The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  British commitments East of Suez, particularly in the Gulf region, steadily increased throughout the 1990s. Royal Navy submarines were involved in supporting the invasion of Afghanistan by coalition forces in 2001. HMS Trafalgar and HMS Triumph fired Tomahawk missiles during the first wave of attacks, while HMS Superb was engaged in intelligence-gathering operations. HMS Turbulent was also deployed to the Gulf where, alongside HMS Splendid and twelve US Navy SSNs, the submarine took part in the opening stages of the invasion of Iraq, Operation ‘Telic’ to the British, destroying Iraqi military and regime targets with Tomahawk missiles. ‘We were on a notional countdown to when we thought we would be conducting our first strikes,’ recalled Turbulent’s CO, Commander Andrew McKendrick:

  We did our first strikes on the night of March 21 and 22, 2003. It was pitch black; it was night. We were keeping UK time. It was dark quite early. There was incredible concentration. It was faces in glowing screens. It’s whispered orders, concentration and then that moment when the discharge system actually ejects the missile. I’ll always remember my officer on the periscope, the communications officer. We had seen footage of Tomahawk firing before but of course we had never done it. This missile leaves the water in an absolute blaze of rocket motor. There was an expletive from the officer about how bright it was as it soared away into the night. I do remember somewhere deep in the submarine there was a cheer as the first one left. The training harnesses and tempers the adrenaline but it was there. I have absolutely no doubt. You feel this great thump and whoosh as the air blasts back into the submarine; it’s something you can’t mistake on board. It was remarkable to an extent; to find myself after that period in the Submarine Service to actually be using the submarine’s weapon system was A, remarkable and B, it was all about getting it right.100

  McKendrick was well aware that the world was watching.

  We had trained intensively for this mission and you’re very aware people are watching and the importance that your strike is conducted properly. The co-ordination is so fine, both in terms of deconfliction of these missiles as they are flying but also when and where they are to arrive – that absolute focus. The thing that impressed me most was these guys had been away nearly for nine months and the concentration and professionalism was absolute. It was all about getting it right and you perhaps think about the more profound issues afterwards. It was the most demanding work schedule I’ve ever taken part in. Morning, noon and night we were exercising different scenarios. In between that we were sitting down to work out how we would meet that demand. For me it was the satisfaction on board after so long away in proving your worth. These people [the crew] had brought the submarine from the depths of Devonport Dockyard back to the Gulf and delivered – that for me was the culmination of a very long period of ops deployments. Bringing all that together is one of my abiding memories.101

  Turbulent returned to Devonport flying the Jolly Roger after 300 days at sea.

  Given the distances involved, submarines operating East of Suez have carried out record-breaking patrols. In 2002, HMS Turbulent spent 236 days at sea out of a total of 300 away and travelled more than 50,000 miles, equivalent to twice around the world. Sailing from Devonport in June, Turbulent entered the Mediterranean, passed through the Suez Canal and became the first UK submarine to visit the new naval base at Changi in Singapore, before taking part in a series of operations in the Far East, including patrols in the Pacific and a port visit to Guam, where she became the first Royal Navy submarine to visit a newly formed US Navy submarine squadron. She then continued west, passing over the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of any ocean in the world, through the Celebes Sea, Lombok Strait and on to the British Indian Ocean Territory of Diego Garcia, returning to Singapore for Christmas and New Year, before heading into the Arabian Gulf and Bahrain for operations and exercises with coalition warships.

  Operating East of Suez is also expensive, financially and materially. Due to the lack of overseas bases, submarines have to be supported while in the area. They also have to transit through the Suez Canal, a process that costs a great deal of money and has to be planned and booked in advance. Materially, the distances involved take their toll on the SSNs, particularly their reactors and machinery. The ‘Swiftsure’ and ‘Trafalgar’ classes were never designed to operate in such warm waters, yet by the twenty-first century they were deployed to the region on almost continuous patrols. Typically an SSN will now stay East of Suez on operations for ten months. The core burn is considerable and due to delays in the ‘Astute’ programme, the service life of the ‘Trafalgar’ class is being extended well beyond what was originally designed. Once East of Suez, Royal Navy submarines are responsible for maintaining continuous TLAM coverage in the region at a few days’ notice to fire. They also simultaneously conduct what are termed Intelligence Surveillance Tracking and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) Patrols, which are demanding in that the submarines are required to deal with both potential enemies and friendly forces, avoiding all of them and remaining undetected.

