H.M.S. Unseen am-3

by Patrick Robinson

  “Gentlemen,” said the commander, “I am sorry for the delay, but I have been trying to read up on procedures. Our sailing time is, as planned, 0800, three hours from now. I have the Next-of-Kin update, and the Squadron Standing Orders. At about 0755 we are expecting four Royal Navy Sea Riders to arrive from the dockyard to supervise the day’s exercises. And we will take care of them as planned. We will allow them to arrive safely and go below. Lieutenant Commander Pakravan, well-done tonight. You and Seaman Azhari did an outstanding and difficult job. I know I can leave you to silence the Sea Riders as soon as they come below.

  “The only major change to our plan is that I intend to send Unseen’s diving signal to cover today and tomorrow’s program, because she’s not due back until tomorrow evening. However, we must send in a Check Report every twelve hours because this ship is still in Safety Workup. I intend to comply with all of the external procedures when we depart, and it is vital that we make no errors. I also intend to walk out of Plymouth Sound with this ship, not run. When we leave here I do not want one shred of suspicion left behind us. That way we have many hours to get free. And once we are free, they’ll never find us.”

  Like all of the Iranians, Lt. Commander Arash Rajavi listened carefully to the intensive two-hour training program they all faced. And he tried to stay calm. But it was hard to cast from his mind the overwhelming magnitude of their crime. There they were, sitting bang in the middle of the historic harbor of Sir Francis Drake, the very cradle of the Royal Navy, having stolen one of their submarines and killed all of the crew. Three hours from now Commander Adnam was planning summarily to murder two British officers and probably a couple of petty officers. My God! he thought. If we are caught, they will execute every last one of us.

  But he fought back his fear and his natural instinct to escape from there at all costs as he listened to the cool, measured words of his leader. Not for the first time, Lieutenant Commander Rajavi decided that Benjamin Adnam was, without doubt, the most cold-blooded man he had ever met.

  Two hours later, neatly dressed in Brazilian Naval uniforms, four hands, in company with a young officer, waited on the casing for the arrival of the Sea Riders. They spotted them through the cabin windows of the harbor launch, speeding down the well-marked channel west of Drake’s Island, toward Unseen at 0750. Two more officers, plus a lookout, were on the bridge, all in Brazilian uniforms. Five minutes later the launch was alongside, and the young officer on the casing saluted, wishing the Royal Navy men “Good Morning” in an Iranian accent which Ben hoped would be assumed to be Brazilian.

  The launch headed back to the dockyard, and one by one the four Royal Navy men came on board, making for the open hatch on top of the casing. There was an 8-foot steel ladder inside, and the leader, Chief Petty Officer Tom Sowerby, made his way expertly downward, his final steps on this earth. As his right foot hit the ground three of the Iranians grabbed him, with a hand clamped tight over his mouth to stop him crying out as Ali’s knife cleaved into his heart. Lt. Commander Bill Colley, next on the ladder, never realized what was happening below until it happened to him as well.

  Eight minutes later, all four of the Royal Navy men had joined the pile of zipped-up bodies in the torpedo room. It was 0759, and Commander Adnam was preparing to leave British waters.

  At 0800 sharp, he ordered the Brazilian ensign hoisted on top of the fin. The diesel generators were still running sweetly as they slipped the buoy, and Ben ordered, “Half astern,” then “Half ahead” as he turned HMS Unseen away from Plymouth, making coolly for the western end of the breakwater, and freedom. No one, in all of the great sprawling Royal Navy base, had the remotest idea that anything was other than normal.

  The men accompanying Lieutenant Commander Rajavi on the bridge were surprised at the sight of Rame Head as they ran fair down the channel, keeping the big red buoys to starboard. The headland, steep-sided, solid rock, no trees, with a small chapel on top, looked even higher by day, visible for almost 20 miles. Ben Adnam’s engineering officer had the big electric motor running steadily, with the diesels working to provide the power.

