Ron Gordon – Doing my Part 3 in just four weeks
Firstly you have to learn all about submarines down at Dolphin. It wasn’t a long course, but you firstly had to do your submarine skip training which I enjoyed thoroughly. Then you had to do your basic submarine qualifying course, which is learning all about how submarines operate and the class of submarine you are on, you learn about that.
You don’t learn the detail of what you’re going to do in that submarine because then you went from there up to the Polaris School where I learnt how to be an In Watch Keeper in the Missile Compartment ‘cos that what I was drafted to, and what my responsibilities would be in there. Once I completed the training, I went as Spare Crew in Faslane.
A Spare Crew is you’re doing jobs in the Workshop, assisting people onboard submarines, assisting people in different jobs. It delegates you to do these things, but the understanding is if suddenly somebody on a seagoing submarine goes sick or is injured and can’t be at sea with that submarine, one of you is going to take that place and within two or three months of me being a Spare Crew, I was suddenly on a Bomber that was due to go to sea on patrol.
Normally you go on an eight-week patrol, but they decided just to send it on a four-week patrol. So, I went to sea on this submarine for four weeks and in that four weeks, I had … my boss saw me and he said, “You have to pass your Part 3 in that four weeks.” Part 3 is when you learn that the layout of the submarine, what everyone does in each compartment, and then you get an examination by the First Lieutenant, the second in command of the submarine, and you have to pass out before you become a qualified submariner, so I had to do that.
Simon: Was that shorter than normal then, the four weeks?
That was crammed in a bit more yeah, ‘cos normally you get away for eight weeks and you’ve got that time to be able to complete it before you finish your patrol. At the same time, I had to boff up and learn how to pass my … I had to go from a Petty Officer to a Chief, so I had to learn how to do an exam, so I passed the Board.
So, you sit in front of a Selection Board, a Senior Officer and a Senior Rating and they examine you and they either decide whether you’ve passed or you’ve failed, so I did all that as well.
Simon: Both of those in parallel.
Yeah. So, I passed my part 3 in the last week when I was at sea on the Renown, and then once we were back alongside, they then arranged my Board and I passed my Board when we got alongside, so I became a Chief Petty Officer then.
