Duration: 1 hour 59 minutes 16 Seconds
Simon: This is Simon Perry for the Submariner Stories oral history project. And I’m in Stubbington today. Today being the 24th of February, and I’m with …
Brian: Brian Wood.
Simon: Thank you, Brian. It’s a second interview. And you mentioned at the end of the last interview, we started talking about SETT, the escape tank in Gosport. And you showed me this octopus diagram that had an unbelievable amount of things that went on at SETT, so it seemed really worthwhile having a chat about going through the process of what SETT was, I mean, it’s a central part for this project. It’s really was the instigating idea was seeing that iconic tower and saying, What can we do with this? How can we help the people of Gosport know about what contributions it’s made to the world of submarining. So I guess one thing, maybe we start with something as simple as what was the process of somebody, a new recruit, or a new Submariner being told that they’ve got to go and do their escape training, what were the stages they went through?
Brian: Once you were drafted, or volunteered for submarines, obviously, you get your draft into Dolphin, and they would start their initial training. But during that training, they would have to qualify in escape training at the SETT, they’ve come from all different parts of the Navy, so the first thing they’d have to do is have what they call a divers medical because they were actually going to be taken up diving activities as such during their escape training. So a new trainee would most probably spend five days at this escape tank during their training period, where the first day as such would be introductions to the building itself, a quick diagram of what’s going to be going to happen to them during this period, and then they would all have to do medicals, which would include full chest plate X rays, all breathing into what they call FEV machines to check their lung capacity and make sure they can have the muscular power as such to exhale at the breathing rate that they will be expected to be getting rid of expanding their lungs as they go up through the water. So there was quite a lengthy process to do medical checks on, say, 30 or 40 people that were going to be coming through that week. And that would take possibly a day, day and a half during that period when they weren’t having their medicals, they’d be subjected to watching videos, PowerPoint presentations and getting ready. They would also have to do what we call an initial dive into the decompression chamber to nine metres. And that would sort of identify people who were claustrophobic who had all sorts of different feelings about going in the decompression chamber. And we pressed the chamber down to nine metres just to see if they could clear their ears, getting used to breathing the sort of the compressed atmosphere and such. So that was a couple of days process
Simon: That was dry?
Brian: Yeah
Simon: And how big was the?
Brian: You get ten men in the chamber, but we had two chambers at the time, one at the bottom and one at the top. One at the top, if we were still doing other training whilst all these people were doing their medicals, we had a big chamber on the ground floor next to the sickbay. That could take 10 people, we’d stick them in there, with an instructor so they weren’t on their own, and just monitor them and explain what was going on. So they were all clear in areas and getting used to the claustrophobic atmosphere as such. And that would identify if you started to have any initial problems that the medical people couldn’t pick up. Then, possibly the third day or later on the second day, depending on the programme was going home and how many trainees you had, we take them to the tank top and they would be shown a demonstration by the staff of what’s going to happen to them. Which included the first demonstrations what are called ladder drill. It’s the ladders around the tank. And they would all climb in or the instructors would be on each of the ladders. And we’d hold on to the ladders and say well we’re going to teach you how to do a deep breath. And if you’re going to be going in to the nine metre lock, you’re going to breathe in air that’s compressed down there. And if you left that lock and held your breath, by the time you get the surface you’ve done two lungfuls of air, which your lungs will be able to hold. So you’re gonna have to breathe out the compressed air that you breathe at nine metres, you’re going to have to get rid of at least a lung full of air before you reach the surface, which will take you about five to six seconds from the nine metre lock. So the first demonstration the instructors on the ladders, take a good deep breath, push themselves down to ambulance tilt their head up and demonstrate how you blow which is like a forced whistle and you get rid of a lungful of air, took a gamble of any more, within that five to six seconds. So all the trainees have a little viewing time and will be watching the blow, which we show them that a couple of times so that everybody had a good view of it. Then we show them a couple of instructors being pulled out of the nine metre lock and released and come to the surface blowing out. They’re all happy with that. And they would then once at the end of that demonstration, they would all be invited into the water one at a time with an instructor on a one to one basis. And just teaching this blowing technique until they get it right which only used to take two or three minutes for each each, the odd one or two would try and force it if he didn’t want to be in submarines and do all sorts of silly things, but that was a rare. Once they got the blowing technique, correct, then he get out, give the name to the tank top chief, because everybody who’s been in the tank as you climb out, you’ve done some evolution you have to record everything and go in dive in logs and all the different the different statistics and things like that. Then they’d be put into a section of 10 at the time and taken down to the nine metre lock. lifejacket on, a belt with two tabs at the back, into the nine metre lock then flooded up until it was equal to the pressure outside of nine metres, open the door and get the first two ready, which inflate their life jackets, put the goggles on nose clip. And when all the staff then were in positions, they’d be pulled out gently by the two tabs because their back would be to the door, they’d be already instructed to check their life jacket was full. Right? He’d look out, instructors would be outside taking up their positions. Take a good deep breath and bend forward as they bend forward. You gently ease them out
Simon: Because the hole they’ve got to get through is smaller?
Brian: Yeah, it’s because you got a water level and an air pocket so the door has got to be lower than the air pocket or we won’t maintain an air pocket. So gently you try and just tap him on the forehead once it would clear the door. They’d be held there. And another chap had come down from the five metre blister and the little hammer in his hand not to hit the trainee but if you start to blow this blowing rate that they just learned, if he’s blowing correctly it would be four taps like that.
Simon: That’s the hammer on the tank?
Brian: Yeah, just a little hammer there is little knocking plate by each door, he’d knock that, the instructors will let him go from holding on these little belt and then his lifejacket would then take him to the surface. He is being monitored by an instructor who has come down from the surface to the bottom of the ladder. He’s pushed down as he’s released, and he’s watching his blow. And so he’s monitored more or less every foot of his ascent from nine metres. And if he wasn’t blowing correctly be encouraged by a small little tap in the solar plexus area. If he didn’t blow then, he’d get a little bit more of a vicious blow. But you could slow his ascent down as well if you’ve grabbed hold of him.
Simon: And that would stop his lungs over expanding? Before we get onto that you mentioned a blister and people listening probably won’t know what that means.
Brian: Yeah. Reach the surface. And it’s all out, and they’re all confused. I remember when I learned first off, well what the hell happened. So you do it again, you do two runs. Everybody’s happy with that, then you will be taken down to the 18 metre lock, which is 60 foot. That’s a little reservoir of air and just above each of the locks as such.
Simon: Okay, so that’s the instructor’s little cubby hole?
Brian: Yeah. So you didn’t have to keep going to the surface. A little chap with a hammer. Because that would be a lengthy process and keep going to there and then he would have to blow out every time he went to the surface. So to make it easier for the instructors, obviously you’d place the diving bell opposite the nine metre lock which there’d be three instructors in and you’d rotate, two would push across when you had the order standby standby because everything was reported ready in the lock first man in, right standby standby, two instructors to go across in the bell and take a position the side of the door to grab all of the tabs to pull the trainee out.
Simon: And this is you, the instructors had no kit on, just that holding their breath?
Brian: Just goggles and the instructor is going to give the signal checking that the blow rate is in a five metre blister, so he doesn’t have to keep going. Okay, so 30 foot up or nine metres up for each trainee, he was just above the nine metre locks and instructed to come out of the little blister reservoir, go down and sit above the door. And then once he’s released, he’s monitoring for a little while and then would go into the blister again. And he was very soon ready for the next man. Because two of the surface instructors, one would leave the surface and go down to the bottom of our ladder which is 12 foot and push off from that. So as the blister man veered off into the blister, bottom of the ladder man would be in a position to watch him there and come up to the surface. So you’re just constantly monitored.
Simon: So I distracted you saying about 18 metres down to 18 metres.
Brian: Initially, when you get the water from that ascent, you give your name to the tank top chief, you would then invite you to put a dressing gown on and stand on the white line. And you’d have to be on that white line for four minutes. But you’d constantly be still putting a trainee on until you had the whole section on the line of ten men. When the last one has been on there for four minutes, then they could all relax and get ready to do another run nine metres. Again. After that, they’d all be on the line again. They stood on the line for a minimum of four minutes if you’ve got any sort of decompression illness. If it was anything serious, it would manifest itself within that four minutes as medically proven form many years’ experience as such, so you have to give them that rest period, and then they’d be taken down to the 18 metre lock. Of course, it’s identical to the nine metre locks are great and slightly different when you’re in the 18 metre lock, that’s 60 foot. The pressure down there has certain effects especially on your vocal cords. They’re in the way because we pressurise these locks at the rate of the slowest man who could clear his ears and keep up with what’s going on. Because sometimes if you had a trainee stopped, you need pressurisation of the locks, put his hands out, oh can you clean me ear. Now you can encourage him or show him another method of cleaning as is. Or you can vent the pressure off a little bit, get him to clear and then stay at pressurising so you pressurise a lock to equalisation as such everything was okay. During the pressurisation of an 80 metre lock, the pressurisation isn’t any different, so the trainee doesn’t experience a rapid pressurizer because it’s deeper, we will control the pressurisation. Once we’d equalise at 18 metres, then you would ask one of the chaps to try and whistle, if he could whistle in the first place, and you can’t and your voice would be slightly squeaky as well like a duck. Because the pressure on your vocal cords and such, and of course they all start laughing and it relaxed them a little bit. Of course, then they’d make their ascent in a similar fashion with all the instructors from 18 metres. And that’s the first time that you will realise as we will have explained to them during all the introductions and videos and things that you can never run out of air, you cannot empty your lungs. Even if you breathe in on the surface, you blow out all the air that you can now, you still have 25% of your lung volume inside your lungs. Because you just can’t squeeze your lungs flat, it takes a steamroller to do or something like that to completely collapse your lungs. Of course, they don’t believe that and they forget about it. That blow rate that we’ve taught on five to six seconds is ideal for all depths, because then down at 18 metres, you’ve got three times inside your lungs that you can hold on the surface. So you have to get rid of at least two long forms of air on the way to the surface. And it takes 10 to 11 seconds to get to the surface maybe 12, depending on your bulk as such to get to the surface so in that time you’ve got to blow out two lungfuls of air, so teaching them that five to six seconds is the ideal throughout their escape training as such. And then you get to this stage, blowing at that rate, once they go, I’m running out of air for then more air comes back to blow as you as you going out . And then they say ‘oh, I thought I was running out of air, I’ve more to come back to blow’ than that’s the first time that they realised that what they’re being taught is actually is believable. And it’s and it’s true. So that was the end of sort of that part of the training. And then the next day because they’d been under pressure for quite a considerable time, depending on if they stopped using pressurisation. They’d done two nine metre runs, and they’d done an 18 metre run, which could take up a total of 25 to 30 minutes, because the last man in the section of ten men has been in there at least ten minutes during the escape phase and a couple of minutes during the pressurisation phase, which doesn’t leave him a lot of time to do any more training at a deeper depth than 18 metres, so we’d have to stop the pressurised training at that stage.