  Below in the control center, the CO studied the operations area where Unseen was scheduled to work that day, and headed for the northeast corner of the “square,” a couple of miles west of the Eddystone Lighthouse. There was almost 200 feet of water under the keel, and, with all signals now correctly sent to home base, he ordered the submarine to dive. The great black hull slid down beneath the cold gray waves, leaving behind a mystery that would rival that of the Marie Celeste, and which would last for many, many months.

  Commander Adnam was in perfect position. He was in precisely the area he was supposed to be. He wanted to test his team in some under way drills in precisely the same way the Sea Riders would have been testing the Brazilians. In the following few hours he worked the Iranians through the electrical and mechanical systems, the sonar, the radar, the ESM, the communications, the trimming and ballasting, the hydraulics and air systems, even the domestic water and sewage systems. He checked the periscopes and low-light aids, sometimes running easily at nine knots, occasionally stopping in the water to give his Officer of the Watch experience at trimming this new and strange submarine. More than half of the time was spent snorkeling, making certain the ship’s battery was well topped-up. Sometimes the commander offered quiet advice to the younger men, sometimes he pushed them harder. But there was never an edge to his voice. He was always conscious that a tired crew might make mistakes, but not so many as a tired and frightened crew.

  Three times he took her deep, insisting his men grow accustomed to the diving angles. Twice, in midafternoon at the southern end of his ops area, he ran her on the surface, which Lieutenant Commander Rajavi regarded as one of the most reckless decisions he had ever witnessed. What if anyone should see us? At one point late in the afternoon, he actually ventured to ask if the CO considered it possible that there might be a hunt on for them. “Would you not feel safer, sir, at periscope depth?”

  “There is no danger,” replied the commander. “If there were, I would not be on the surface.”

  At 1930 he sent in his Check Report to the operating authority, Captain SM2 in Devonport, half an hour early. He was 90 miles from his diving position, and now he turned the ship toward the southwest, running throughout the night on course two-two-five, heading for the northwestern coast of Brittany, snorkeling constantly, keeping the battery well charged. They went deep only twice in the small hours, once when they detected a threatening sweep of British military radar, and once for a large merchant ship close by.

  At 0700 the following morning Commander Adnam sent in his second Check Report, the last one. By then he was, of course, well beyond his ops area, but naturally it was assumed the signal was sent from Unseen’s correct, designated place in the ocean.

  By 1800 that evening, when his Diving Signal was due to expire, he would be 180 miles away from Unseen’s designated area of activity. But by then, he would be running deep down the Atlantic, 120 miles west of the big French Naval base at Brest. Ben Adnam would take no chances there.

  301725MAR05. Second Submarine Squadron

  Operations Center.

  Lt. Commander Roger Martin, the staff officer, Operations, had just about had it for the day, coping as he did with the frenetic mass of tiny problems that made up this unenviable job. Aside from the endless stream of Orders coming across his desk, he had also been coordinating all the plans for exercises among the boats in the squadron. Not just the workup boats; Lieutenant Commander Martin was dealing with the exercises for all of the squadron boats based in the vast Devonport dockyard.

  He took a deep swig of tea, checked his watch, and prepared to hand over for the night to the duty staff officer, Lt. Commander Doug Roper. He checked his list over again, as he always did when there were boats at sea, ensuring that every anticipated Check Report and Surfacing Signal was recorded on the State Board complete with times when ships were due to make contact.

&n
bsp; By now he could see the fair-haired athletic figure of Lieutenant Commander Roper striding along the corridor, and he greeted him cheerfully. “Hello, Doug, we’re more or less in order here…except for Unseen. She’s not actually late…but her Diving Signal does expire at 1800, and she’s been well ahead of time with communications for the past couple of days. I was just beginning to wonder…still, Bill Colley was her senior Sea Rider today, and he did mention he might give the Brazilians an extra hard time out there. He reckons they’re slipping behind with their program. Perhaps he’s keeping them at it until the last minute.”

  “Probably,” replied Lieutenant Commander Roper. “Still, you always wonder when they cut it fine. I’ll keep a close eye on the situation.”

  “Okay, old pal. I’ll be off now…have a good night.”

