Duration: 2 hours 26 minutes 24 Seconds
Simon: My name is Simon Perry, and we are here in Gosport and it’s the 24th of June 2022 and we are with Chris Groves for the second part of the Submariner’s Stories Oral History Project. So, where we were last time, we’d just got on to talk about your decision to move to command a submarine and we seemed to have a healthy break on talking about ‘Perisher’ so can you talk about your decision to go for the command? Well, let’s start with that and we’ll go from there.
Chris: So I guess that any Submariner Warfare Officer’s view, selection for Submarine Command, so selection for the Submarine Command Course or colloquially known as the ‘Perisher Course’ is the pinnacle of your early warfare career. It’s what you aiming for because it’s the route to the second half of your career in submarines if you like. As a Warfare Officer, if you don’t get onto Perisher and you don’t get through Perisher then you don’t get to those exciting roles which is Second in Command and Command of a submarine. So, that’s kind of everything that you’ve been groomed for through your training and preparation, whether that be inshore or sea roles, so for me, I was the Watch Leader and Navigator and Tactical Systems Officer of HMS Victorious, and I can vividly remember I suppose the signal that I got when I was on Patrol so on an SSBN Trident Submarine Patrol, coming through which gave the Perisher selection for the next Course and being on it and it being a real celebratory moment. So, I was selected in 1999 to go on the first Course of 2000, so I started in the March of 2000 and at the time that I joined the Submarine Command Course, the Teacher, so the person that ran the Course, did all of the training and did a lot of the assessment and assurance of the standard of students that were successful on the Course was a Commander called Commander Paul Abraham. Hugely well-respected operator in the Submarine Service with a wealth of experience in all sorts of operations but quite a lot of time doing the sort of more covert and exciting elements of SSN Operations, so Attack Submarine Operations, and a formidable character, very ebullient and gregarious single-minded very operationally focussed and I guess quite daunting for us as new students. I think every Teacher is seen as fairly daunting, but there is no doubt that Paul Abraham is hugely respected for his ability, and for being a fair but really firm man. I mean he knew his mind; he knew what was required and he expected his students to put 110% in and be successful. And so the Course is split really into a Shore Phase and a Sea Phase so the Shore Phase really start off with what we would call ‘eyes only safety’, so that’s making sure that you can remain safe at periscope depth using only the periscope really fundamentally to keep yourself safe, in increasingly complex scenarios where you start off with maybe only one Warship and then you add in a Warship and a Fishing Vessel and a Merchant Vessel and then you add in two Warships and you work up to a sort of a scenario where you’ve got five Warships plus a couple of Fishing Vessels and the Warships are moving pretty fast and some of them are coming directly towards you and providing you with real significant issues of safety and you have to make a decision. The idea being really that you remain safe but you reduce the chances of you being counter detected so in other words seen effectively either by a sensor so by a radar or visually and so you want to keep the mast, the periscope if you like, under the water for the most time you possibly can, in that scenario and you’re doing that by using the tool of the periscope but using your mental agility and maths to be able to work out how far away that the various vessels are, what courses they’re doing and you’re trying to work out what speed they’re doing and how close they’re going to come to you.
6 minutes 38 seconds
Simon: This is all through the periscope.
Chris: All through the periscope. You’re assisted a bit by various positions within the Control Room who are looking at it from a Navigation Plot perspective and an Operations Plot and making sure that these are recorded, so you have a little bit of time when the mast is down to be able to consult with the rest of the team and brief the team on what’s going on and what your aims are and what you’re objectives are and you’re constantly worried about, you know, am I safe? Is there a chance of me being counter-detected and am I achieving the aim? And so, the initial bit, you could almost I guess call it a Driving Test. Can you keep the submarine safe using the periscope, at periscope depth in really tactically quite demanding scenarios? Can you prioritise? Can you make the right decisions? Have you got good judgement? That’s really what you’re looking at, it’s a Driving Test. And so, once you’ve done that, and you can prove that you can do that, then you can start to look at how you can operate the submarine slightly more tactically. How you can use the rules that you used to keep the submarine safe, to your advantage to then be able to be covert and achieve the aim in a slightly more realistic and tactical environment.
Simon: So that’s the first … I mean that seems like an extraordinary first part. You’ve done training in a classroom before that have you?
Chris: Well you do a little bit of it. So, you go through the theory of it but in reality you have done … we discussed before how you go through a series of Courses and a series of jobs in between those Courses of increasing responsibility, and so you start off on your Basic Warfare Course and you go onto your Intermediate Warfare Course and then end up with your Advanced Warfare Course and in each of those Courses, you’ve learnt the theory, you’ve learnt all of the theory pretty much that you need to learn to get through Perisher. You then apply it in the jobs in between those Courses. You then demonstrate that you’re capable of doing it to your Commanding Officer who then comes up with a recommendation as to whether or not you’re ready or not to go on the Submarine Command Course, and then there’s a Board which sits which selects Officers to go on the Submarine Command Course and they look at what’s your potential. Do you merit selection? What’s your potential for the future? So that kind of decides whether or not you are an early selectee or whether perhaps you need more experience or a later selectee and when you get on to the Course, the Teacher’s assumption is that you know what you need to know. And so, there is a little bit of revision, particularly around some of the ‘eyes only theory’ and periscope rules but fundamentally you’re expected to have prepared yourself for that Course. So, I can remember when I was still the Watch Leader of HMS Victorious having been selected for Perisher, knowing that I was going to go on that Course in 4- or 5-months’ time, getting the books out, getting my head into the books, preparing myself ready for that Course. Making sure that I knew the various warfare books and books of reference, knew the various Standard Operating Procedures and Emergency Operating Procedures and tactics and all of the tactical development publications. Getting them out, understanding and learning and revising operations in the Arctic, under ice operations, operations Special Forces, operations for anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare and sonar publications and sensors and tactical weapon systems and understanding absolutely how the weapon operates and how to operate it to the best tactical effect. And going around to all my Heads of Department on the submarine so my Marine Engineering Officer and my Weapons Engineering Officer and my Executive Officer and asking for advice and making sure that I understood and revised reactor principles, and what to do in certain circumstances and just preparing yourself for every eventuality. And you had to do that, and I think that those of us that passed the Course, certainly were I suppose dedicated enough to make sure that we had done what we needed to do before we got there.
12 minutes 10 seconds
Simon: How old were you at this point?
Chris: So it was 2000, so I was 33.
Simon: And the bit at sea where they’re testing you with an increasing number of ships, what period is that over, how long is that?