Simon: What stops them then, it’s logical thing?
Brian: Yeah, I mean, you can only dive for at certain period, if you go beyond that, then you likely do suffer from some decompression or die, Let’s put it that way. Because you’ve accumulated certain amount of nitrogen in your body, as such. So you have to stop any more pressurised training once they’ve done two nines and an 18. And then the next day, then you can pressurise them again. So we then we’d go through a little introduction, what’s going to happen today, you’re going to be doing some runs and an escape suit. So then we demonstrate they go to the tank top watch the demonstration of instructor coming out of the tower where all the instructors are boom, come into the surface, what we want them to do in on the surface once they’ve reached the surface, but that’s wearing an escape suit now instead of just the buoyancy aid and goggles, which they’ve been wearing during the nine and 18 metre run. And then they’d all go down individually, down to the bottom of the tank dressed in the suit, have a brief down there, climb into the tower, and do a run from the single escape tower at the bottom.
Simon: And that’s at what depth?
Brian: 30 metres. So that’s the fun ride, then they start to enjoy the training and they all want to do it again, ‘that’s better than a ride on the funfair’. That’s the sort of normal comment that they used to get from them. So once they’ve done that, and they were cleared of their four minutes line time, in your early days, then before they stopped it, they go down into the bottom of the tank, the second compartment, the rush to the compartment escape, and put them all in there, flooded up but not under pressure, into an air pocket, breathing off the breathing apparatus, and then pretend to there’s a trunking in there that simulates the trunking that’s on a submarine. And they would all have to pretend to escape one at the time from the compartment. But that was not under pressure. That was just a simulator. In the early days, you had to do a compartment escape. And that was with it under pressure. They stopped there in 1970. For our Navy, we still used to use compartment escape for the Israeli and another Navy at the time because they only had compartment escape on their submarine. So we still kept that procedure going. But we stopped it, pressurised compartment escape for our own trainees in 1970. They decided sort of going along the lines that submarines were constructed better and it’s unlikely that compartment escape would be needed as such. The escape system the tower system was designed to work down on continental shelf levels where up until now 90% of our submarine accidents throughout the world have happened in those sorts of depths, on continental shelf and shallower. So they decided just to have this skip system. If you were to go off a continental shelf. How deep can you go? And before you collapse,
Simon: And how deep is the continental shelf?
Brian: It’s 600 feet, around any big landmass the continental shelf is on average about 600 feet.
Simon: So yeah, we were saying that they’re down to 30 metres. Yeah. And they’ve done, so that’s sort of four or five days worth of training, and then they’re done and signed off are they? And then it sort of has the psychological benefit of when they’re actually on board the submarine. They’re not thinking Oh, my goodness, what happens here if this goes wrong, because they just think, well, I’ve done it.
Brian: Yep. Then they go back over and complete the rest of their work in phase one of their training in the school, in Dolphin, the submarine school. So that week of their sort of six week training part one in Dolphin, a week in the middle of that was sort of a week with us friendly chaps in a swimming pool. A lot of lads, we were all apprehensive when they first you go up there, and they talk about this, and we’re putting you under pressure, you looked into the water, and there’s a little bit of apprehension amongst most of them. Put it that way, I was very apprehensive when I first did my training. And thought dear me, is a challenge. At the end of that week, they’re all smiling. They’ve learned something about themselves, I believe. And they’re only a bit more confident of, yeah, some of the fears have gone being Submariner. And most of them really enjoyed the last day of training, put it that way. We’re at the beginning, we could see some glum faces at the end of the week. They’d all want to do it again. So it was quite an experience for a young lad. Yeah, yeah.
Simon: Okay. So one it’s important for the preservation of their lives, but in the preservation of the Submarine Service important as well, yeah. Because you don’t have people thinking, Oh, my goodness, what’s going to happen there?
Brian: Yeah, what do I do in the case of an accident, and you’re shown during that first week, or any escape training, you go through the guardbook. So it goes through every page, all the processes of different stuff, how you survive in the submarine, if you’re trapped, and you don’t have to make an escape just yet, there’s no rush, then you would wait for surface forces. If you’re waiting for surface forces, and you have to keep the air clean, you have to feed yourself, you have to have all different routines to keep so the compartment hygienic and breathable air, put it that way, so you go through the guardbook, it goes through all the emergency equipment that you’re going to be using the emergency rations of what you’ve got, where they’re stowed, how you would disseminate to monitor, you know, somebody didn’t gobble up all these rations on the first day. So there’s lots of procedures that you go through during that week’s training. So when you go on board a submarine, you look in a compartment. You don’t say any of these equipment, but you know, it’s all okay. Okay, she says, in case you need. It’s all in different lockers and all sealed. They’re all marked in red tape. But you don’t see it? Because you don’t want it banging about so it’s all stowed. But during that training, you know, there’s all this emergency stuff in the escape compartments.
Simon: Why is it called the guard book then?
Brian: Yeah. I don’t quite know why it ended up as the guard book because it’s just the book of it should be escaping instructions. It’s a legacy from many, many years ago, someone came up with that.
Simon: `So that’s interesting, that escape is not the first thing that you do know that it’s really it’s, there’s no other options. We’re just gonna have to leave now.
Brian: Yeah. Okay. Ideally, if you were on a submarine and had an accident where you were disabled on the bottom, you would wait for rescue, which is going to take a few days to get a mini rescue submersible aid. These days. There’s lots of rescue submersibles throughout the world. So you wouldn’t just rely if we were operating in the Far East or something. Australia and Singapore, Korea, they’ve all got rescue subs, the Americans have got rescue subs. So wherever you are, that is now getting us part of the SMEWRG (Submarine Escape and Rescue Working Group) that they all agree that all submersibles can mate with the escape hatches of all the different submarines, they all have this seat around all and they all agree to do that on, on submarines. So ideally, you’d wait for rescue. And during that period, which could take five days, seven days, depending on where you were, hopefully not that long. Because all the responses are 24 hours to get these things mobilised and then depending on where you were, how fast they can get the submersible down to you, but you can be down for a number of days and during that period, say, you’ve got to maintain a breathable atmosphere, you’ve got normal bodily functions, eating and all the rest of it have got to be maintained. And so that’s the guard book, will guide you along the same lines as well. So the first option is wait for rescue. Second option is wait for surface forces to arrive. Because if something’s going slightly bad, you can’t control the atmosphere as well as possible or something else is happening, you’ve got slow flooding or something in that compartment, then you would want to get out as quickly as possible. But ideally, you’d wait until someone’s on the surface to pick you up. So you’re not floating around for days on the surface on your own. So rescue, wait for surface forces, SPAG team something like that arrive and communicate right begin through some life rafts and come up. So we’d be wait for ships wait for SPAG because we’d be there quicker than surface forces anyway. Or if you have to, then get out. And then you’ve got your own individual suit and liferaft. So those are the options as they come down.
Simon: Okay. And once they once they’ve been through the training, they’ve qualified, how frequently did they need to come back to be rechecked?
Brian: You still have to re qualify within four years. So you would come back three and a half to four years, you would be built into your programme, your life in submarines. And in the early days, your submarine pay reflected it as well. So if you run out of your recall date, they stop the submarine pay. So most submariners make sure they were in that requalifying period. Recalling only used to take two days, because you’ve been on board a submarine and you’ve done all your training, you’re now qualified, you come back, you’ve done the tank before, so there’s not too much of a problem. So you wouldn’t have to do full medical anymore, you do the breathing into the FEV machine. They’d give you a quick check, just to say ‘are you alright, got any coughs colds or flu anything?’ at the time, but they’re not going to give you a full dive. So that used to take 10-15 minutes, I’d say. They already know all about blowing rate, what they’re gonna do, there’s no need to go two nine metre runs or an 18 metre run, they’ve done that before they’ve realised that they can never run out of air. Hopefully they remember. We still give them a demonstration that make each of them get in and do the ladder drill, the blowing technique. They’re all happy with it take two or three blows, they’re back into it again, realising I’ve never taken a good deep breath before the last training, they do one nine metre run. And because they’ve only been under pressure 10-15 minutes, we can then take them down and put them in a suit and pull them from the 30 metres straight down to nine straight down the 30. Right. And you would do that as a requalifier.
Simon: Right. Okay. Do they have as much fun on the re qualification as the first time do you think?