  SSNs have also been involved in recent conflicts. In 2011, HMS Triumph was deployed in the Libyan campaign, supporting operations to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 through the Joint Task Force’s Operation ‘Odyssey Dawn’, known in the UK as Operation ‘Ellamy’. Triumph protected the refugee and humanitarian aid ships docking in Misrata while the port was under heavy fire by tracking Gaddafi-regime minelaying small boats, avoiding the mines and conducting intelligence-gathering and targeting missions off the coast. ‘We are the special forces of the maritime world. We do things that would make your hair curl,’ said HMS Triumph’s CO, Commander Rob Dunn. ‘Not since the Second World War has a submarine been used this effectively and flexibly. We were sitting incredibly close to the coast, watching and listening to the battle raging around Misrata and providing the most up-to-date intelligence and early warnings of impending attack against the port and the Nato ships providing its security.’102 For the duration of the scouting missions, artillery, rocket and missile explosions were easily heard throughout the submarine and shells repeatedly landed in the water nearby.103 During the opening two nights of Operation ‘Ellamy’, Triumph launched a number – perhaps as many as twelve – Tomahawk missiles into Libya alongside US forces, which fired a combined total of 100.104 They were directed against targets inside Libya, which included air and missile defence system radars, anti-aircraft sites as well as key communications nodes in the areas around Tripoli and along the country’s Mediterranean coast.105 These operations were designed both to de-risk subsequent missions flown by NATO aircraft, degrade the Libyan regime’s capability to resist a no-fly zone and prevent further attacks on Libya’s citizens and opposition groups. Justin Hughes, Captain Submarines, Devonport Flotilla, described Triumph’s missile firings as ‘getting up close and personal’ with Libya and ‘landscape gardening from the deep’.106

  Triumph remained at sea until 4 April.107 It was relieved by HMS Turbulent, which was also involved in operations off Libya in June 2011 before moving through the Suez Canal and to the Gulf, where Turbulent suffered from a mechanical defect, which in the warm waters of the Gulf caused severe problems. Turbulent had been alongside in Bahrain conducting repairs and preparing to sail for an ISTAR patrol. The submarine sailed in 34-degrees Celsius water temperature and 45-degree air temperature, with its coolant pumps operating at 50 per cent capacity. As Turbulent attempted to reach the cooler waters of the ocean, the boat’s freon plants – part of the air-conditioning machinery – failed and the temperature inside the submarine started to rise even higher. Turbulent’s crew shut down all non-essential equipment attempting to reduce the heat, but there was no improvement and before long humidity in the aft machinery compartments reached 100 per cent with temperatures of over 60 degrees Celsius. Personnel quickly overheated and some of the crew began suffering from severe heat exposure. The submarine started to become uninhabitable.

  ‘I genuinely thought there was going to be a loss o
f life on board,’ recalled Turbulent’s CO, Commander Ryan Ramsey, who was on the bridge at the time. ‘I came down below and was met with this incredible blast of heat.’108 Turbulent’s crew faced a three-fold problem: people were collapsing; equipment was failing; and if conditions continued to deteriorate, there was a small risk that the weapons would heat up beyond their design state and the reactor would shut down. To avoid long-term damage and, in the worst case, calamitous failure, many of Turbulent’s systems were switched off. The marine engineers cycled personnel in and out at fifteen-minute intervals to maintain the reactor while the rest of the crew opened up the submarine’s outer hatches to get comparatively cooler outside air into the submarine. Nevertheless, within hours, ‘people were just collapsing everywhere, many at their workstations,’ recalled Ramsey. ‘We had casualties in the control room, the engine room, the bridge, the wardroom, cabins and the toilets and showers.’109