  Doug Roper was a very ambitious officer, aged only thirty-one. He was not yet married, and money from his family timber business in Kent had enabled him to buy a flashy, low-slung, white sports car. In a predominantly middle-class operation like the Royal Navy this might have caused some envy, but this lieutenant commander was universally popular, and in addition to having a keen and profoundly watchful mind, he worked extremely hard.

  He studied the sheets he had been handed and checked his watch. It was 1740. He checked for Unseen’s Surfacing Signal. Nothing. And for no accountable reason, alarm bells began to go off in Doug Roper’s head. Time was running out. If Unseen continued to live up to her name for much longer, he was going to become the busiest man in Plymouth.

  He realized that Lieutenant Commander Colley might just have forgotten to send the Surfacing Signal. But he knew when she was supposed to be on the surface, and by now she should be on the surface, close to Plymouth. Maybe, thought Roper, she’s had a total communications breakdown, and is right now running through the harbor, trying to contact anyone in sight to pass her signal by light, VHF or word of mouth. But somehow he doubted that.

  And at 1800 on the dot, he hit the phone to the captain, Second Submarine Squadron (SM2), to report the overdue Surfacing Signal — standard Submarine Safety Instructions (Allied Tactical Publication ATP 10). Doug Roper knew that a disaster must be considered a possibility.

  The captain instantly put into operation Comcheck, a procedure that effectively means, Hey, Unseen, haven’t you forgotten something? But in fact it alerted all Royal Navy ships in the area that a communication was urgently required with Unseen. The signal from the Second Submarine Squadron was regarded as sufficiently important for a copy to be relayed to the Flag Officer Submarines in Northwood, 250 miles away in West London.

  Thirty minutes later nothing had been heard, and it was almost impossible that the submarine had not yet found some way to communicate her safety. By 1835, Captain Charles Moss was in the Staff Office. So was Lt. Commander Roger Martin. The mood was somber. The Royal Navy had not lost a submarine since the diesel-electric A-Class boat, Affray, had gone down in the Channel in April 1951. Everyone knew it had taken months to find her.

  At 1900, they went to the next phase, SUBLOOK, because each of the four officers in the room knew that if Unseen was on the surface, someone should have reported in. If she was dived and anyone had survived, they’d have released the expendable communications buoys, or the main indicator buoys, situated one forward, one aft. If anyone had gotten out, their locator beacons should have been picked up. But not a word had been heard, and she was an hour overdue. The worst was feared. It always is when they issue SUBLOOK.

  Because this is a very big word in the Navy. It comes in capital letters, a serious message that will alert other nations, and rescue Coordination Centers all around the English Channel. It also alerts the RN Casualty Organization and the Public Relations network. We are very much afraid we have lost a submarine, NO SHIT.

  The word whipped around the base that Unseen was missing. Four available guided-missile frigates moored alongside in Devonport were ordered out to the exercise area. Royal Navy warships were signaled to stop whatever it was they were doing and start looking and listening. The senior officer out there, Captain Mike Fuller in the 4,000-ton Type-42 destroyer Exeter was ordered to coordinate a methodical search of the area. Two maritime patrol aircraft, big RN Nimrods, were diverted to search the waters south of Plymouth Sound, under Captain Fuller’s control.

  The weather was deteriorating. With the fading light of that early-spring evening, the breeze was backing southwest, and a gale-force wind was gusting off the Atlantic straight up the English Channel. The sea was rougher than it had been for a week, and Captain Fuller, on the bridge of Exeter, was extremely concerned the search would become impossible if sea conditions worsened much more.

  Back in the Staff Office, Lt. Commander Doug Roper, as the duty officer, was dealing with the minute-by-minute reports coming in. But he also could see the looks of real concern on the faces of Roger Martin and Charles Moss. He could hear the captain saying, “Time is of the absolute essence. The quicker we find it, the better our chances of getting any survivors off.”