Brian: Yeah, they say why can’t we go through toys, we’ve still got like pressure time left because they’re all starting to get used to this, you’ve only got 30 minutes down at 30 metres. There’s a maximum time you can do it that day. Having explained it to them earlier you will have accumulated nearly that time doing two nines and an 18. They’ve all come to this. I got stacks of time left. Why can we do a second round? And even initial trainees, once they’ve done that first run, they’ve sort of I would say the majority of them come out with a big grin on my face, or can we do it again, because I don’t think you’ve fully appreciate what you’ve actually just done because you’ve been a little bit apprehensive dressing in your suit being locked in this tower, flooded up. Bang, you’re on the way to the surface, you’re on the surface within 10 seconds, in the escape suit. And you haven’t had to blow out because you heads in there. And you just breathe normally. Or when you tell them to breathe normally in an escape suit, but you can’t actually breathe normally, what you’re actually doing is exhaling most of the time. As long as your airway is open. Then the expanding air is just expanding. You think you’re breathing normally, but it’s just and you think you breathe in, but that’s a fun ride.
Simon: Yeah, the suit is as you’d imagine for body and then quite a large thing over the head that holds all the air
Brian: Yeah, you plug into it is a connection on your left wrist, which is sort of a plugin bayonet connection. And the air system inside the escape tower is a female and you plug your male connection into that. And the air then comes up a tube and into the life jacket section of the suit. Once the life jacket section in the shute is full, there’s two little relief valves each side, that lift, and the air then is flowing through and fills the hood, the hood is open bottom, so it’s just like a bucket over your head, so the constant flow all the time you’re plugged in, as the pressure comes on, the air system senses the pressure and increases the airflow. So you will always have a flow of air greater than the pressure as it’s coming on only slightly, but just enough for them to realise you run out of air if it’s too high, and you’ve got 60 odd people wanting to do it after you. So it’s sort of a metered airflow. That’s just above the incoming sea pressure to keep your hood inflated.
Simon: So you’ve got to push against the pressure of the water coming in? Otherwise it would just collapse in?
Brian: Yeah, the pressure is slightly lower than your sea pressures as it floods up the open bottom, or meets the open bottom, so now it’s trapping that air but it’s still allowed to flow. And that’s what’s now given the sensing to this air pressure sensor and say no, right, I’ve got to keep above this pressure. So your hood is always fully inflated and a constant airflow out of it. Once the hatch opens the buoyancy will lift you out quicker than that, because there’s 50 pounds of buoyancy, something like that you only weigh 25 pounds down there, there’s only one way you’re going to go and that’s out. You come on unplugged that little plug seals itself so it traps the air. And as you’re going up, all the expanding air in the life jacket is coming out of the relief valves, so that’s keeping the hood full of air and that expanding air is going out the bottom of the hood. Okay, so you’ve got a constant air supply all the time you’re going upwards from the air expanding in the life jacket.
Simon: Is it quite comfortable in those suits?
Brian: I wouldn’t say comfortable. But it’s okay. Okay. Deeper you go you can get what they call a suit squeeze on some of the deeper escape X’s it gets quite tight because obviously it is the the air is only in the life jacket in the hood. As the water’s coming in, it’s obviously squeezing this suit you’ve got wrapped around you and the deeper you’re going. It’s okay, it’s tolerable, depending on what clothing and you’ve got on as well and make sure your delicate bits are in the right place as well before the pressure reaches that pair.
Simon: You get sudden warning as it comes up your leg
Brian: Yeah, you can feel the pressure coming up slightly.
Simon: So it’s like someone squeezing your leg, is it, effectively?
Brian: Not that hard. You’re just aware. Well, you’re not really that aware of it, your mind’s on other things. Especially as a young trainee. Yeah. You asked them if they had the suit squeeze and they wouldn’t know what you’re all about. The brains hearing lots of messages. Keep plugged in. Keep breathing. Clean me ears. Boom! The hatch opens and you’re on your way up, what a fun ride, can I do it again?
Simon: You were saying the training of the Royal Navy staff. The submariners? Were other forces being trained at the same time?
Brian: Yeah. Altogether, we, the tank has been involved in training most probably 20 other nation’s navys. Not all the time, we didn’t have 20, it was sort of two or three Foreign and Commonwealth, maybe four trainees from other Navys, about four or five times a year that gradually sort of whittled as well as other Navys built their own escape facilities and started training their own people.
Simon: That’s Gosport training, being responsible for the training of the world’s Navys, it’s incredible.
Brian: Yeah, because it was the only sort of pressurised training going on at the time in the world, the Americans had two escape training tanks of 100 feet. One of them burned down. And the other was having lots of problems. They were using the different escape methods that the Royal Navy adapted. They were forced to shut that one down. So the Americans didn’t even know they had a tank. They weren’t using it as full pressured training. And we were the only ones really conducting pressurised training. So lots of other Navys were interested in doing the training at our facility in Gosport.
Simon: Was it a challenge to teach people who didn’t necessarily speak English? Or did they all speak English?
Brian: No, they would always send an interpreter with them. Okay, it was more difficult to get the message across. But the training was a little bit simpler, because we wouldn’t be teaching them all our escape equipment or anything like that it would they wouldn’t be going through the gap, but we wouldn’t put them through scenarios. It was just pressurised training. So they would all have to have done their own medicals in their own facilities in their own country. And we would have to have their medical documentation and a doctor would look through it whilst they were having their classroom introductions. And if he highlighted an individual that he didn’t deem as strict a medical that we required, then he will be withdrawn from the course, he would do all observation, but he wouldn’t actually go through pressurised. So it was a simple, very quick process to train for an uncommon one, slightly longer doing all the briefs and the instructions, but they always used to send at least two really good interpreters. That was the remit of sending these people anyway, that they, and a lot of them. A lot of people understand a certain amount of English. I mean, the Dutch speak quite good English. A lot of the Italians that used to come would understand a lot of the English.
Simon: Can you run through quickly that countries that you remember the training?
Brian: When I first went there, they had class of French people. They didn’t come very often after the 70s. Australia we had trained at that time because we were building submarines for the Australians. Israelis, the Chileans, Brazilians, Canadians, quite like Canadians because we built the O boats for the Canadians, had Denmark, Israel, our biggest customer most probably were the Italians, because they were very keen on all their submariners having pressurised escape training. Not all the navys required all the crews on their submarines to be pressurised escape trained, they would only send a percentage so they had a percentage of the crew who done proper escape training, and then they would be the sort of senior survivors and instructors if their submarines had an accident. They didn’t have the protocol of our Navy of all submariners having done pressurised escape training at that time. We have trained other tank staff as other navys started building their own tanks. The Australians are one of the first then the Americans wanted to re introduce pressurised escape training, so they built a new facility, the Germans, so we’ve had all their instructors over doing a full instructors course, take a couple of months training up to do all the same procedures that we use in it or we used in our escape facility. As a result of teaching these other sort of 19-20 other navys. They were using British escape equipment. Other navys are different escape equipment at the time, but pressurised training was basically all the same, but having worn the suit, lots of these navys actually buy submarine escape suit from Great Britain. So it was quite advantageous to the suit manufacturers that we had our facility and we were selling their product for them and lots of other navys are now all using British escape equipment. And the same air assistance as well. So kinetic, or DRA was originally there if we can, if you got that suit, you have to have our air equipment. So it brought a lot of trade into for the UK.
Simon: So the countries that you spoke about there were what people think of as friendly forces. Do you train anyone that maybe not so friendly?
Brian: The last class to go through were Chinese. During the last year as well, we trained a small squad of Russians. So I wouldn’t say that I’m friendly. It depends how you view the people.
Simon: And also these things change over time.
Brian: Exactly. Yeah.
Simon: So what was the Chinese were getting into having their own so I don’t know what their submarine capacity is, like, are they?
Brian: Yeah, they obviously following all of SMERWG and everything else, because they would send representatives as well. They, obviously they’re very good at copying things. They’ve got a small training facility as well now. So they’re using similar escape equipment, in essence, so they don’t actually buy anything off us.
Simon: And what about, so that’s submariners? What about other groups, I mean, like Special Forces, anyone like that.
Brian: Most of these navys that have a special forces have a requirement to deploy from the submnarine, which is quite a few, then we would train them as well.
Simon: That’s not escape?
Brian: No, well we do a quick escape course with them. Because they were already Special Forces and been diving and all the rest of it. So we just made them, for our sake, put them through nine metre lock and put them through an escape suit, which gives them a little bit of, if the submarine did have an accident, at least you’ve got an idea about equipment and what you’d have to do to escape from the submarine, besides your special forces knowledge of what you’re going to do on a submarine, so if they’re going to sea on a submarine, you have to be escaped trained. So they do a quick nine metre and a super just a quick intimate knowledge as such. And then we’d spend a couple of days doing the exit and re-entry there was such, different names have different ideas of how they do it, but we’re very limited, because we only had the single escape tower, or the other tower that could hold about four people inside at the bottom. And depending on what country what submarines they’ve got how they would deploy from the submarine. But it’s basically still the same procedures, they’re gonna go in a compartment, very limited. You can pressurise it, swim out, meet your equipment outside. They would go to the surface, pretend to do the job on the surface and come back down and get back inside the submarine. In our tower down at the bottom. That’s a little bit of a complicated procedure, depressurising people as well, because obviously, you don’t want to depressurise them too quickly and stuff like that. Right.
Simon: That’s interesting. So the idea of them coming back is, I guess while they’re out, the pressurised area is free flowing water in and out of it.
Brian: You’d shut that down. Once the team is gone, because you can only put them out at shallow depths. That way you can put them down at the deeper depths. Yeah, you’ve got to be a certain a certain depth depending on what submarine you’re on, depending on on their equipment. It’s all a little bit, I wouldn’t say secret, but I couldn’t tell you what other navys, their depths capability of what what air systems are using or what have you. But basically, we’re teaching them the drills that they would have to use to get out of a submarine and come back into it.