Chris: So, if we go through the Course a little bit more, you spend as I remember it about a week doing a little bit of theory, a little bit of introduction, a little bit of character and leadership and a bit of psychometric testing and understanding yourself and doing a bit of self-evaluation, and then you go in to a three-week period in a simulator where you’re doing the ‘eyes only driving test’ piece that I was describing. You then come out of that and you move into what we’d call the Tactical Phase, and that’s where you go in the simulator shoreside, a little bit of time in the classroom but mostly in the simulator, going through all of the various types of operations that you would be expected to do in a submarine, and quite a significant amount of safety elements as well so operating in close proximity to Warships but close proximity to Fishing Vessels and there are some specific rules around how we operate in fishing environments. How to operate the weapon, how to operate the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, the Cruise Missile. How you do support operations when you’re working with a Task Group or when you’re working with a Maritime Patrol Aircraft, or how you’re doing anti-submarine warfare, how you’re doing anti-surface warfare. A whole load of scenarios, some quite tricky navigational operations so working in close proximity to land where your navigation has to be very precise, where you’re doing intelligence gathering or whether that be intelligence gathering around communications intelligence or whether that be around doing photographic intelligence, visual intelligence, preparation of battle space, looking at beaches in preparation for amphibious landings. All sorts of the types of operations that you might imagine a submarine would be involved in, and so Teacher is trying to make them more and more complex, more difficult. He, through the simulator so if you imagine it’s a submarine Operations Room but driven by computers in a Shore Base, so for us it was either in Plymouth or it was up in Faslane in Scotland, and we did a bit of both. You can simulate being in a submarine so you can increase the complexity of the surroundings. You can make them more contacts, more ships, more Fishing Vessels, more Submarines, more Warships, whatever they happen to be, and Teacher is in control of that picture, and so he can also quite quickly create situations where either tactically things are going wrong, or from a safety perspective, things are starting to go wrong and he is doing that on purpose to increase the pressure and make sure that your judgement is good and that you do the right things and you keep the submarine safe. You avoid counter-detection and you achieve the aim. And if one of those … and it’s kind of in that order, safety is absolutely paramount. Counter-detection is the next one and then achieving the aim is the next one, so we all like to achieve the aim, but if something is preventing us from doing that, so we stand a chance of being detected by somebody else that’s going to do us some harm for whatever reason, or if we’re going to have a problem from a safety perspective, you’ve got to be able to understand what level you’re at and be able to flex between those sort of three states, with the aim of being able to deal with the situation and get back to achieving the aim but recognise what your priorities are all the time. So, you’re allowed to make some mistakes …
Simon: Better in the simulator than …
Chris: Better in the simulator than doing it for real, but I would say even doing it for real, you’re allowed to make some mistakes depending on what those mistakes are, and it depends on whether or not you learn from those mistakes. If you start to do things twice, then you’re starting to get yourself onto a sticky wicket. Remembering that the assumption is that at the end of that Course, you’re going to Command, and the natural progression for the Royal Navy is that in actual fact on all nuclear submarines we have two Command Qualified people, so the Executive Officer is Command Qualified and so is the Captain, and the natural progression is to go from the Perisher Course, having been successful on that Course, you go in to a Second in Command place initially, but even when you’re Second in Command, depending on what the submarine is doing, quite often you will be effectively in Command for 12 hours a day because if you’re doing 24 hour operations, then the Captain and yourself need to be opposite each other so that you can provide that cover for the rest of the submarine, so the assumption is you are going to be in Command, you’re going to be on your own, you’re going to be the one that’s keeping the submarine safe and achieving its aim and avoiding counter-detection for 12 hours a day as soon as you get onto you boat, and you have to be capable of doing that. You have to assure Teacher that you deserve it, you deserve Command and that you’re worthy of it. I think when you go onto that Course, I think we discussed before that what you have to do is, I think you have to be absolutely certain in your mind that you’re going to pass the Course and you’re going to do everything you can to pass that Course. There’s always a slight doubt in your mind until Teacher comes to you at the end of the Course and says, “You’ve passed it”, shakes you by the hand and says, “Congratulations Captain” and gives you a glass of champagne. Right up until that moment, even the most confident of us, certainly myself anyway, there’s always, always just that little bit of doubt in your mind that ‘will I get through the Course?’ even if you think you’re doing well. Will I get through the Course? And it’s not until he shakes your hand you absolutely know, so the pressure’s on right the way through to the end of the Course, and so the first pace at which you can faulter really is at the end of that ‘Driving Test’ piece.
20 minutes 19 seconds
Simon: That’s the simulated testing is it?
Chris: It is a simulated ‘Driving Test’ so the ‘Eyes-Only’ Phase where you’re trying to keep the submarine safe. It’s the first time where Teacher looks at you and says, “You can either do it or you can’t.” It’s certainly the place where Teacher has, will have his suspicions aroused if you’re not performing particularly well. Some people don’t make it past the end of that bit of the Course. Now, we’ve changed the rules around Perisher a bit. Previously if you were taken off the Course, you never could go back again, and you wouldn’t go back to sea in a Command role of a submarine. That was your sort of Command career over in submarines. They’ve amended those rules a bit now and they’ve recognised that there are people that either through a lack of experience or lack of exposure take a little bit longer to get to the right place, so now for certain individuals if they’re just not quite cutting the mustard in the Shore Phase, either in the ‘Eyes Only’ piece or the Tactical Phase, Teacher can remove them from the Course and say, “Needs to go back to sea and needs some more experience but should come back again.”
Simon: Press a pause button effectively.
Chris: Effectively. Couldn’t do that when I went through the Course. That wasn’t part of the game. So, if you were removed from Course, either in the Shore Phase or at the Sea Phase, that was it for you. I was saying that you go into this Tactical Phase which is this phase where you …
Simon: Before we get on to that, is the simulator accurate? Does it feel like your onboard a submarine? I mean you know you’re on land but you’re so caught up in it, do you feel like it’s …
Chris: It’s really accurate. It’s very good. The periscope ‘Eyes Only’ piece is pretty accurate. Of course, it’s a … you’re not seeing real life, you’re seeing a simulation of land and ships but …
Simon: But they’re high resolution …
Chris: It’s high resolution and you are completely in the moment, and of course the other thing is there’s no motion that you would have on a submarine.
Simon: So it’s not simulated movement or …
Chris: No there’s not and in some ways that’s one of the … it’s not really a downside, because you just cope with it but in a submarine, when you’ve been in a submarine a while, when things start to happen, you feel it. You feel it because of a motion or a sound and so …
Simon: Interesting. So, you don’t need to … you don’t need the feedback from somebody else, you’re just feeling the feedback.
Chris: To an extent. In certain scenarios, so if Ship Control is struggling to keep depth for example, you can feel it when you’re at sea and you’ve got a bit of experience, and similarly if there’s an issue, if the submarine is changing depth of course you feel that, if the submarine is altering course you feel that and you don’t get that feedback in a simulator, but all of the instruments are there to look at so you can see. If you’ve given the order to alter course and change depth, you don’t feel it but you can look at the compass and you can look at the depth gauge and you can see what depth you’re at and what you’re doing and what your attitude is and what your pitch and roll is and things, and you’ve got a team there that are supposed to, if they’re doing their job properly, to tell you if they’re having problems doing what you’ve asked them to do, so if they’re having problems keeping depth or there are problems with speed or there’s problems with propulsion, then you should get the verbal clues as well as the simulator clues from the team that are around you.
25 minutes 6 seconds
Simon: Might one of the curved balls be that the crew isn’t performing as they should?
Chris: You’re exactly right and that is absolutely part of it and part of Teacher’s armoury for piling on the pressure and testing you. So, if I get one of the team to do this which they shouldn’t be doing, how long will it take the student to notice and what will he do? And that goes down to some really crazy … and we’ll talk perhaps when we get to sea, some of the things that Teacher will do just to pile on the pressure.
Simon: Ok.