  All four men knew that a major accident seemed certain, but that Bill Colley and his men might still be on board, on the bottom somewhere, their air supply strictly limited, some men possibly injured, waiting to escape when the searchers finally arrived. All submariners realize there’s no point just getting out and floating up into a raging, empty sea, where death is just about inevitable. The trick is to float up into the arms of your rescuers, who will haul you out, administer first aid, and get you into the ship’s hospital, where they can at least treat hypothermia and possibly the “bends” and CO2 poisoning.

  By 2130 two of the frigates were working with active sonars, checking out known wrecks and bottom contacts, to see if a new one had appeared. Captain Moss had ordered two minesweepers into the area because their sonars are particularly well suited to wreck searches. In the next twenty minutes they began scanning the bottom of the English Channel, trying to sift out a new wreck from the thousands of others that had been there since World War II. In Captain Fuller’s destroyer, and in the four frigates, the navigation officers pored over charts detailing almost all of the wrecks on the floor of the Channel. Commander Rob Willmot, in the 4,200-ton Duke-Class Type-23 Portland, thought they had something out on the western edge of the “square.” It was not marked as a known wreck, and, but for the sea conditions, he was ready to send down two divers and a TV camera to have a closer look.

  However, despite an evening full of false hopes, and false alarms, no one had anything firm. At midnight Captain Moss issued the fateful SUBMISS Signal, six hours after Unseen’s Diving Signal expired. There was now in place a full-scale, coordinated, international search, which would continue until the submarine was found. In the hard-edged mind of the Royal Navy, submarines do not just disappear. They might go missing, because they have sunk, or even blown up, or even been blown up. Nonetheless, the submarine, or its wreckage, had to be somewhere.

  The critical issue was, had Unseen left her area of operations? Why on earth should she have left it? Bad navigation? Incorrect tidal calculations? Sheer carelessness? Not very likely. But the specter of the Affray still haunted the Royal Navy submarine operators — because that 1,800-tonner out of Portsmouth on a training exercise, full of men just in from the surface Navy, was finally found on the bottom a long way outside her allocated area, right down by the Hurd Deep, off the Channel Island of Alderney, weeks after any hope of survivors had disappeared.

  Shortly after midnight the next of kin of the four British Sea Riders were informed. A communication was drafted to the Brazilian Navy Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro detailing the men who were on board. The press were informed very quickly, because that way they could be controlled a little more, rather than having them pick something up on the Naval networks and start off by asking, Are You Trying To Keep This A Secret?

  Nonetheless everyone knew the press would do its worst, dragging up every Royal Navy submarine that had ever been lost, starting with Affray, then
going back a year to January 1950, when Truculent collided with a merchant ship and sank in the Thames Estuary, then moving back to June 1, 1939, when the Thetis went down off Birkenhead. It was all more than half a century ago, but still it was sufficient for the media, apparently, to conclude that submarines are not much better than iron coffins. At least that’s how the news was presented by the time the headline writers had gone to work. Should Our Bravest Young Men Be Subjected To This Carelessness?

  At 1945 (EDT) the news reached the office of the director of National Security in Fort Meade, Maryland, and Admiral George Morris was very thoughtful. He read the brief details over and looked at a chart on one of the computer screens, tapping a button that drew it in closer, then took in a much larger area. Out of Plymouth, eh? Long time since the Brits lost a submarine. Wonder what happened?

  Ten minutes later he had reached Admiral Morgan at the White House, still in his office, and interested, as ever, in anything to do with submarines.

  “How long’s it been missing, George?”

  “Seven or eight hours since its Surfacing Signal was due.”

  “I don’t mean that. How long since they heard from it?”

  “They got a Check Report in at 0700 their time. ’Bout twelve hours before her Diving Signal expired.”

  “Hmmmm. Where was she?”

  “Twenty miles off Plymouth Sound.”

  “They gotta lot of ships out there searching?”

  “Guess so. They’ve had sonars working the bottom of the ocean for several hours, but no one’s found anything.”

  “Ocean?” replied the old blue-water submariner. “That’s not a goddamned ocean, it’s some kind of a fucking mudflat. The English Channel’s only about 20 feet deep. I bet the fucking periscope’s sticking out of the water! Incompetent Brits. Couldn’t find an elephant in a chicken coop.”