Simon: To come back in. It’s pressurised when the sub comes back in?
Brian: We pressurise the area that they’re going to come back into, open the hatch, and they would have to come in we’d shut the hatch, and now you’ve got to de-pressurise them.
Simon: So you then, you’re not emptying the water, you’re pumping air in to get rid of them?
Brian: No, you’re emptying the water and letting some air in, but you can’t do it too rapidly or otherwise you’re gonna give them an embolism or a deep, a cage or whatever, de-compression illness. So there’s a controlled decompression rate that you would use, so that you didn’t give them any medical problems. Okay. Special forces, as I say, the ones I can remember, Canadians, Israelis, Norwegian were our main customers and the other ones which are can’t remember, we did a few more but those were our main as special forces training.
Simon: I guess that that sort of cooperation with other nations is important and it’s what effectively escape turned into you touched on it already the idea of having a united connector on the submarine that then SMERWG? I can’t remember the right word, the submarines can then attach to, to then if a submarine is in trouble or the rescue vehicles. . That through international cooperation there’s now a united standard across across the world submarines.
Brian: You can see the world right okay.
Simon: So then a rescue submarine can come along and effectively the taxi people off?
Brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Simon: Rather than people having to escape from it. Okay. When did that change come in then, that idea?
Brian: A rescue chamber was thought about many years ago and the first rescue chamber, as such, was like a diving bell that would go down and sit above and then you could get people, but it’d be on a cable. And the first successful rescue off American submarine, Squalus. And as a result of that, and complicated procedures, the Americans devised a rescue submersible, called a DSRV and they had two, the Mystic and the Avalon. And they were were the first ones. But you had to have a mating seat around the escape hatch is like the bottom half of a bucket that can be sealed. The mating skirt of a mini-sub was a top half of the bucket, then you empty and depressurise the bucket so you can open your hatch. Okay. And then climb in and out. That was trialled and made very successful, and now lots of other navys have followed on. We had at the time, lots of submersibles operating in the North Sea and other gas and oil fields around the XXXX. And we piloned two of these commercial mini subs a such that we’re commercial submarines and just put a skirt, on it, and turn them into, they had a dual purpose now as a rescue sub as well, but they were very limited in the amount of people you could rescue. So six to eight people maximum. Of course, navys then started getting interested. So lots of other navies have then developed their own version of a rescue vehicle. Another side of that, which is quite JFD, James Fisher defence, they’ve sort of took over what we had at the time, them commercial submersibles. And now they develop their own. And actually they have now sold these and the maintenance and all the routine operating stuff that they have to pay for to the Australians, Singapore, India, South Korea. And they’ve all got versions of the British rescue submersible that JFD developed on top of the older original commercial one. So that’s another area that sort of benefited this country by having a British defence manufacturer manufacturing these rescue submersibles for lots of other navys. And if the Navy hadn’t been leading the world in it, then that wouldn’t have happened. Most probably not. That’s another side that sort of developed from all these different exercises and things that the tank got involved, not that the tank sold in the mini-subs, but obviously it was introduced through all their training and everything these systems are available.
Simon: What sort of stuff have you done? So you’ve done the tank stuff? What sort of escape stuff have you done from submarines?
Brian: Well I’ve done numerous I think I’ve been on eight escape exes, from various depths, from eight different submarines, conventional and nuclear, I have done DSRV or mini-sub rescues with the American and our LR5, a bit on SPs is where I’ve been part of the crew that sort of monitoring people during an escape or disaster exercise. I was liaison officer for a big exercise in the Mediterranean going on board a Spanish, Italian and Dutch submarine doing mini sub transfers. When they first fitted their submarines with a compatible skirt on their towers, they’ve never done mating routines with a submersible before. And they didn’t exactly have all the right tail fittings as such. But they had the skirt. They all started fitting these skirts on their submarines that would mate with the rescue submersible. And all the rescue submersibles have the same diameter skirt. So all the Americans, ours, the Australians, Koreans, Indians all have the same skirt size, and same seat as fitted or these submarines. So they fit in these seats onto these other submarines, but they never actually done a mate. So being the chap I was at a time, ‘I’ll go’. So I went on board all these three submarines to do mating trials for the first time.
Simon: And those are three submarines or three rescue submarines.
Brian: They were three different, so I was on each of the submarine at the time I had to transfer to different submarines on different days, and then do a mate and then transfer some people from the submarine. So it’s the first time so they sat on the bottom.
Simon: So what’s the failure on board when they’re doing that?
Brian: Very apprehensive for their first time, but once they realise it works, it’s sort of another morale booster and confidence giver to they’ve got a system that works. So they can be rescued instead of escaping.
Simon: So the fear in their head is why are we opening the door when we’re sitting on the bottom of the sea? You know, that wet stuff’s gonna come in.
Brian: So you have to have all these reassurances that there are emergency procedures if the submarine submersible actually breaks away while you’ve got the hatch open and stuff like that, so it’s just trying to convince these people that it’s safe to do it.
Simon: But as you say, that once is successful, this is like oh, this is great. And how how does the rescue submarine, do they have glass at the bottom that they can see where they’re going to be mating to?
Brian: Most of them have got a big glass dome on the front, you’ve seen them on the telly all these different types. DSRV ones, they haven’t got a big dome so it’s all fibre optics and cameras and things like that and underwater lighting. So it’s depends on the visibility, but most exercises have been successful. Not really failed to do or mate because they can’t see or what have you. There’s cameras inside the skirts so they can see where they are, centralise themselves, get them in the right position over the escape facility.
Simon: And what’s the maximum number of transfers you’ve done then? I had a vague feeling that last time I was here were chatting afterwards. You said you’d been from a submarine into a rescue back into another submarine. Yeah.
Brian: Well, we we dived on one of our big submarines with the DSRV Avalon on the back so we dived in to that submarine and we climbed into the Avalon to go down and mate with a conventional submarine that was on the bottom, so I climbed down in that one and it was a dual exercise with LR5, the British submarine, so once we got inside the conventional submarine, which is the Odin which I joined me last submarine eventually, the DSRV went away with some people LR 5 come on and I went up into LR5. So I went onto the British submarine went into the American DSRV transferred to the Odin, the conventional submarine, and then got lifted off by the LR5. So it was it was quite an eventful day.
Simon: How is it for the people that are on board the submarine, they’re so you know it’s such a tight knit crew. What was their reaction when it’s like someone’s just rang the doorbell and turned up and it says like, what are you doing here?
Brian: It’s not a surprise because obviously they know what Exercise they’d going on, put it that way. I mean, for real, if you’re, you’re waiting for him in the sub, you’d be glad for it to arrive. But the first time you do mates with sort of the submarines, it’s all a bit apprehensive, because they’ve never sort of it’s difficult these days to do them sort of exercises because nuclear submarines have not got the capability to sit on the bottom as such, conventional submarines can sit on the bottom for as long as they as long as they want, actually. So initially, lots of other navys that were developing rescue vehicles wanted to exercise with the Royal Navy, because we could sit our conventional submarines on the bottom. The Americans in particular, they’d done lots of mate sets. But they’d done sort of mid water mates, because they got rid of all their conventional submarines. And when they were developing the DSRVs, they had to get a nuclear submarine go into the hover, as such, midwater. And then they would mate and depressurise the skirt but because they were mid-water, they wouldn’t open both the hatches of the submersible. And the submarine.
Simon: What’s the reason for not opening that then?
Brian: Well, if you’re just hovering the submarine could (jesticuates), something could (jesticuates). So it’s a little bit dangerous to it. When you’re on the bottom, you’ve got a stable environment. So we did the first men transfer with the American DSRV, because we could stick a conventional submarine on the bottom and be in a stable condition. So then they were then sort of held quite tightly by sea pressure onto the hatch, and they were quite happy to open and transfer people. So it was a good exercise for the Americans to prove, actually, they could transfer the personnel. That was in 87.
Simon: Right. Okay. And so that that was you were also in SPAG which we’ve touched on before, which was the really the rescue team, is that right?
Brian: Difficult to say rescue team. Assistance, we were the sort of be the first people on site to offer assistance. If they had an accident, if a submarine had an accident, where they were forced to make an escape immediately, then these people will be on the surface bobbing about with no facilities available to them. Before they had a one-man liferaft even, they would be floating around just with the buoyancy of their suit. Some of the suits are double skinned, so they inflate like a Michelin man. But before that all they had was a life jacket section of the suit. So what are the clothing sort of underneath the immersion suit that you could put on?
Simon: And it’s not just like off the coast of a little island somewhere? It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Brian: Yeah. So I mean, hopefully, the authorities would have been alerted to an accident. So you will be sending sort of surface forces and whatever you can to the scene to assist, whatever. But if they’d been forced to make an escape immediately, then it could be quite a few hours, even a day, two days before the first surface ship arrived. So SPAG was developed as an instant reaction force if we were made aware that there had been an accident, we could fly out with a couple of boats and life rafts and jump out and be on the scene sort of to pull these people out of the water, at least stick him in a big life raft. We take doctors and other oxygen therapy equipment as well. So we could do a certain amount if there was a small decompression, but SPAG was developed to try and get on scene as quickly as possible. And that was better. I mean, as the SPAG team developed, some of the equipment got better, the life rafts have gotten bigger, the parachutes got better. So you got more accuracy when you were jumping out, but that’s what it was designed for, as an immediate reaction. Otherwise, you could be used as SMERAS as such, which was if there were ships, racing out to the scene, and they could be in the area within a matter of hours and would you risk jumping out of aeroplanes, right throwing all your equipment out? If it wasn’t really that necessary, especially on different conditions. So SPAG would sort of turn into SMERAS.
Simon: And what does SMERAS do?