Chris: So, you do this 9 week Tactical Phase which gets increasingly more complex, you get to the end of that and at the same time as you’re doing the Tactical Phase, you’re preparing for each of your … during the Tactical Phase you fulfil a number of roles, so you’re either in Command or you’re the AC, or the Attack Co-ordinator or the Executive Officer, so supporting the student who’s in Command for that day, the Duty Captain as they’re called, or you’re doing the Navigation and so you’re rotating through those roles, and normally each of the scenarios, the different scenarios that you’re being set by Teacher, last for half a day, so you’re in at 8 and out at maybe 12, you have some lunch and then you’re back in at 1 and you’re out at 5 again perhaps. And you will be the Duty Captain for the morning run and you might be the Attack Co-ordinator for the afternoon run. The person who is the Duty Captain is the one that’s responsible for planning that scenario and sort of briefing that scenario and responsible for how it goes, really fundamentally. So, they’re the pressure ones when you’re Duty Captain. You doing the preparation for all of that in the evenings, outside of the simulated time. It’s 9 weeks of constant simulator, Monday to Friday, 8 till 5, and at the same time as you get towards the back end of the 9 weeks, you start to know what the program is going to be for the Sea Phase, so when you go to sea on your submarine, which is a month long, and similarly you’ll find yourself with periods of time as the Duty Captain at sea, and you will have a whole program on inshore operations and open ocean operations which you’re having to plan and having to get ready for, because you do not have time to do it at sea. So, you have a bit of time to perhaps finesse things or a bit of time to make some changes ‘cos programs always change but you’re doing that preparation so you’re working pretty hard. The Course is quite demanding. We as a Course would always try and at least get in to the Bar for last orders, but moist of the time you were in your cabin getting ready for the next day or for the Sea Phase and so it’s pretty full on. Quite a bit of pressure, and I chose to leave Claire and the family here in Alverstoke. In fact, that’s not true. Actually, we were up in Scotland living in the Married Quarters in Scotland and so Claire and the family stayed in Scotland and I went down to Plymouth to do the Course and I have to say that took quite a lot of pressure off because I wasn’t worried about getting home or seeing the family and so I was able to just throw myself into it, and Claire was really great with it because she knew that was what I needed to do. And so, she was very accommodating, just accepted the fact that it was fundamentally 6 months of my life where I needed to concentrate on making sure I got through it.
Simon: Sounds, I mean 6 months, day to day is a long time isn’t it? When you look back on it, it seems much briefer.
Chris: Yes, the Course went pretty quickly I have to say. So, you ended up with, if you think about it, you spent a month basically doing that initial ‘Eyes-Only Safety Driving Test’ bit of it. Then you spend 9 weeks, so two- and a-bit months doing that piece. There were a couple of weeks then of other things, so I seem to remember there being a bit of Maritime Warfare Course that we did down in HMS Collingwood, and a couple of other little bits that we did, sort of acquaint stuff and things and then we joined the submarine. So, for me it was HMS Sovereign. Really nerve-racking and interesting time ‘cos we’d all spent time in nuclear submarines, we’d all come from sea pretty much. I hadn’t been in an SSN, an Attack Submarine for a while but actually I found it very, very easy to just go straight back in to it and get into the routine, but it’s quite nerve-racking because it’s a ship’s company that you don’t know, and you know because of your experience of perhaps having done Perisher Courses, what we call ‘Perisher Running’ in a submarine before, what the ship’s company is looking at. They’re looking at you quite nervously because they’re thinking, ‘I’ve got a month of really, really busy and intense work here to do. I’ve got 6 Captains, who I don’t really know and the first thing they’re doing is trying to get the measure of you.’ They immediately start, you know, a sweepstake. They’re immediately putting money on whose going to pass the Course, and there’s a huge element of this which is around character and leadership. They want you to be consistent, predictable. They don’t mind you being firm, but if you’re going to be firm, then they want you to be firm all the time so that they can read you and react and respond to you and in my view, they don’t like shouters, they don’t like people who are inconsistent. They don’t want to be your buddy. They don’t want you to come and try and court favour. They want you to be their future Commanding Officer is actually what they want, and they want to see that in you, so it’s all about how you relate to them and if you start to make a bit of a name for yourself, you get a bit of a reputation, it goes around the ship’s company immediately and if it’s a bad reputation, that is pretty difficult to shake off. It’s also usually deserved, so it’s a really interesting almost social experiment. And Teacher uses it to his advantage the whole time and I know that because when I was Captain Training North later on in my time, Teacher used to work for me and I used to go to Perisher for two weekends of the month that they’re at sea from an assessment perspective, so I was assessing both Teacher’s capabilities because I was responsible for the line management and reported on Teacher, but also I was responsible for just making sure that the end product was assured by more than just one person, the Teacher, so the first thing you did when you went onto the Perisher Running boat was you went to the Galley and chatted to the Chefs and you went to speak to the Stokers back aft and you very, very quickly get the ship’s company’s opinion of the students. And particularly the very good students and the very bad students, they’re very happy to talk about them, and as I say, Teacher uses that as a big part of his assessment. I mean he sees it himself of course. I mean he is looking at you, not only from a ‘can he keep the submarine safe, can he avoid counter-detection, can he achieve the aim?’, but he’s also looking at and saying, ‘”Do we want this individual to be Commanding one of our nuclear submarines and directly affecting 130 people?”
35 minutes 30 seconds
Simon Keep the atmosphere healthy onboard.
Chris: Yeah, from a morale perspective. This all affects retention of individuals. We have a pretty unique skill set if you like, Nuclear Submariners, pretty difficult to sideways recruit, you know from industry or from somewhere else. There aren’t too many Nuclear Submariners sitting around outside of the Royal Navy Submarine Service and so therefore a lot of our skill sets we have to grow from the bottom up, so if you’re leaking them out of the side, because people are not enjoying the journey and part of that enjoyment of the journey is how your boss treats you. Does he value you, does he treat you as an individual, and is my working life fulfilling and satisfying and enjoyable and do I feel that I’m being treated in a way that is acceptable? The last thing you want is a Commanding Officer or anybody in the Command Chain I guess, that does not push them in the right direction.
Simon: And the experience of setting the right tone with the people onboard, that’s something that you had gradually learnt in the process of getting to the point where you were taking the Perisher Course.
Chris: Yeah, I think so. So, you start don’t you when you do your new entry training at Dartmouth and you’re learning about what makes a good Naval Officer in theory, and then you’re doing a bit of practical leadership and you’re learning the theory of leadership and then you gradually get introduced to sailors and you start to interact with sailors and you start to demonstrate some of that leadership and junior roles. You learn about sailors, you learn about being at sea and then as you go up through the various steps in the career, you’re then interacting with other Officers of your Branch, other Officers of different Branches, you’re interacting with your own Line Management, you’re seeing Executive Officers and Commanding Officers as you go through, remembering quite often when you join a submarine for maybe a two year assignment or appointment, you’re going to see a changeover in your Executive Officer and your Commanding Officer. So, perhaps you’re seeing two or three Executive Officers and two or three Commanding Officers and so you’re getting exposure to a lot of different styles, and you learn as much if not more from the less capable or the poorer styles than the good.
Simon: You look at things I must not do.
Chris: Each one of them rubs off on you, without a doubt, and you say, “Ooof, I’m never going to be like that” or “I wouldn’t want to like that,” and so you get shaped by those people that you work with and for and alongside and you get shaped by the people you’re on Courses with and you hope that you pick up the good bits and you discard the bad bits, you hope. But it shapes you anyway into … and then of course there’s the nature and nurture element of everything we do, so you need a bit of the raw material and then hopefully through both the training and the experience you nurture that into what you become. I thought it was a pretty good system and it works pretty well, but then I had a blessed career without a doubt in terms of the breadth of experience that I got and the opportunities that I got. Some of that I suppose you make for yourself; you make your own luck in life. Some of it was luck and then I guess if I perhaps had not been successful at Perisher, I’d probably have a completely view on than I hold at the moment. I got to the end of the Tactical Phase, and then we went to sea in HMS Sovereign and the first few days are spent going back to that ‘Driving Test’ piece and you end up sort of rendezvousing with a number of Frigates and Destroyers and you go through that ‘Eyes-Only’ safety piece for real, and it’s amazing how different that is. All of a sudden you’ve got the friction that you get of actually being in a real submarine where you’re interacting with people and a crew and you’re interacting with equipment that doesn’t work like the simulator all the time. You’ve got the realities of waves and the sea washing over the periscope and not being able to see the targets as well as perhaps you could in the simulator, and you’ve got different frustrations and things to deal with. You’ve got the real world that’s perhaps less controllable. I didn’t really have too much of a problem with that. I’d had the experience before and so it wasn’t new, and so I was fine and dealt with it ok. I can remember one Officer on my Course who in the Shore Phase had been brilliant, and when I say brilliant, I mean mental maths better than Teacher, his ability to deal with the periscope in the simulator was second to none and I can remember sitting in the Abbey House Hotel in Barrow on a visit to see BAE and where we build submarines and we were having a brandy together at the end of the night. It was the week before we were due to go up to Faslane, and do the Sea Phase of Perisher, and I can remember saying to him, “I would bet my house on you passing this Course” and he said something similar back about me. We were both at the top end of the Course at the end of the Tactical Phase. I would have said he was top probably and we got to sea and as soon as he started to deal with a live scenario and had water washing over the periscope and couldn’t see the ship as well as he’d been able to see it and couldn’t pull the minutes on the periscope so he couldn’t range the ships as accurately as he wanted to, he started to struggle and in actual fact he ended up being removed from the Course, and I was gobsmacked. I think we were all surprised but he couldn’t deal with the real world, couldn’t deal with the prioritisation, couldn’t deal with the judgement he needed to, and so I learnt a little bit from that.