  The only option was to dive Turbulent and get to below 60 metres where the temperature would drop by up to 10 degrees Celsius and even more the deeper the submarine went. Once deep, Turbulent’s crew could cool the boat and machinery and recover the crew. But with the foreplanes and afterplanes [used for steering, diving and surfacing the submarine] out of action, diving was next to impossible. ‘It was touch and go before we dived as to what might happen to us and the submarine,’ recalled Ramsey.110 Eventually Turbulent’s crew managed to extend the foreplanes and the submarine dived. There was relief all round as the crew slowly changed all the water in various tanks and started to bring the air-conditioning plants online. The first started, then the second, followed by the third, but Turbulent’s crew was still unable to turn on any equipment which would run the risk of overloading them. Eventually a small amount of equipment was turned on, but when Turbulent returned to periscope depth for the first time the air-conditioning plants shut down again because of the rapid rise in water temperature. The boat dived again for the relative cool of the depths and after forty-eight hours Turbulent’s crew succeeded in bringing the submarine back to full operational state and continued with the operation. ‘There’s not a day that goes by that I do not think about what happened,’ said Ramsey. ‘The pain of seeing my crew like that. But when I think back to that time I quickly remember how fantastic they all were in dealing with the situation. We recovered from it. They did exactly what they had to do, and looked after the team.’111

  OVERSTRETCH?

  As a result of Labour’s Strategic Defence Review in 1998, HMS Splendid was prematurely decommissioned in 2003, followed in 2006 by HMS Spartan. This reduced the total number of SSNs from twelve to ten.112 In July 2004, a supplement to the 2003 Defence White Paper – entitled Delivering Security in a Changing World – announced that ‘in the light of the reduced threat … an attack submarine fleet of 8 SSNs will be sufficient to meet the full range of tasks’.113 HMS Sovereign was decommissioned in September 2006; followed by HMS Superb in September 2008, after it hit an underwater pinnacle in the Red Sea, eighty miles south of the Suez Canal. HMS Sceptre, the last of the ‘Swiftsure’ class was decommissioned in December 2010, reducing the number of in-service SSNs to just seven. Numbers were meant to remain at this level, but due to further delays with the ‘Astute’ programme, the size of the SSN fleet has continued to fall. HMS Trafalgar was decommissioned in December 2009. In 2011, the Submarine Service was required to maintain four SSNs at high readiness, known as R4+: able to deploy to sea within twenty days. This became increasingly difficult following the July 2012 decision to decommission HMS Turbulent, leaving only five SSNs in service with the Royal Navy. As of early 2014 two were usually in various stages of refit and maintenance, leaving only two or three available for operations, one of which is always East of Suez, while the other is preparing to relieve it. The remaining submarine, if not undergoing routine maintenance, or taking part in exercises and training such as the Perisher course, is expected to be available for other tasks. It is nearly always designated the Immediate Readiness SSN, ready to depart anywhere in the world at short notice should it be required.

  With so few submarines, the Submarine Service is finding it increasingly difficult to meet a range of other commitments, acting as the host submarine for the Perisher course, providing the rest of the surface fleet with ASW training, participating in the large annual multinational Joint Warrior naval exercise, supporting NATO and taking part in joint operations, such as Operation ‘Active Endeavour’ in the Mediterranean (reporting on shipping movements) and Exercise ‘Cougar’, the annual exercise of the Royal Navy’s Response Force Task Group.114 The smaller the Submarine Service gets, the less resilient it becomes. If the unexpected occurs, the service will have little choice but to scale back or temporarily abandon some of these commitments.