Brian: It’s an assistance team to the surface forces? Okay, so we’d either fly out by helicopter and land or transfer by wire, depending on what ship you’re on, if she didn’t have a helicopter deck, we could wire down. Or we would parachute into the area to give expert advice to the surface forces, because all warships have underwater telephones and things like that. So you could be in communication with a submarine. But the surface forces have got no knowledge of the gab(?). But they’ve got no knowledge of all the drills and everything that the Submariners are doing in their compartment. So they drop a few of us out to give assistance and advice to the surface ships. You would go on the underwater telephone, and go through, ‘are they doing this?’ ‘are you doing that?” Are you checking this?’ ‘Are you going through the guard book?’ ‘But have you done this drill? Are you ready to do this? Which surface forces don’t necessarily, they’ve got enough to think about in their normal lives without knowing all our procedures on the submarine. So SPAG SMERAS as a combined assistance team and we’re not capable of rescuing them, but we’re capable of assisting them. Giving them all the right guidance, knowledge. And if they were on the surface, we could actually help them and give them some surface support until bigger ships arrived.
Simon: How did he get on that jumping out of an aeroplane bit?
Brian: I wasn’t too happy about it at first. SPAG will go in, very basically when I first joined the tank, and only a certain amount of people with SPAG but that developed as boats got better, but it’s got bigger, we had more access to aircraft facilities and things like that. I would volunteer to be the safety crew or drive the wagon carrying parachutes and things like that. But then, I was told, No, you have to be SPAG. When I became a chief, they said I was due a PO when I first joined. And once I got my chiefs rating they said you’re not driving wagons and boats around anymore. You’re jumping out of the aeroplane. Thanks very much. But it’s part of the job. If you want a job, if you like that job, that’s part of the job, you’ve got to do it. Some people have declined and said no thanks. And it’s not for me. It didn’t mean the get kicked out the tank is just that you had to have enough members at least 16, say, people on the tank staff qualified SPAG/SMERAS.
Simon: So that’s 16 People would be on one rescue?
Brian: Not necessarily 16 people qualified because you need a team of at least eight to actually operate the life rafts and the boats and all the assistance that’s required. Ideally, you put more people if they were required, but you need a team of eight to actually go out and deploy. You need a boat driver you need another man in the boat. You need a medical team. You need people in the big life rafts. So you need a basic team of eight so you’ve got people being here you’ve got people on leave, people doing courses. So you need at least 16 people fully trained in that capability at any one time. How that goes at the moment I’m not quite sure, since a tank shut down and it moved north SPAG sort of got thinner and thinner and thinner. I think there’s only a couple of escape staff now actually run the SPAG team, it involves divers and other special forces now. Because they haven’t got sort of 16 people capable of. I’m not sure quite sure on the manning, but I know SPAG has been thinned out quite a lot since the facilities been operating in Faslane. But it was quite enjoyable after my first one, I did my parachute training off the pavement in Guernsey.
Simon: What, like a kerb?
Brian: You should pretend you’re on the tailgate, jump off, now pretend you’re landing.
Simon: And then the next one is you doing it? See now it’s got ever small because someone else told me that their training was jumping off a table, which seems like infinitely, well not, significantly higher than just stepping off a kerb.
Brian: You’re just throwing yourself and your’re having full trust in the parachute opening put it that way. You can do all the training, you like. First jump, it’s a little bit like butterflies in the tummy. In fact, the first day we did the training because we do an exercise in Jersey we got in the aeroplane and we’re flying round and round, but conditions change where they had to scrap the jump so I tested all of my wet gear, was sweating and, and we didn’t jump. And we got back and we did a another one very close to that time, in Studland Bay, which was my first parachute jump, my actual jump out of the back and that didn’t go too well the first one I ended up because I just threw myself in sort of, I didn’t do the correct drill off the tailgate and ended up with a big what they call a tower, a big twirly parachute. But I was kicking and twisting.
Simon: So you’d been going down faster than you should be.
Brian: Yeah. The parachute fully deployed I could see it twisted up so I was trying to untwist it. And I just hit the water, it did it I mean, I was because I’m going to be light, it partially inflated and I was quite happy. Hit the water and a big boot picked me up and said ‘you got that wrong Jack didn’t you’. He took me around the back of the aeroplane when we got back out to the airport.
Simon: What, to say this is how you?
Brian: To give you your drills. He wasn’t very pleasant to me, put it that way. But we took off and I did it right the second time.
Simon: You learnt the hard way? So those were exercises were they or did you ever do any any active SPAG stuff?
Brian: I learned very quickly. And then I got to enjoy it once you get over that initial, sort of, you’re always I would say people are stupid if they’re not nervous when they jump out of an aeroplane, even qualified paratroopers. I did over 150 jumps out of different aircraft. I think every time I jumped there was still a little bit of apprehension and thank God the parachute opens, you know, when it did and then you enjoy it on the way down? Yeah, I got quite the adrenaline as well it was a good rush. I got quite to enjoy parachute jumping. I still like to do it these days, but there you go, it’s costs money now. We never actually jumped out for real we did do lots of exercises, SPAG team had to do at least six day time on one night jump to keep qualified. But every time we would have an opportunity to jump we would because we’re a small unit we couldn’t justify having a Hercules for a couple of days just for our small group. So if we planned an exercise, there would be an open invite to EOD, the SB, SAS, similar marines from down in Poole and consequently if they had an exercise, they would invite us so we fill the aeroplane, so it justified, you add at least 48 people jumping out to justify having the aeroplane honoured. So they were doing their stuff you were doing your rescue stuff? So jumping out is all the same again. It’s what you got when down on the surface. But when you’re just keeping training and qualifying you’re hitting the surface and just being picked up taken to the boat taken back to the airport back up jump, just to keep your drills in the aeroplane and parachute. Obviously for other exercises then we would take the boats out and throw them out and throw teammates over life rafts over all the rest of it. That would only happen about once a year. All the other times it was just keeping your qualifications for actually water descent parachute and put it that way.
Simon: And you mentioned that the move to Scotland, what was your, I mean you spent so much time at SETT, what were your thoughts on when it was going to be decommissioned and moved us to Faslane, as an equivalent or replacement put up there?
Brian: I mean initially when they stopped pressurised training I was very disappointed when I wrote that letter to the Admiral, I did have a nice reply. Still got it somewhere, explaining and he wanted to do away with rush escape and pressurised training and all these different types and I said you’re just cutting in whole capability and explained you know how much pressure I was training was beneficial to this country for the development of escape equipment, commercial people selling or equipment, or the revenue from Foreign and Commonwealth training or surely the overheads would keep the building going, but they wanted to do away with pressurised training and they didn’t see the need for it. They’d gone all for rescue as such. They still have rescue, escape towers and escape suits, they still believe in escape, but not pressurised training. So, when we stopped pressurised training, I wasn’t too happy so I did sort of help them develop a dry training facility. And obviously, everything was moving north, all the submarines were going to be more or less operating from north. So you could see the future was everything was going anywhere. I had this idea of a new facility. I thought great, why not? And they have gotten superb facility up there, but they don’t conduct pressurised training so it’s still disappointing where they could do, because other navys, because we stopped pressurised training, have developed their own pressurised training. So they still believe in it, we don’t. So now, we no longer the world leader in escape, as such, or development of escape systems, because there’s nothing to test it and prove it. They still could develop the suit. But how can he really test it under real conditions?
Simon: Because that what’s in Scotland, the Faslane one, it’s an …
Brian: Unpressurised training facility, they’ve got a mock up of the escape towers and the submarine compartments. They’ve got a beautiful swimming pool that make rough waves, thunder, lightning and rain, you can develop all the conditions, so in actual fact it’s a superb facility. Except they don’t do they can’t pressurise or give the trainees a pressurised environment to get used to.
Simon: So they still go low down in the water and get out and float up. No, not at all. They just sit sit on the surface?
Brian: They go into escape facility in Faslane and you’re gonna go into tower are flooded up to so far. And you’ll drain it down, and they’ll climb out and then jump into the swimming pool.
Simon: So you feel the pressure, what it’s like with the water coming in?
Brian: It’s giving the environment in a tower, you don’t get pressure on your suit, and you’re just like getting in the bath. And they’re plugging into the air system to get used to the noise and the airflow through the suit. And the water comes up to just sort of the bottom of the hood, but it can’t go above it because you’d start giving some sort of pressure inside the hood. So they can only flood it up so far. And then they stop and drain it down. So it’s unpressurised training, as such. You’ve had the experience of dressing in the suit, climbing into the tower, plugging into the air system, and the beginning of the water coming in. Once they’ve done that, then you climb out, get in the pool, do all their surfacing drills or though they just escaped from a submarine. Inflate the life rafts, get in, they have do thunder lightning waves turn it over upside down or so that the facility is really good and obviously more modern. But the disappointing is that they, in my opinion, and lots of Submariners’ opinion is because you’ve never subjected a trainee to pressure now they don’t even do part of the medicals. They don’t do full divers medical anymore submariners. So you don’t know the fitness really well. If they’re going to be subjected to any hyperbaric conditions, you don’t know the fitness of any Submariner, whereas years ago, they were all subjected to a divers medical, they’re not anymore. We knew the physical capability of each individual because they’ve done a divers medical as such, and they’ve been in recompression chamber. They don’t go in a recompression chamber there. They don’t do a full medical. So the first time they get subjected to any hyperbaric conditions is the first time they’re gonna get in the escape tank. And that’s gonna cause lots of problems.
Simon: So the theory there then , was that because they thought it was too risky to do the pressurised training or?