Simon: So he had to do the prioritisation in the simulator, but it was the lack of precise information …
Chris: I think it was the lack of certainty. Precise information is probably a reasonable way of saying it. He needed the facts and he needed to deal with it and a very interesting social experiment for me I think in some ways, and certainly made me … shaped the way I looked at people and judged people going forwards.
Simon: Lucky he didn’t get the house then.
45 minutes
Chris: Well lucky I didn’t bet the house and it also absolutely emphasised to me the importance of assessing and witnessing people in the real environment. The whole thing around pressure, the whole thing about dealing with people directly that you don’t know, are not your Course mates, the whole thing about interacting with real equipment. Mentally the fact that if you can in the real world if you get it wrong, things can … you can hurt people. Things can go wrong, you can hit the bottom or you can have a collision with a ship, you can get the navigation wrong and that adds an awful amount of pressure which you don’t have in a simulator, because your mind is I think probably telling you that’s it’s ok, it’s just a simulator. You do get involved in the moment, and you do get absolutely immersed in what you’re doing and it is brilliant preparation, but it isn’t quite … it’s not good enough to replace doing it for real as well. It’s a great way of reducing the amount of time that you perhaps have to do it in the real environment, which means that you can use a real asset you know for operations rather than using it for training, but it doesn’t replace it. You’ve got to do it.
Simon: You were talking about the levels of pressure that were built up when you’re actually at sea as well, and what variables Teacher could throw at you.
Chris: So, Teacher has control of the programme to a large extent, so what the submarine and what you are required to do, and then he has a whole load of assets that he has assigned to him which he can use to achieve his training aims and objectives, so he will have maritime helicopters that are doing anti-submarine warfare, he will have Frigates that are going up against the submarine in an anti-submarine warfare scenario, he will have access to for periods of time Special Forces, he’ll have Maritime Patrol Aircraft either in support or going against you, so he can up the pressure by increasing the complexity. So, you might have 1 Helicopter on one day, you might have 3 Helicopters on the next day and you might have 3 Helicopters and a Maritime Patrol Aircraft and then he’ll bring the ship in and then you might have 3 Helicopters, a Maritime Patrol Aircraft and 2 ships. And then he’s got a number of other assets that he uses to help him with the complexity of the scenario, so up in Scotland we’ve got a number of the University Royal Naval Unit ships that I was discussing before. Well, he will get one of those involved and they’ll just make life difficult by being in the wrong place. He’ll put them in the place where he knows that you need to get to, to take the photographic intelligence of the lighthouse or whatever it is that your aim is, and he’ll put them there on purpose and then unbeknownst to you as the student, he has the ability to go into the Wireless Telegraph Office, the WT Office, and when your periscope’s raised or he’ll put a mast up without you knowing it, and he’ll talk to them and he’ll say, “We’re over here” or “I want you to do this” or he’ll go into the aft Escape Compartment and he’ll fire out of the submerged signal ejector a white flare so that everybody around you can see you so that you get counter-detected. And he’s wanting to take you through that whole process of ‘right, it’s fine, I’m going along nicely, navigating it’s fine, I’ve got a Frigate over there, a Helicopter over there, I’m achieving my aim, I know where I’m going, navigation’s going nicely’ and then all of a sudden, not through something the student has done but through something he’s done, or it might be through something the student’s done, you get counter detected. So, all of a sudden, for some reason that Frigate’s suddenly turned and is driving straight towards you, and he’s waiting …
50 minutes 34 seconds
Simon: You don’t know the flare’s gone up.
Chris: You don’t know the flare’s gone up and so the flare’s gone up there or he’s turned round and given the Frigate a position, or he’s turned round to the Frigate and said, “Your bearing south from me at two miles, come and give me some harassment” sort of thing, and all of a sudden you’re there as a Commanding Officer thinking life’s going really well I’ve got 20 minutes before I take this photograph of this lighthouse, I know where everything is, everything’s cool, the Frigate’s over there and opening the range and he’s not a threat to me, and all of a sudden the Sound Room, the Sonar Operator is saying, “I’ve detected an alteration in course on the Frigate” and so you go, “Oh, that’s a bit strange, I wasn’t expecting that” and so you’re then turning arounds to your Attack Co-ordinator and you’re saying, “Let’s take a look through the periscope at that Frigate.” He puts the periscope up, it’s coming straight towards you, there’s a great big bow wave, he’s 8000 yards away from you, 4 miles away from you and then you turn around and say, “Oh my word, right ok, what’s the speed by revs Sound Room?” and he says, “Oh, he’s doing 29 knots, he’s up maximum speed” and then you’re thinking. “Oh, my word, it’s 4 miles away, it’s 29 knots, oh my word.’ I’m now not achieving my aim, I’m into counter-detection mode here. I’ve got to assume I’ve been counter-detected; how do I lose contact with that? And so, all of a sudden … and Teacher just wants to see you do the right thing. Recognise the issue, deal with it, make the right tactical decisions, lose contact with the Frigate and nine times out of ten, once you’d done that, you know he’s back telling the Frigate to go away and get on with its stuff because he’s managed that training, he’s seen that you’re responding and doing the right thing. You’re achieving what you need to do and then you can get back onto the aim. Or, suddenly you’re sat there as a Commanding Officer, you’re 20 minutes away from taking your photograph of whatever lighthouse, everything is going fine and dandy and the next thing you hear is, “Fire, fire, fire, fire in the Engine Room” and so this is all part of the scenario, the tools that Teacher can use, or he’s there saying, “Hydraulic burst” or an “Air burst” and so the other piece that you have to be able to do is fight and continue the aim in all sorts of defect scenarios. So, I’ve lost hydraulics to my fore planes, my for’ard planes, so I’m having to control the submarine using the after planes so can I do that, can I still achieve the aim? Yes I can, no I can’t, you’re taking advice from the Weapon Engineer, you’re taking advice from the Marine Engineer. Can you take that advice? Can you make the right decision, the right judgement? Can you keep the submarine safe? Can you achieve the aim? Can you make sure you don’t get counter-detected at the same time? And so, as time progresses it becomes more and more complex, so you’ll be in a scenario where you need to be able to fire your weapons, your torpedo and all of a sudden you’ll have a defect. Your Weapon Engineer will be coming back and saying, “You don’t have the Weapon System at the moment.” So, right, should I carry on, should I do this, what decision are you going … what are you going to do Captain? Make a decision, make sure it’s reasoned, make sure it’s the right priority and that you’re doing the right thing. He just wants to make sure that when you’re there on your own, doing it for real, that you’re going to do the right thing.