  The shortage of SSNs has been reflected in ever-longer patrols in the Mediterranean and East of Suez. In July 2012, when HMS Triumph returned from operations off Libya, the submarine had been on deployment for the best part of a year: 323 days on operations, with 257 days at sea, 93 of them on ‘silent patrol’.115 A year later, on 22 May 2013, Irvine Lindsay’s HMS Trenchant returned home to Devonport – eleven months to the day after the start of what became the longest patrol ever completed by one of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines. In total Trenchant spent 335 days away from the United Kingdom – 267 of them East of Suez as the UK’s high-readiness front-line asset on a deployment that covered 38,800 nautical miles, the equivalent of one and three quarter times around the world. Trenchant spent over 4700 hours underwater – the equivalent of six and a half months. Of Trenchant’s 170 crew (of whom 130 were always at sea), seven were on ‘Black Watch’ – on board for the entire deployment.

  Nuclear submarines are some of the most complex machines man has ever built, and each has its own foibles. As the ‘Trafalgar’ class age, it is becoming more of a challenge to ensure they are safe to operate. In 2011 the Royal Navy was getting about 55 per cent availability out of each submarine and though the boats were originally designed for twenty-five years they are now trying to operate them for over thirty years after their construction while trying to get more out of them.116 In 2013, the MOD’s internal nuclear-safety watchdog, the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR), issued its annual report and highlighted the problems of extending the operational lives of the ‘Trafalgar’ class. It underlined how the five remaining ‘Trafalgar’ class submarines, launched between 1984 and 1991, are now expected to operate for up to thirty-three years, with at least one not scheduled for decommissioning until 2022. ‘As a result,’ the report concluded, ‘the Trafalgar class are operating at the right hand end of their “bathtub” reliability curves.’ The number of problems being encountered by the boats is increasing steadily and the ‘effect has been seen in a number of emergent technical issues of the last few years’ which ‘can be directly attributed to the effects of plant ageing’.117 In March 2013, HMS Tireless was forced to return to the UK with a minor leak to her nuclear reactor. This left just one SSN in service, a position that the retired Admiral Woodward called ‘very worrying’.118

  The Submarine Service’s commitments continue despite their reduced numbers. The Royal Navy still aims to send a nuclear submarine into the South Atlantic twice every year, to remind Argentina that the UK remains committed to defending the Falkland Islands. Details of deployments are almost never made known. But in May 2012 HMS Talent, armed with Tomahawk missiles, arrived in Simonstown Dock in South Africa, a strategic staging post for missions to the South Atlantic, and the remarkably well-informed Sun newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying ‘HMS Talent will be dropping by the Falklands and keeping watch. That’s what she is built to do – protect Britain’s interests … and that is what she will be doing this summer.’119 Talent arrived in the area in good time for 14 June 2012 – the anniversary of the day the British Task Force ended the 74-day Argentine occupation of the islands. South Atlantic deployments often involve a dash of careful attention-seeking behaviour.


  The Submarine Service also continues to go north, to ensure that it retains the skills required to operate under the Arctic ice. At the time of writing the last Royal Navy SSN to operate in the Arctic was HMS Tireless in March 2007, under the command of Ian Breckenridge. The exercise was conducted as part of the Joint US Navy/Royal Navy Ice Exercise 2007 (ICEX-2007). Tireless was under the ice pack, 170 miles north of Deadhorse, in Prudhoe Bay Alaska when an explosion ripped through the Forward Escape Compartment killing two submariners, Anthony Huntrod, an Operator Mechanic, and Paul McCann, a Leading Mechanic Operator. A third submariner, Richard Holleworth, a navy stores accountant, was also injured. ‘I was about a metre away when I heard a really loud bang,’ Holleworth told the subsequent inquest. ‘The room was instantly filled with bright white smoke. I could not see my arm in front of my face, just a glow.’120 In Tireless’s control room Breckenridge was confronted with a rapidly deteriorating scenario as thick smoke spread through all forward compartments. A manual flood alarm, indicating that flooding was present, was also triggered. In line with the Navy’s standard Emergency Operating Procedure (EOP), Breckenridge operated what is known as the ‘Battleshort’, overriding Tireless’s reactor safety systems in order to ensure that the submarine was not further ‘jeopardized by a spurious automatic reactor shutdown’.121