Brian: There was contributing factors. One of them was they thought it was too risky. There’s more people die on accidents on rifle ranges and other military training and what died. Six people died in the tank during its 60 years’ time. And when you were training 4,000 people a year, could you say that’s risky, or would you accept that risk? It’s ridiculous. But also, it was getting expensive to put every individual through a medical, as such, ECG, full chest plate X rays, doctors, they’re quite expensive. So you had that expense, the running of the facility, the upkeep, paid for itself in a way with all other commercial and Foreign Commonwealth, although we didn’t see it, if we would attribute the cost of maintaining that building against the income, right? It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t it would have been at no cost. I can’t say too much. Certain people on the review body that didn’t like the tank, because they’d had a bad experience going through their training, I believe, right, because one of them said he burst his ear drums and it hurt and I’ve never been the same ever since. And he was got to quite high rank. And he was always against pressurised training. Right. So there was a small body of people who did the review. And they came up with all these contributory factors. Medical, risk, was the they said was the most important and cost, the overheads and all the rest of it. So they decided to do away with pressurised training. Against the thoughts of all the other navys in the world who used to come to us, they’ve gone ‘sod it we’ll build our own training facility’. So the Dutch had built one, Americans recommissioned theirs, the Italians, I think are in the middle of it. We’ve sent people out to India, and China has done it. So you’ve had all these people used to come to us, Australia built their own tank, Germany built their own tank, and a few of them have stopped pressurised training, having following the logic that they should. Unbelievable to me, but then again, the world changes. I’m just an old dinosaur. And I’ve got my own thoughts about it.
Simon: Maybe your exposure to it was extended very long and very deep. As he said, you know, you want to know everything that went on with it and discover it.
Brian: I believe if a submarine actually had to do a terrorist go from the continental shelves, level, they would lose a lot of people because they would lose it go into the escape facility. Under pressure going into pressure. 80 metres 90 metres, you’re gonna suffer briefly from narcosis. Before the hatch opens. During the pressurisation for each you’ve got to contend with the pressure coming in. You’ve got to keep your lungs inflated, you’ve got to clear is m gotta clear is burst anyway, if you don’t short sharp pain and you don’t have to do it anymore. You just concentrate and you have to concentrate on keeping yourself plugged in, which is your own muscular power plugged into the air system. And you’re being pressurised, you’re going to suffer a little bit narcosis where you your body sends you into a panic, people are going to lose it in that out, they’re gonna come unplugged. They’re not gonna have a fully inflating life jacket, the hood is gonna collapse and ain’t gonna make it they’re gonna lose it in the tower on the way to the surface. Because they’ve never been exposed to hyperbaric conditions. And what it feels like on your body, if you’ve done a tank a couple of times, you’re quite happy.
Simon: So is the logic that the rescue vehicles will …
Brian: Always get to, if a compartment is still intact. If you can stay down there 24 hours or more, they should be able to get, hopefully they don’t have any problems deploying or anything, within a day or so. There is a maximum sort of five to seven days where if you’ve got enough emergency or equipment on board to maintain suitable living conditions. Take for instance the Kursk, they had people still alive in the rear compartment of their submarine if you know where I’m gonna be when I mentioned the Kurst.
Simon: That’s the Russians.
Brian: Now we had LR5 already crated up and more or less on an aircraft all ready to fly to another exercise. So it’s instantly available. They didn’t want to know. But the Navy flew it to Norway anyway.
Simon: Just leave it there on hand?
Brian: Until the Russian said, you can come. But it was too late by the time they it, those people were alive in that rear compartment for long enough to be rescued.
Simon: But just the Soviet authorities wouldn’t or Russian authorities were not allowed it? So that’s the exception rather than the rule perhaps though?
Brian: Different thoughts. I mean, if you’d been another Navy, there’s an agreement amongst the SMERG people, you have an accident, we’re coming anyway. And they’ve all said, Yeah, anybody who’s got, you know, you can have, you know, a load of buses come along at one stage, because they’ve only made that agreement if you’re within a certain distance of any accident. All these navys all offer their escape rescue facilities. Some navys were bigger.
Simon: So on the SETT, what do you think about it being now a listed building?
Brian: Love it, I think it’s great. I think I might have been a little bit involved in getting it listed. So because it’s, it is an iconic building, it’s putting together with nuts and bolts, old English engineering. Alright, some of the brickworks falling to pieces, but the main part of that tank could still be used. Not necessarily from pressurised training. But if someone had the forethought or the business acumen, they could make that building make enough money to keep it viable and keep it going. Because there’s enough firms out there we’ve known in the past who are interested in trialling or testing their equipment in a safe, stable environment that can be observed, filmed down to 30 metres. In ideal conditions, you think of all the equipment that goes underwater, there’s cabling, lighting, telephones, cameras, new diving equipment, you name it, there’s people who would want to use our facility. So hopefully, they’re doing a review at the moment where I think a number of people have been invited to come up with their thoughts, it could be very interesting.
Simon: Right. So it’s, on private land now. It’s not a navy?
Brian: It’s still navy. They don’t really know what to do with Dolphin at the moment, there’s various thoughts on that. They’re keeping it in reserve as such, the accommodation because if you had both aircraft carriers in at the time, there’s not enough facilities ashore, for them to house them if they wanted and move them off.
Simon: Right. So that’s because of the barracks?
Brian: Because the Portsmouth barracks now is depleted to what it used to be. And a lot of it has been taken over by Portsmouth University. So what used to be the sort of shore barracks for any big ships alongside in Portsmouth, we’re doing sort of a mini refit there, they move the cruise ashore, there ain’t that facility anymore, so they’re going, if we have these carriers come in, there’s quite a few people on, if we put them ashore, where can we put on? Well, there Collingwood and Sultan. But their accommodation is not that good. And their accommodation is usually quite full as well. So they go ‘what should we do with it?’ There are people interested in buying the place, the people who bought Haslar and develop that site? So there is an interest from the civilian side of it to obtain the site. What’s going to happen? Nobody knows.
Simon: This is funded in part by Gosport Borough Council, and what they call the High Street HAZ, which is the Heritage Action Zone. What are your memories of Gosport?
Brian: Yeah, I mean, Gosport when I first even thought, knew Gosport even existed many years ago. First time I went into Gosport I thought it was a great place. The High Street was still, it wasn’t pedestrianised, put it that way. There was lots of shops. There was more pubs in Gosport, I think than what was in Portsmouth at the time, and what a place it was. But it was a Submariners town. A couple of pubs were Submariners, obviously they had St. George’s barracks and a few other forces around but they had their own pubs. But there was a couple of pubs in Gosport which was Submariners pubs and I thought it was great place. There wasn’t a lot of nightlife, there was the occasional one that you could find if you knew about it. So you have to go over to Portsmouth and Southsea, but
Simon: You didn’t go to Emma’s then much?
Brian: Yeah
Simon: It’s best not spoken about?
Brian: It wasn’t called that at the time, I was called, I can’t remember now. There was too little nightclubs in Gosport but you can’t call them nightclubs. They were after hours drinking areas. Gosport has changed so much now, you know they pedestrianised it. Big shops have moved out so, Gosport to me is gone down, put it that way. It’s a dead end now, people don’t go to Gosport anymore. If you’re gonna go shopping and go to Port Solent and or Gunwharf Quays or something like that? What’s the attraction of Gosport anymore? It’s a pity because it was a lovely town, 60s 70s early 80s it was very busy. But you have to pay for parking and stuff like that. It’s difficult cause what can you, it is difficult I believe for the Gosport council to try and sell Gosport because it’s on the end of the peninsula, there’s no big shops anymore, although there’s lots of building going on, it’s still a nice place, but Gosport’s not what it used to be, put it that way.
Simon: There has obviously been a lot less people there spending money. I mean, it’s Submariners got money in their pockets all the time.
Brian: Oh, yeah I mean, all the military have moved out of Gosport as such. You still got Sultan, but that’s not really Gosport. I mean, young matelots from there go to Fareham or Southampton or Portsmouth. There’s nothing in Gosport for the young matelots these days or they use it as a transit over to Southsea. They’re not going to go down into Gosport, the pubs and not really …
Simon: Which were your favourite pubs in Gosport in the heyday then?
Brian: Well, the Royal Arms as such, we used to start off sometimes in the Fighting Cocks which is down Alverstoke, didn’t get very far if you’ve only ended up there. You’d cross over the bridge. Well, it was a walk from Dolphin to the Fighting Cocks, cause it was just at the end of Haslar Road and the barman and barlady there were very friendly.
Simon: I beat they couldn’t believe their luck when people were turning up
Brian: Over the pneumonia bridge, George and Dragon
Simon: What did you call it?
Brian: Pneumonia bridge.
Simon: Is that because it’s windy is it?
Brian: It was only a little footbridge years ago.
Simon: It’s not really called pneumonia bridge though is it?
Brian: Well it was, even the people from Gosport cottoned on used to call it pneumonia bridge. The George and Dragon, which is just up the road off the bridge. And then the main pub was a Royal Arms. You had to be a submariner to go in. Even civilians wouldn’t go in there.
Simon: Really, because what would happen? You wouldn’t be welcome?
Brian: If you’ve been at sea you for 10 weeks or so. And you hadn’t been paid. And then you get alongside. And you’re given 10 weeks worth of pay. And your hair’s all long, unclean and unkempt and you just wanted a bit of fun. Then you go into the RA, and the people who run the RA would let you go a little bit further than normal. Lots of activities would go on in the back room or whatever it is.
Simon: Right. Is it sort of a leisure centre in effect?
Brian: The back room? Yeah, I mean, you could go and have a sing song and sing words that you wouldn’t dare even mention these days. You know, various little routines that Submariners used to get up to that wouldn’t be accepted in pubs these days. Put it that way. You could let your hair down and have fun. Certainly civilians used to come in and have a look and ‘Ooer’ just to watch this behaviour going on, but they wouldn’t stay long. It was a lovely pub, it was a good family pub. The front for darts and chat, the back room was sort of to let your hair down and have fun. You’d go in and the mess would buy a barrel of cider, you wouldn’t go up and get a pint, they’d sell you a barrel, stick it on the table all sorts of things like that goes on. You could do things in there that you couldn’t do in a normal pub, you wouldn’t be allowed to. But it was a pub where Submariners let their hair down and had fun, so people were aware of that, so you were just left alone to just get on with it. Get it out your system
Simon: Where was the Fighting Cocks then? I know that George and Dragon is.