54 minutes 54 seconds
Simon: So, the most intense of when you were on the Perisher in the sea, what did you have to cope with? What was the … what had been loaded onto you?
Chris: I think the most intense time generally comes when you’re doing the inshore operation. So, you move … there’s a kind of natural rhythm to the month you’re at sea, so you start off with this scenario of ‘Driving Test’ and ‘Eyes-Only’ in periscope with fast Warships. That lasts for about 3 days. They go off. You then go into your initial inshore operations period where you’re doing precise navigation and trying to achieve tactical and remain tactical all the way through. You then move into a thing what was called the ‘Joint Maritime Course’, the JMC. It’s now called ‘Joint Warrior’ and it’s a big operation that they coincide with the running of the Perisher Course, or the Perisher Course coincides with the running of this big exercise. Multi-national exercise with lots and lots of different countries coming together with different Frigates, Destroyers, Aircraft Carriers, Helicopters, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and some land stuff as well, and then you join in with that Course, either working for the Task Group or against the Task Group and so you’re getting experience of anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare ‘cos there are other submarines in that exercise as well. And so, you’ll go off and start to do a period of Special Forces Operations, you’ll go out into open ocean and do a period of working for and against the Task Group. You’ll then go off and do some anti-submarine warfare where you are working against another submarine in what’s called a ‘ Submarine Tactical Exercise’ and then you’ll come back in. By this stage you’re now getting towards the last weekend and the last weekend is the final Perisher weekend is when usually Flag Officers Sea Training , Captain Training North comes onboard which is the role that I did at the end of my career. Usually Rear Admiral Submarines comes onboard, so you get about three VIPs are all coming to look at the students and assure Teacher’s product if you like and then you’re into the final inshore phase where you’ve got quite a lot of opposition, Helicopters and ships and Maritime Patrol Aircraft and small ships, and you’re also working inshore where there are increased numbers of fishing vessels and merchant vessels and you’re trying to achieve the aim and stay safe. That’s quite stressful, quite stressful, can be. Normally it’s the real-world stuff that actually can come and trip you up, so it will be the Merchant Vessel or the Fishing Vessel which you’ve been concentrating too much on achieving the aim and the Warship piece and your guard slips and all of a sudden you’ve got too close to a Fishing Vessel or you’ve missed the Tanker or Container Ship that’s just coming up through the traffic lanes and those are the things that trip people up. They’re the things that make it more difficult to clear yourself and make sure you’re safe to come up from a safe depth up to periscope depth and yeah, it’s very much the real world which gets in the way.
Simon: Did you ever experience anything as intense as that after Commanding submarines?
Chris: Yes.
Simon: You did, right (laughs).
59 minutes 28 seconds
Chris: As intense as that? Similarly, and more pressure for other reasons. When you’re achieving real time operations. Real world operations, and you’re on your own, I mean for me I found Command, being on my own was less pressure than when you’re trying to perform for or in front of somebody, particularly if that person is somebody you particularly respect or is in your Command Chain. I always found that, for some reason it’s just me and my character, I always found that more stressful, probably because I didn’t want to be seen in anything but a good light, I suppose so that personally put pressure on me. I think that when I was on my own, I knew that I was in control of the scenario and I was responsible for the decisions I made and I had to live by them and that was fine, I didn’t mind that at all. So, when my team got me into stickier situations than perhaps they should have done, you know got me too close to a Merchant Vessel or got me too close to a Fishing Vessel, called me too late in a scenario, then I was fine. I’m not saying that I didn’t mind it, but I could deal with it. You know, I could put the periscope up, I could look at the Sonar screen and use my experience and know how to keep the submarine safe and how to regain the situation, and I didn’t find that particularly stressful. There’s always the initial come and look at it and think ‘oh my word, how did we get ourselves into this scenario? We shouldn’t have got into this situation.’ There’s always that initial ‘my word’ but you very quickly just go straight back into mode, deal with the scenario, get yourself back straight and level and sorted and then do the learning from experience and the de-brief afterwards. How could we have done that better team? Where did we make the mistakes there? I think always how you deal with your team is enormously important in those scenarios because they all, the good people anyway, they all recognise when they’ve made mistakes. Nine times out of ten they don’t really need to be told off.
Simon: They’re kicking themselves anyway.
Chris: They’re kicking themselves anyway and I think if you have the right relationship with your team as a Commanding Officer, they don’t want to let you down, and so just the fact that they know you’re disappointed in them or they know that they’ve let you down, is enough for the good people. There are always those that only react to a little bit of guidance.
Simon: We won’t go into the detail of what that guidance … the way of delivering the guidance might do.
Chris: When you join a submarine, one of the first things that you do as a Commanding Officer is that you write what are called ‘The Captain’s Instructions to Officers’ the CIOs, Captain’s Instructions to Officers, and it’s your ability to be able to put a bit of personality on to how you want your submarine to be run, how you like to interact with your ship’s company, how you like your ship’s company to interact with you, and one of my key things was, and I can remember writing this into my Captain’s Instructions to Officers, and basically I said that any member of my ship’s company who shouted for anything other than a situation of immediate safety criticality, I would have considered to have lost it, and it was not acceptable. I was not a shouter myself; I’ve never been a shouter, it never helps. There is a time for it. You know if you need to kick the Control Room into action because there’s a safety issue or there’s an operational safety issue or a submarine safety issue if you like, then there is a time to raise your voice and make sure everybody is listening, and get everybody to react, but not in a sort of b*llocking sense, there’s not a requirement for it.
Simon: What are the … I mean this isn’t a normal sort of oral history question but it seems that for somebody who has been in a situation of such intense pressure, it’s a failure for me not to ask really. Your top tips on dealing with huge amounts of information coming in I guess in a medical sense it would be called arbitraging or whatever you … is that the right word? No, it’s not is it?
Chris: No, I know what you mean though. Triaging.
Simon: What are your tips on …
65 minutes 29 seconds
Chris: I think experience allows you to pick out the key pieces of information and discard the information that’s not important to you. And I think I’m reasonably good at that. You see people who can’t do it. You’re in a really busy scenario, there’s information coming in from all kinds of places in the Control Room. You know you’ve got information coming across the main broadcast from the Manoeuvring Room, from the Engineering spaces. You’ve got information coming from the Sonar, you’ve got information coming from the Radar, you’ve got information coming from the Navigation, you’ve got information coming and you see that information coming in and as the Commanding Officer, you’ll sit back and you’ll hear the one report that comes from the Sound Room which makes you think [clicks fingers] straightaway ah, and it might be there’s a Warship that’s suddenly started transmitting on Sonar, and then the rest of the Control Room are so in the moment and you’ll see the Watch Leader, the person who’s got charge of the Watch and should really be doing your job if you like with charge of the submarine, will miss that piece of information and you’ll think, ‘why is that?’ You know it’s the only thing he should be worrying about at the moment is that. The rest of it is all fluff but experience gives you that ability to be able to deal with that and again I suppose there’s the nature and nurture piece of it, but experience is definitely the thing that allows you to do that. And the same is true of Navigation. So, you’ll see your Navigator is going through the motions the way he’s been trained to do, pilotage coming in and out of a Harbour for example, and he’s concentrating on the Echo Sounder and what that headmark is and how far away he is from that buoy and how far away he is from that buoy and he’s working it all out and he’s not looking out of the window and he’s not actually checking his information by just looking out the window and saying ‘does it look right? What’s that ship doing over there?’ and he’s so concentrating on the Navigation that he’s not seeing the small Motor Boat that’s just about to steam in front of him when he’s coming into Harbour. As a Commanding Officer, you can take yourself up a level and out of the detail of it and you can concentrate on the one thing or the two things or the four things that you know you need to achieve your aim or to keep yourself safe or to stop yourself from counter-detection. I think the same is true of when you take enough briefs on something. So, if you’re taking a brief from your Engineers on a defect for example, or if you’re taking a brief on a seamanship evolution, you’re going to come to a buoy or you’re doing a boat transfer or something like that, there are key bits of information that are critical to you to be able to do that job, and it’s experience. So, all of a sudden you’re planning to do a boat transfer for example, so a boat’s going to come alongside you and you’re going to transfer some people from a boat to the submarine and people go through the motions and they’ll tell you what the weather’s going to be like, what the sea state going to be like, all these things, and they won’t think about what that really means to the evolution that you’re doing. So, whoever is dealing with the weather will say, “There’s going to be a sea state 4” and you as the Commanding Officer will immediately go, “That’s going to be really hairy, a sea state 4 for a boat transfer, is that sensible?” And then you’re thinking, right, so what’s the course we’re going to need to do that boat transfer to make sure that sea state with that wind direction is going to have the least effectiveness and therefore the best chance of us being able to …and it’s not until you’re absolutely responsible for the safety of your people and the safety of your submarine and making sure you don’t damage your submarine and that you don’t … that you really start to think about the important things in life, I suppose and that’s how you then start to grow that ability to be able to prioritise.
