‘as a matter of urgency’ and concluded that an SSN could leave for Belfast within forty-eight hours. However, it would not have been able to make a worthwhile contribution to the electricity supply, as the electricity generated by a nuclear submarine was not compatible with the national grid. Only a few places, such as the Royal Dockyards and one or two shipbuilders, had the suitable conversion machinery. Even then, due to the design of the submarines’ electrical system, only a few hundred kilowatts could be fed into the grid.119 The idea was shelved and the strike eventually contributed to the collapse of the power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement.
The Submarine Service was also involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, when submarines were involved in intelligence-gathering operations and in support of Special Forces.120 The British Government suspected that arms, ammunition and explosives were being smuggled into Northern Ireland by sea using containers or car ferries. Since 1967 the Royal Navy had been conducting Operation ‘Grenada’, providing minesweepers or similar craft for coastal patrolling in order to intercept provisional IRA clandestine arms smuggling. However, these vessels often suffered from the extremely poor winter weather off the east Irish coast, which made interception hazardous. The overt nature of the patrols and the minesweepers’ slow speed often meant that smugglers were able to avoid or outrun them. In June 1975, the UK’s military authorities in Northern Ireland requested that a submarine be assigned to conduct covert surveillance of the east coast to help intercept vessels involved in smuggling. The submarine was attractive because of its relative immunity to bad weather, the fact that it could, if equipped with image intensifiers and low-light television, identify and follow suspect ships. It could then direct the minesweepers to take over the trail of suspects into ports, or to carry out an intercept at sea. Submarines could also move close inshore and covertly observe landings, gathering intelligence. The psychological value was also attractive.121 In July 1975, HMS Osiris was ordered to conduct a patrol in Red Bay, in Northern Ireland, in order to test the feasibility of using SSKs in covert surveillance. Little suspicious activity was observed, and it was concluded that future operations should only be mounted if the submarine had specific intelligence about smuggling activities.122 Operations continued well into the 1970s and in September 1976 HMS Onyx and HMS Otus were also involved in ‘Grenada’ patrols.
Royal Navy submarines were also involved in deploying and extracting SBS Royal Marines in support of operations in Northern Ireland. In January 1975, HMS Cachalot infiltrated two SBS teams by canoe in the area between Torr Head and Garron point as part of Operation ‘Aweless’, an anti-gun-running operation.123 Such operations were not confined to Northern Ireland. Although Sam Fry had discontinued a number of Special Forces practices while Commander SM, 7th Submarine Squadron in the late 1960s, by the mid-1970s submarine Special Forces operations had developed into something of an art form and Special Forces were involved in training for a number of operations using submarines. One such exercise, codenamed Exercise ‘Cold Shoulder’, was conducted off Norway in the early 1970s and saw Special Forces carry out a submerged attack on an enemy ship at anchor in a Norwegian fjord. According to an SBS Marine who took part in ‘Cold Shoulder’, one of the Royal Navy’s ‘Porpoise’ class submarines, HMS Walrus, entered the Malangan fjord, just south of Tromsø on 14 March 1973, and conducted a reconnaissance of a suitable landing point using the submarine’s periscope.
Exiting and re-entering a submerged submarine was a lengthy and complex procedure that involved the SBS leaving through the submarine’s forward escape tower (SET). Prior to departure the SBS would pack stores – wooden skis, pulk (a toboggan), rucksacks and an inflatable Gemini called a Capella – and place them in a stores box located under the casing of the submarine. As Walrus moved in towards the landing point, the CO o
rdered his crew to remain silent. Speed was reduced to less than half a knot and the SBS began to move outside. Wearing specialist breathing apparatus, the SBS Marines, followed by a casing diver, entered the escape tower, shut the lower lid and waited while the compartment was flooded. Once the pressure had been equalized the casing diver would signal that he was ready by using a ‘knockometer’, a hammer to hit the bulkhead. The upper hatch was then opened and the casing diver exited and began to prepare the stores for release. Meanwhile, the rest of the team, each wearing a Rechargeable Air Breathing Apparatus (RABA) proceeded to exit the submarine using the same procedure. ‘Initially in the SET, we breathed from the submarine Built-in Breathing Supply (BIBS) to conserve the air in the RABA’ recalled one Marine involved in the exercise:
The cold water slowly flooded into the tower and, when it reached about head height, the pressure inside equalized with the outside water-pressure. The upper hatch started to lift and cold seawater tumbled in, sometimes knocking your facemask off. Once the hatch was fully open, we changed from BIBS to RABA. Grabbing a wire along the casing, we then exited the tower and swam, or rather the slipstream pushed us, aft to the area of the Forward Torpedo Loading Hatch and got under the casing. We called this space the ‘lurking area’. As each team member made his exit, he went in to the lurking area to get out of the slipstream and waited with the RABA plugged into a large 150 cu ft air bottle.124