Brian: Come out of Dolphin. And you go into Haslar Road don’t go over the bridge, right turn left and go. The side of Haslar on your left driving into Clayhall, as such, as you get to the end where the junction is you turn right and the Fighting Cock’s just there on the left.
Simon: Okay. And that’s closer than the George and Drsgon because you don’t have to go over the bridge?
Brian: It’s about the same distance. We didn’t have to go over the bridge and you could also in the Fighting Cocks if you were one of our favourites, you could get a couple of beers on slate if you didn’t have a lot of money. So long as you went back paid them and squared your bill. But that happened in lots of even in commercial in civilian life. There were places where you could run a slate up as such. If they were friendly and they trusted you. And you were honest.
Simon: And you stayed, a constant customer you know.
Brian: Yeah, you will come up. You were going to spend your next pay packet in there anyways. Didn’t matter to them, they were getting their money and custom.
Simon: You mentioned before Smash X. Because there’s also an Escape X isn’t there? Yeah. Which was what how would you describe those two?
Brian: Well a Smash X is where you’re exercising the Navy’s capability to assist a submarine that’s been disabled or something you’re not testing the tank staff or it or anything to do with sea, you’re testing the Navy’s ability to identify that you’ve had an accident, identify the location, get assets to the scene to see if you can assist in any way either in recovering people or rescuing people, so it’s the Smash X is getting a submarine to go to sea, covert as such, without anybody knowing there’s a Smash X going on, because we’d be directed by a Flag Officer Submarines or something right I want to do a Smash X, it’s covert, tank staff get the paperwork in place. I’ll tell you later on when everything’s in place what submarine you’re going to go on where she’s going to be I want at least two of the tank staff got to be ready to go on board and instigate this to Smash X’s as such.
Simon: That’s pretending that the submarine’s in trouble.
Brian: Yeah. So I would go on board I went on one of the submarines I’ve got ferry over to St Malo because it was on a visit to St Malo in France doing the bomber jetty. Ask to see the Captain giving them envelope from Flag Officer Submarines you told him when you sail
Simon: They didn’t know until he given the envelope? Wow.
Brian: Or the Captain may have had a phone call prior, whatever, but he sort of kept it covert as well as much as he could onboard the submarine.
Simon: The people on the submarine didn’t know is a simulation?
Brian: No until sort of I joined and they’re like ‘what’s going on here?’ Cause you heard of these Smash X’s and things, ‘We’re supposed to be going to Blackpool on a visit’. So you say, oh we bottomed at 400 and something feet in the southwest approaches and just released an indicator buoy and just sat there.
Simon: And that indicator is sort of SOS we’re in trouble?
Brian: A beacon. And then what you’re gonna do about it? Then obviously then we decided to have an escape compartment still intact back aft and an escape compartment forward still intact. I went forward and my other compatriot when aft. shut the door and said to the people in there, ‘Right. What you’re gonna do, you’re stuck on the bottom. Your senior survivor, get your guard book out.’
Simon: What does that senior survivor phrase mean then?
Brian: Ideally, it’s the most senior in, in ranking as such, the highest ranking person would be the senior survivor. Not necessarily so, depends on the qualifications of the person, or the most experienced, put it that way, person should be the senior survivor, if the captain was in there, obviously he’d be the senior survivor. But the captain is not necessarily the most expert on all the equipment and everything. And again, booking everything. So we would pick what they call a second senior survivor, and ideally would pick someone who he knows has got the knowledge of that compartment where all the equipment is, and whatever. So the senior survivor could be anybody, because if you’ve had an accident, bang, slam, the door shut. Who’s in that compartment? Right? It’s me and four others, right? Who’s going to be the senior survivor? Well, on my last submarine, if I’d had an accident, and I was in a compartment, I know, I would want to be the senior survivor. Or would they pick on me as ex-tank staff. As to be the senior survivor or the second senior survivor.
Simon: And you’re the organiser to say, Okay, here’s what we’re doing?
Brian: Yeah, you’ve gotta have some control. Otherwise, it’s just panic in there, and people all doing their own thing. So, I mean, submariners usually well disciplined whilst they’re on a submarine. And they would follow orders, and know procedures and everything else. But it’s all got to be done. And it’s got to be coordinated. And there’s got to be atmospheric readings taken every hour, there’s got to be this done, every hour, there’s gotta be radiation monitoring done. So you’ve got to have a strict routine and set people up and the ideal people, you should know the group, right, you’re going to be this team, you’re going to be the atmos, you’re gonna control the co2, you’re gonna do that you’re going to get the imern, you’re gonna prepare the escape suits. So there’s a lot of activity initially to go on. But it’s going to be coordinated. So that’s what on the Smash X, we locked in a compartment. And I would just sit there with a load of other envelopes. So happened we picked on a young sub lieutenant, your senior survivor, you’ve got 17 people in here, you’re stuck on the bottom, it’s 400 feet. You’re intact, there’s no need to escape at the moment. And then let him, watch him organise the team, reading the guard book. But then giving him an envelope saying, ‘Oh, this is going out of spec, what you’re going to do about it?’ and he’d have to resolve the co2 or the oxygen replenishment, or something like that, said ‘oh two of them want to go to toilet now. Where’s your toilet facilities?’ ‘They’re the other side of the bulkhead.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ I said, ‘Use your initiative, you can’t have all this crap floating around.’ So there’s lots of things like that, a new take a ride up to develop, develop, develop. And he was getting the guard book out, because it was inadequate, it was out of date hadn’t been written, rewritten for quite a period. And you take em right up to right he’s gotta escape. So I want to see him now prepare all the systems ready for making an escape. So I’m getting to open up all the air systems and everything else, get ready to do a trial runs with the tower. But then the rescue vehicle turned so I said ‘Right now what you’re gonna do? The rescue submersible is going to mate get the tower ready for mating procedures’, ‘who you’re going to send up?’, ‘Who you’re gonna have rescued first out of the 17 people?’ He’s in a hell of a state, he’s got a broken leg. When are these going to go up? So you’ve got to put them through all these different scenarios and that’s the idea of a Smash X. On the surface of it, thre’s a lot of activity going on, there’s the aeroplanes flying over trying to pick up where the signal is, there’s helicopters, surface ships dashing around. Some of the SMERAS team have gone on to these surface ships and they’re prepping them what to do if they arrive on the scene, showing them pictures of a one-man liferaft or person in this escape suit. What injuries would they expect, have you got a team on board that can give oxygen therapy easy, you know and all this sort of stuff. Have you got adequate clothing to given them when they get on board? So there’s all that and then there’s the rescue submersible being put on board a ship flying down as far as it can in the water. All the equipment that has to go with that, because there’s other equipment based around the country that you would need in a rescue situation because even if initially, they couldn’t do a mating they could post actually equipment through the tower. So what would you post through the tower, you;d post oxygen generators, co2 absorption, fresh water. So there’s there’s what they call pods. It’s equipment based around the country that you can quickly put on a ship, that a submersible or a deep sea diver or hard suit diver can actually post stuff into the tower. So all this is going on, this is a Smash X. There’s a hell of a lot going on. You had to prepare for that. Or they’re just like, well, we’re going to do it now The tank staff would be prepared for it. But yes, you have to do the OP orders for as such and putting the scenario in place. But we didn’t have anything to do the surface force, that was up to them and we knew what we were doing.
Simon: So was that you who put those scenarios together? Was that quite good fun? To think right. Now we know we could do now
Brian: Develop the situation on the submarine, you know what we can probably what would we expect if we sat down there now? What would happen next? What is our priorities initially? What’s your initial reactions? And then well because there’s 17 of you breathing out co2, you’re gonna have to control the co2, you’re absorbing oxygen, so you have to replenish the oxygen. Right? We’re all getting thirsty. We’re all getting hungry. We all want to go to the toilet. We’ve got injuries, what can we do about this and he slashed his arm, how we gonna stitch your up, he’s broke his leg, what we’re going to do is stick it in a splint? So you you go into it. And of course you have little pool of people going, oh, let’s do this. No that’s ridiculous. So Smash X is a huge exercise not just for the tank, but the Navy itself, and involves the Air Force, obviously, because now we’re going to say give me a Hercules. Now, put my boats, my life rafts and all this other stuff in it. And I want you to fly out and find you know, drop these people in the water, and the RAF are going, ‘Oh we haven’t gotta’, yes you have.
Simon: Right. Goodness, And that takes a day or two days?
Brian: It can go run for a few days. Initially, it involves quite a lot. But once the submarine is located, then you know, the RAF can go back, the Navy can relax some of the ships because they don’t need everything out there. They only need the basic people to assist in the rescue or recovery of the crew from the submarine. But the whole exercise can take a number of days, when I went on, lasted about four days, five days.
Simon: And he said that sort of showed weaknesses in the guard book.
Brian: Yeah, yeah.
Simon: So what let what happened from there?
Brian: Well, you always have a washup, or a debrief after every big exercise. And at the time, we had our own little debrief in the tank with our commander, and I explained the deficiencies in the guard book and some of the equipment that was on board the submarine wasn’t even mentioned because they put this new equipment on but hadn’t done anything about updating the instructions or anything. And lots of it was out of date. And I said it’s no good someone’s got to update the Guard book. So yeah, fine. It was all agreed, of course you get feedback from the crew as well saying, ‘bloody hell, those instructions, it’s bloody useless, like, didn’t have a clue what he was doing after the third day or something, so right we need someone to do it. So they ask around who did the instructions in the first place and it was never identified? Because initially the guard book was one page. And then it got to two pages.