70 minutes 31 seconds
Simon: Thanks for that. We’ve come to the end of Perisher and then how would you describe the feeling the handshake on successful completion?
Chris: Is it describable? I guess there’s a bit of euphoria around it and there’s also a huge sense of relief. ‘Cos it’s such a seminal moment. One, it’s something you’ve been working towards for a long, long time, two there’s a big bit about kudos and self-worth and having achieved it, and you’re joining this Club which even today, I mean this has been going since 1917, the Submarine Command Course, the Club’s only got I think about 1000 people in it. There’s only about 1000 people that have gone through it. I don’t know what the numbers are now. We had the Centenary of the Perisher Course in 2017, and it was 900 odd people were members of that Club. And that’s not those that are alive, that’s have ever been members of that Club, so it’s a pretty elite Club, and so there’s an element of kudos in that even if it’s only in your own mind. And of course, it means al of a sudden from a career perspective and a progression perspective you’ve got some security, which is important I think. It was a brilliant day; it was a brilliant day. I said earlier that I was pretty confident at the end of the Course. I don’t think I was over confident but I was pretty confident that throughout the Course that I was doing ok, but there’s always that bit of doubt and you only need to have a bad safety error, and you can find yourself leaving the Course. Leaving the Course is pretty brutal from sea.
Simon: They whisk you off the …
Chris: Yeah, you get to the end of your Command Run where Teacher’s made his decision, and the next thing you know is the submarine is told to stand by the surface, you go through the surfacing routine, you’re as an individual are told to get usually to the Captain’s Cabin, Teacher comes straight in, turns round and says, “I’m sorry, you’ve not made the grade”, either for a safety piece or whatever it happens to be, you’re told you’ve not made the grade and the next thing that happens is one of the students on the Course with you, comes up with your grip full of all your clothes and bits and pieces which he’s packed for you, and Teacher provides you with a bottle of whisky which is a tradition, always hands you a bottle of whisky and says, “Cheerio” and usually a boat is called in from one of the Frigates or a Helicopter will come and do a Helicopter transfer, or some form of transfer of personnel and you’re off.
Simon: So, that’s within a couple of minutes of being called.
Chris: Well certainly … yeah it is. As soon a Teacher can arrange a transfer to get you off, you’re off. The effect on the ship’s company is quite impressive. You know, everybody goes, “Oh, wow, that was pretty brutal.”
Simon: They all feel it.
Chris: They all feel it depending on the individual. Usually, it’s not a surprise if I’m honest. It’s not a surprise and quite often the ship’s company will be relatively pleased, which sounds brutal but it generally there will be good reasons why somebody’s not made the grade.
75 minutes 16 seconds
Simon: And it’s personal safety as well isn’t it? It’s worth considering perhaps.
Chris: Yes there is. Normally people aren’t that unsafe if you know what I mean. I think it’s brutal for the rest of the Course as well ‘cos for one, somebody has to pick up the work that he was planning to do for the rest of the Sea Phase, so you’re all going to wear some more work, which is fine but it does put on a level of pressure, and then secondly you feel pretty vulnerable when all of a sudden somebody leaves the Course. You think, ‘oh crikey, who’s next?’ and so that’s always lying over you.
Simon: So, of the six that started on your Perisher, how many ended?
Chris: Four.
Simon: Four completed.
Chris: So we lost two, which is about average. A third of those that start … and what people forget is that you’ve got to get selected to go on the Course in the first place, and then once you’ve been selected, of those that are selected and go on to the Course, about a third of people fail the Course. They are not successful on the Course, so we lost two and of the four that passed, one Commanded, one Commanded and then tragically died, two didn’t Command, so there was only me who is left of that Course of those six that started, who Commanded a submarine and is still about.
Simon: What would be the reason to complete the Course but not Command?
Chris: I said that you go into a Command position as the Executive Officer. We all went off to be Executive Officers. Two of my Course for various reasons didn’t do a brilliant job as Executive Officers and then did not then progress to Command their own submarines.
Simon: Even after all that pressure?
Chris: Yep.
Simon: For different reasons not to deal with the pressure or it just didn’t work.
Chris: One was through health, one was through character.
Simon: So, a tremendous relief, joy, and …
Chris: Brilliant. I can remember you get off on a boat transfer and we got onto a ship called ‘The Adamant’ which is one of the Support Ships that did transfers of personnel and stores to submarines at sea, and we got on at the Cumbrae Gap, which is about 25 miles away from Faslane Naval base, and she would steam, I guess she did about 12 knots or something like that, maybe a bit faster, and somebody had got a couple of cases of beer and it was a sunny day. I’m trying to think, it was probably June or July …
Simon: Good time to finish.
Chris: Yeah, and then we steamed up the Clyde and had a few beers, and then you end up going into what’s called the ‘Perisher Breakfast’ and it’s usually not at breakfast time, although in olden days it had been, so you have a traditional breakfast which tends to be a submarine type of breakfast with full English plus a few bits and pieces, and a few speeches and a reasonable amount of alcohol, and it ends up … we ended up in a place called the Resolution Bar which is one of the Bars underneath the Wardroom in Faslane, celebrating into the small hours. It was a very happy day, a really happy day. And then you go into a few weeks’ worth of adminy stuff, so you do things like Health and Safety Course and an Executive Officer’s Course and a Divisional Officer’s Refresher and Admin Section and then I think we did a couple of sort of industrial visits where we went to visit some of the key industry partners. Telus who make the Sonar and BAE who one build the submarines but also do our Combat Systems and things like that, so we went around the country a little bit doing some visits and that sort of thing, and then in the August we all went … so we’d started in the early March, finished in the August and we all went to our various submarines. So, I went off to HMS Tireless, so this would have been in August of 2000, and she at the time was sat in Gibraltar having had a nuclear defect going across the Mediterranean where she had a leak in her nuclear reactor and a small water leak and came back to Gibraltar and spent a whole year being repaired in Gibraltar, so I spent virtually a year, which was a real challenge, making sure that you kept your ship’s company motivated, trained, ready to go in a pretty uncertain program. Make sure they got enough time to have a decent work life balance and see their families back in the UK ‘cos we were stuck in Gibraltar. So that was a really challenging period. Challenging politically ‘cos we had all kinds of issues from the Spanish Government through to CND around what was going on. It was very well publicised, it’s in the open Press, you know what went on and all kinds of challenges with the Commanding Officer having a Court Summons against himself for endangering the Spanish population which some of the Spanish Nuclear Disarmament chaps decided they were going to try, so he was constrained to Gibraltar. Wasn’t even allowed to go over the border into Spain. It was an interesting time. And then we had the challenge of having to leave Gibraltar after a year, go straight into a workup with Flag Officer Sea Training staff embarked without having done any time on our own to get people ready and working as a team, which took some real leadership and challenge and we did a cracking job of it. Came out of there and had a great time. I was Executive Officer on Tireless for about 2 years, did all sorts of operations including going over to the States and working with the US and doing some tactical development over on the American Ranges in the Bahamas in a place called AUTEC, the American Undersea Test and Evaluation Centre. We were the first submarine to do a live firing of the Spearfish Torpedo and we sunk the ex-USS Wainwright about 90 miles to the east of Norfolk Virginia, which was a good and bad day. One of the ships that we were in company with had a Lynx Helicopter that was involved in the firing exercise that we doing against this ship, and very sadly we lost that Lynx Helicopter and lost the Pilot and the Observer. They were killed on that day, so that wasn’t very much fun if I am honest. Particularly as we had been working with that ship probably for 3 months and knew the ship’s company and the Wardroom and the Pilot and Observer very well. I left Tireless in the August of 2002, came down to Portsmouth to be Career Manager. Got promoted pretty quickly.