Simon: So it grew to I guess calling it a book, then it’s gonna be
Brian: It’s in three parts now. And once I started developing it, we couldn’t find anybody really who sort of it could be the technical author. I wasn’t interested at the time. Or I didn’t even think they even asked me because I was part of instigating someone to review it. And then commander said, right, how would you like to do review and see if you can update the guard book? I thought I can’t do it on my own because there’s lots of technical things now that’s not even included. I have to make graphs, different developments and things like that. So said I need to speak to kinetic, I need to speak to I&M, the doctors, the medical, because there’s no medical instructions on how to have various other people involved in it. So that’s going to cost money I can’t pay, because they have to involve I&M people, kinetic people, which is all time and their commercial people as such, you have to pay them for their time. And he agreed to do it as long as we put it together. And that was another challenge. And I did that. Only me most of the time, it took me months, months. To finally because I had to do it all on paperwork and search. And then we have to identify the material to put it on, bcause it was going to get wet. So we had to identify an ink that wouldn’t smudge or run if it got wet or hot or sweaty, identify different stuff that if you couldn’t see in the dark, so I sat under the stairs with no sign of light, trying to read the damn book, if there reds and yellows in the graphs and the guide, that’s no good been yellow, that’s no good being green, because the silent light’s green, that disappears. So it was going and then once you get into the nitty gritty, you didn’t think of this. Right, that’s all confusion, right, I’m gonna separate that. The senior survivor, he’s got, he’s got all the instructions, he doesn’t need all the instructions, he can’t do it. The seniors have got to sit back and delegate. So I put another Part B. Give that to the second senior advisor and he gives Part C give that to the radiation monitoring team, because I want you to keep me informed if there’s a radiation leak. I had to have this big graph of when you reach a certain level that you can’t wait for rescue anymore, you’re gotta escape. So there’s all these graphs. And I was assisted by the radiation people at Sultan, I&M, kinetic, all put together all these graphs, all the oxygen co2 graphs and things like that. And as I say, once we then it has to be reviewed. So you’d have to give it to kinetic to see if I put all their information correctly. I&M and all the doctors had to approve it, the radiation people had to approve it. There it is, it’s a copy. Right now identify who’s gonna print it, are we going to put it together, what paper we’re going to use what ink we’re going to use, what colour we’re going to use.
Simon: So much to it.
Brian: It was a challenge. And I enjoyed it when it all got agreed and we identified the company and everything to print it. And then obviously had to start teaching it, then we have to distribute. So some we couldn’t have everybody come to the tank. So a small team had to go on board a submarine. So this is your new one, give us your old one. And then take PowerPoint presentation to take them through the new guard book. So you had to introduce that.
Simon: To each submarine separately? It must have felt a fantastic achievement to know that you’re putting in place something that will help people survive.
Brian: Well it did at the time. But who’s updated it since?
Simon: I guess we’re not privy to that. You’ve been very generous with your time. Is there anything? I mean, we haven’t got the time to go over the suits. And that that might be a separate one really interesting one some other time. Is there anything that we haven’t spoken about you think we should have done? Or maybe we didn’t. We’ve just touched on there. You’re sort of post Navy life. Do you want to summarise what that was like?
Brian: It needs updating every couple of years. Someone needs to look at it, submarines are changing. I did, when they were building the Astute. They needed a totally different guard book, but I was a civilian. So the Navy couldn’t pay me. Right. So they approached another company. And that company approached me. So I set up in my bedroom and made the first guard book for the Astute Class submarines. So that was another achievement, but then they had to have visits to the Astute and everything during his build and teaching their crew all about their new guard book but the tank paid for that because I was still working in it and it was a tank’s responsibility to actually distribute the new guard book, but it was a civilian company that with a technical authorship and sourcing of it delivered all these books to the Navy to the tank and said right, you go and teach it. Yeah, I mean, it was a it was a challenge. And I enjoyed doing it. In the end. It was a bit of a nightmare at times. My wife wasn’t too happy because I was doing a lot of it at home because I still had my job in the tank to do. Well, I was fortunate, when they decided I could no longer serve in uniform. As I was approaching my 50th birthday, I was still enjoying my job inside the tank. But I knew eventually, that I had to leave the Navy. And so I started looking for a civilian job, and I’d actually found one. But just prior to me leaving, there was a little bit of a manpower shortage in the tank as such, and I was approached by the boss of the tank, if I would consider taking on a role as a civilian instructor in it. And I thought, yeah, well, I know what I’m doing in there, it’s no challenge. And it was a transition I had to make at some stage from the Navy to a civilian life, but making it easier being still a navy bloke but in civilian clothing, right, joined as a civil servant having done an interview, quite a pay drop to what I was used to at the time. But that was backed up by then claiming my navy pension. So with a big drop in pay my navy pension, and my civilian pay was more or less the same as what I was doing in anyway. So it was no big financial loss. So my role slightly changed as a civilian now, I couldn’t get into water and go with trainees as such, but I still kept a certain amount of water qualifications to help train up new staff. So it’s still enjoyable working in that job, I wasn’t able to jump out of aeroplanes anymore. They wouldn’t let a civilian do it. But I took on the role of being the water safety officer down in the drop zone, as such. So I was still involved in sort of all the boat driving and safety drills and everything, for when the troops hit the water and recovery of them. So I’m still involved in all the SPAG stuff as such, and the writing of these orders for different exercises. And I was still able to go to sea and do trials on all the submarines so they wouldn’t let me climb out the submarine anymore. But I would go on as the tower supervisor, you know, observing all the tower drills and everything. So I was still still really in the Navy, but as a civilian, and there were obviously some restrictions on what the military would allow me to do, I would have still jumped out of aeroplanes or I still would have done the escapes and the submarine. But obviously, they wouldn’t allow that. So I was fortunate to be offered that role. To initially I was a civil servant, and my job got taken over by flagship with the same terms of reference. The job was then taken over by BAE again, with the same but then the training started to alter so the pressurised stopped. But I was still involved in keeping the staff trained up. Still involved in all the classwork stuff and documentation stuff. And I was still enjoying it until my 65th birthday. So I was fortunate, I was a little bit early because I wanted to do another year. I was a little bit ill at the end of 2011. And after I recovered, I went back to work, but everything had changed. And I thought what am I doing here at 65 and a half. I’d deferred my old age pension. I was still earning a reasonable wage.
Simon: So how many years in total then was that?
Brian: Well for the Navy as such it was 49 years and 10 months. In uniform it was 33 and a bit years.
Simon: Wow. And how long it at SETT?
Brian: It was just over 33 years.
Simon: So you probably the longest serving person at SETT do you think?
Brian: Yeah. I had a break. You couldn’t say that all the time. When I was active service. I went there for years and then went on the submarine and went back there. So it’s in the accumulation especially in the last lot. I was there, joined 82 off a submarine. And I was there to more or less 2012. I’d reached my 40th birthday in 86. I got drafted in there in 82. And they said, because I’ve done lots of sea time, you’ll stay there until you go outside in 86. But that’s when I signed on again, in a uniform, and I had another nine years in uniform after 86 to 95. So when I joined in 82, and stayed there until nearly 2012, well on the last day of 2011 that’s when I retired. Plus the four years previous in there as a young lad. The longest bloke who’d served before that was 19 years.
Simon: Okay, you smashed that one.
Brian: Mishmashed they called it. I had a really fortunate life in a way when you consider, you know, what are the things I’ve been involved in and what I couldn’t afford to do them, in mini-subs touring around the Mediterranean on a frigate, going to different ports, all the trials and things helping civilian companies develop stuff, writing documentation. And I’ve been so lucky. In a way. It’s wrecked my body, but I’m still here.
Simon: Well, thank you very much. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about? We haven’t spoken about?
Brian: No, I think we’ve mentioned most things. I mean, the development of suits is another area from 1929 when it was first thought about escaping from submarines, right up until now going through all the suits to Mark11/)a now possibly, you know, the development of the equipment is another sort of another hour, depends how much you want to get involved, how they developed it using different materials and different aspects of the suit.
Simon: Well that would be interesting, maybe if we can get a budget from somewhere else, we can do that. Brilliant, thanks very much for your time.
Brian: I mean, there’s this and that gives you a little bit of a development and you can use that possibly rather than me bend in your ears for hours and hours.
Simon: Oh right that’s all the suits and what went through, okay.
Brian: Starting off with your DSER, there was no suit as such. If you can read that, bottom bit there.
Simon: My eyes are bad, I can’t.
Brian: Because the two submarines are especially mentioned in the Truculent in the Thames, they’d all made more or less a successful escape, but most of them are died of exposure and dorwning and stuff, once you were on the surface, of course at that time not all submariners were trained in escape training only percentage of the crew, but then they had a big board of inquiry and what they call a Rutt Keen inquiry and they said right we’ve got to do something about this, all these people died half of them weren’t trained. So then decided to build a tank and said right, what we need is they wanted a decent dress so they don’t die of exposure for his start, they’ll still use the DSCA because it got out you know, because so that’s when it all started developing.
Simon: So they go the full body suits and then the hoods?
Brian: Yeah, that’s the first, hooded, Mark 6 so they’ve gone through all these Mark One, Mark Two, because there was sort of, one was glued with certain glue, one was made with Egyptian cotton that had been rubberised, another internally went into propylene nylon, different relief valves, doing different things, locking wounds and a lot of a lot involved in in that but that’s the basic. And so rather than me go through,
Simon: It was the big thing.
Brian: You can have that one.
Simon: Thank you very much, and thanks a lot for your time.