Simon: That was to Dolphin was it?
Chris: No, it was over in a place called the Victory Building in the Dockyard at Portsmouth, so working to the Second Sea Lord as a Career Manager, as an Appointer, so responsible for all of the Submarine Warfare Officers up to Commander level and assigning them to new jobs and to Courses and Career Management. I got promoted pretty quickly, so I got promoted in 2003 and went to the Commanding Officer’s Designate Course and then went to Command HMS Torbay, which was obviously my first Submarine Command. And I was very lucky to Command Torbay for 28 months. I took a submarine straight out of a Docking Period where she had some significant upgrades so we had a brand-new Command System called SMCS-NG – Submarine Command System New Generation, SMCS-NG, and we had a brand-new Sonar Equipment called Sonar 2076, which had all kinds of enhancements and upgrades and we took that to sea for the first time and did all of the testing and evaluation of that Sonar. Went back across to the States again and some more Tactical Development again, firing weapons and using that system.
Simon: That’s to check the theory works in practice I guess is it?
Chris: Yes, and to put it through its paces really and understand how to operate it properly and use it. Not just on behalf of my own submarine but on behalf of the Submarine Service to try and understand the system properly and report on it. So, that was good.
Simon: What was that like being the first time you went onboard as the actual Commander then?
Chris: I really enjoyed it I think. I think it wasn’t really until the first time I took her to sea that it really kind of hit home. So, alongside managing the Maintenance Period was fine. I had a team, a bunch of Heads of Departments who were really capable who I trusted. Built trust in them pretty quickly. I’d been in Maintenance Periods in submarines before so it wasn’t new particularly. I’d brought a submarine out of Refit so I knew what it was like to be in Dockyard hands and what the challenges were. So I think the first most memorable moment was probably having gone to Harbour Stations and got the tugs attached to the submarine, and letting go all lines, and having the tugs sort of take you off the Berth and get you sort of pointing in the right direction, and then the first time that you let go all the tugs and start south, going down the Hamoaze in Plymouth in the submarine and you sort of give the order, “Slow ahead” and suddenly that realisation dawns that there are no tugs attached, it’s you, you’re the Captain, you’re sat there, your navigating, you’ve been in that scenario, you’ve been in that position many, many times but all of a sudden it’s down to you. And I can remember that feeling.
Simon: What is the feeling?
Chris: It’s a kind of a mixture between … to enjoy and absolute terror I suppose. It’s not terror. There’s just this realisation that you’ve got this 5000 tonnes nuclear submarine, nuclear reactor, 130 people and you’re on your own, it’s you. That in some ways is liberating. As I said to you before, I find less pressure when I’m on my own and completely responsible for my own decisions and nobody’s kind of looking, so in some ways it’s liberating but there always is a sense of responsibility. I didn’t let it weigh too heavily on me but I think it was the first time that you had that kind of realisation ‘cos I’d been in Command before. I’d been in Command of a small Patrol Craft which as a fairly junior Lieutenant, with 18 people onboard, but nonetheless it’s you making the decisions, it’s great preparation. I suppose the consequences of getting it wrong are slightly different, but actually you don’t want to get it wrong full stop from a personal pride perspective, so the pressure is probably not that much different.
90 minutes 25 seconds
Simon: It is interesting to see the sort of building stages of you having been in Command before but of something on the surface and of far less consequence I guess. That sounds like many years before when we were running through it before.
Chris: Yeah, that was in ’96 and I Commanded in 2004, so it was 8 years before. Actually I finished in ’98, so 6 years before, which was quite a long time actually.
Simon: Yeah, it’s not for random reasons that they get you to do these different roles, it’s because it’s building towards …
Chris: I was particularly blessed. If I was to chart out the ideal preparation and the ideal career, mine was not far from that. Lots of people are not anywhere near as lucky, but I think I had close to perfect preparation. I was well served by the system I think, and I look back on it and I think to myself, the reason I could do that was ‘cos I’d seen that and the reason I was good at that was because I’d done that, that and that. Everything through my career had kind of given me some form of preparation or experience or training so that I was more rounded individual when it came to Command myself.
Simon: How long did you Command that submarine then?
Chris: 28 months, so I left her in August of 2006.
Simon: And is there sort of rhyme or reason why it’s 28 months or that you go somewhere else or just someone’s decided?
Chris: It’s usually somewhere between 18 months and 2 years. I spent a bit of time in Dock and so just the programme meant that it was 28 months. I think really what you need to do, you need to do a bit of time in Maintenance alongside working with your Flotilla bosses, you need to do a bit of time with Flag Officer Sea Training doing a workup phase and taking your submarine through some sea training, and then you need to do some operations. As long as you’ve ticked those three things and you’ve done alright, then you’re probably ready to move on, ok to move in and usually that’s at least 18 months before you’ve experienced those three things.
Simon: Is it frustrating doing the stuff when you’re alongside? Do you just hanker to be out doing the operations?
Chris: It is a frustrating time because you’re reliant on outside organisations to do the work to a large extent and just the whole being alongside can be frustrating because everyone wants to come and visit you and you’re the platform that can be used to show off to whoever so you’ll suddenly find you’ve got your Squadron are coming down, you’ve got VIPs coming onboard, you’ve got such and such coming onboard at the same time you’re trying to juggle your maintenance, same time you’re trying to use that period of time. The good thing about a period of Maintenance of course is that hope to get a bit of work life balance back, so you’re trying to maximise your time for all of your ship’s company to make sure that they can get to see their family, both regularly, sort of those that live locally every night with the exception of the sort of duties and things, but also for those that don’t live locally ‘cos we al chose to live our lives in a slightly different way, those that don’t live locally you want to try and see if they can maximise their weekends so you’re hoping they can do a 4 day week so they … maybe a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Saturday, Sunday, Monday off on a long weekend. Trying to manage your people in that way to make sure that whole motivation and retention piece comes into things. One of the other hassles of being alongside is quite often you’re depleted in your resources because you’re trying to get people off on Training Courses, on leave, getting them home, doing Adventurous Training, doing all the things you can’t do when you’re at sea you need to do whilst you’re alongside. It can be frustrating but equally it can be really needed. You need that time alongside otherwise …
95 minutes 46 seconds
Simon: Otherwise the intensity is just too much if you were out the whole time.
Chris: Yeah I think you need to recharge your batteries and you need to invest in your family a bit, otherwise you’re not going to keep people in the Navy for too long. You know there’s a reality about how much you and your family are prepared to put up with the trials and tribulations of life at sea, and I think you know you end up in a situation where you have to remember that many of your more junior Ratings and Officers are going from sea job to sea job to sea job, so you do have to give them some work life balance whilst they’re in that sea job. That sort of maintenance bit of it is really where the home time and time to be able to get a bit more relaxation comes.
Simon: So, for you after that period, what happened?
Chris: Well I was one of the first Royal Naval Officers to go after Command to the Staff Course. I went to Shrivenham to the Advanced Command and Staff Course, so I was the Senior Maritime Lead on the Staff Course.
Simon: That’s you taking a Course or giving a Course or …
Chris: I was on the Course as a Trainee if you like but as a Course member. It’s quite an academic Course. I did a Master’s Degree in Defence Studies at the same time and it’s a great opportunity to learn about the other two Services and about Government and the politics and how defence works and a bit about acquisition and procurement and Joint Operations and a fascinating time. You get some great speakers, everybody from the Prime Minister to the Chief of Defence Staff to the Heads of the Service, the First Sea Lord and Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff and then you get Chief of Defence Intelligence comes to talk to you and then you’ll get the American Chief of Navy or Chief of Naval Operations. You get people coming from Defence Diplomacy, from the Embassy and different countries all come and then you’ll perhaps get somebody who’s an expert in Economics, so we had Evan Davis come and lecture to us. And then you’ll get somebody from the Bank of England and you’ll get absolutely fascinating … and then you’ll get people who perhaps you wouldn’t expect to come and talk to you, so you’ll get the Head of the CND come and talk to the Course, so you’re trying to give a completely balanced view and turn people in to people who can work across Government and in a balanced way, you’re getting lots of non-Governmental organisations involved. So, it was a fascinating year and you’ve got people from all over the world, from different Navy’s, from different Air Force’s and different Army’s all on the Course. I think there were about 290 students or something.
Simon: All from what you’d see as friendly Forces.
Chris: All from friendly Forces, so we had Officers from Pakistan, from Malaysia, from Singapore, from Australia, from Canada, from America, France.
Simon: And across 3 Services.
Chris: All 3 Services, complete tri-Service, and we get industry in as well for sections of the Course. They don’t do the whole Course but they might come and do a Industry Placement on the Course for a month or 6 weeks, so a fascinating insight into our Defence and how Government works.
100 minutes 5 seconds
Simon: Was there anything that came up that surprised you? That you hadn’t imagined it work like that or …
Chris: I can’t remember being massively surprised. I was educated by it, no doubt about that.
Simon: And formed a different world view for you perhaps?
Chris: That Course made me watch the News and listen to Radio 4 in a completely different way. I understood the messages that were being said. You listened to the way that Politician spoke or the way a Reporter was reporting something and you understood what they were saying. What was really meant, or what was not meant, or what was not being said which was more important than what was being said. There’s a new language that you learn through that, that whole process, and then I was very lucky after Advance Command and Staff Course, I went to join a very small organisation on the 5th Floor of the Ministry of Defence. The 5th Floor is the floor that has all of the Chiefs of Staff so you’ve got the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the First Sea Lord, the Chief of General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff and you’ve got all of the Ministers, so Secretary of State for Defence and Minister of the Armed Forces and Minister for Veterans and Minister of Defence Procurement, all on that floor. I was in an organisation called the Chiefs of Staff Secretariat, and there were three of us, so there was a Naval Captain Level who could be from any Service, could have been a Group Captain RAF or a Colonel in the Army or a Captain in the Navy, and then you’d got two what are called ‘SO1s’ so Commander Level so I was a Naval Commander and I was Assistant Secretary of Commitments and then I had an Army Female Educator who was a Lieutenant Colonel. She was an Educator so she came from the Education Branch basically and she was Assistant Secretary Policy, so she dealt with all the Policy side of it, I dealt with all the Operations and Commitments and we used to do all of the support to the Chiefs of Staff whenever they were coming together in Committee, so that happened on a weekly basis with a thing called the ‘Operational Chiefs of Staff Meeting’. We supported the Ministers in the Operational Ministers Meeting once a week and then whenever Policy elements came up, we would have Chiefs of Staff routine meetings which would be once a fortnight. I dealt with all Operational Chiefs of Staff meetings and Operational Ministers meetings and at the time those meetings were high classification involved all sorts of Government Departments including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Trade and you would get representation from all of the Intelligence Services and representation from all of the key areas within Government and we were dealing at the time with Iraq, Afghanistan, Piracy. We were dealing with the backend of the Falklands, there were little bits or Northern Ireland still going on and absolutely fascinating time to be there. I would set those meetings up. I was responsible for setting the Agendas for doing all the pre-briefing on all of those subjects and then we would write the Minutes and those Minutes were formally recorded and bound for time immemorial with my name on them, so a great experience. We had a fascinating time really. We had the Secretary of State for Defence come to the meetings; the Foreign Secretary would come across. We would prep for briefings and see the Prime Minister on a reasonably routine basis. It was absolutely fascinating. We gave Prince William his introduction into the Ministry of Defence, so I looked after him for a day and he came along to one of our Operational Chiefs of Staff meetings. Great time, great experience and from there I then ended up going to a completely strange place for a Submariner as the Commander of HMS Illustrious, so I was the Executive Officer and 2nd in Command of the Aircraft Carrier Illustrious for a couple of years. Then I went across to the States to the US where I was Staff Officer Submarines to the British Defence Staff in the Embassy in Washington, so I was the UK US Submarine Liaison Officer basically. Had access into the Pentagon. Three times a week I’d be in the Pentagon and had access into Navy Yard, the acquisition area. I had a number of Exchange Officers all over the States which I was responsible for, working to the Submarine Squadron up in Groton Connecticut and Submarine Squadron down in Norfolk, Commander Submarine Atlantic and a really fascinating time working with the Office of National Intelligence over there and just working the UK US Submarine Relationship and made some great friends. Over in the States we lived in Virginia just on the suburbs of Washington in a place called McClain for a couple of years. Claire and I had a great time out there, really enjoyed it, made some lifelong friends. Got promoted to Captain out there and came back to Navy Command Headquarters here in Portsmouth where I was responsible for future personnel, so I wrote the Royal Navy People Strategy in 2012. It was the first time we’d ever had a People Strategy so that was interesting.
107 minutes 35 seconds
Simon: What did that encompass then? The roles or the type of person?
Chris: It was all about the direction of travel from a personnel perspective, so it was about suitably qualified and experienced people. It was all about how you could recruit, retain, motivate people and how you could develop the right experience and the right qualifications in people to support the Navy going forwards.
Simon: That’s pretty fundamental isn’t it, the way the Force is now?
Chris: Yeah, very much so. It was a great period of time, and I did that for just over a year and then ended up going up to Faslane to be the Captain responsible for all sea and shore training, so it was a role that traditionally was called CSST, Captain Submarine Sea and Shore Training and that had evolved into the role that I filled which was FOST Director North and in my time it became FOST Captain Training North and I was responsible for about 500 people. Five geographically dispersed sites and two Sea Training Organisations, so I was responsible for the Mine Warfare Operational Training Centre in HMS Collingwood, I was responsible for the Submarine Escape Training Tank here at Gosport, HMS Dolphin. I had the Submarine School down in HMS Raleigh in Cornwall. Had all of the Devonport Shore Training Facilities in Plymouth Dockyard and I had responsibility for all the Faslane Training Facility so the Trident Training Facility so the Nuclear Weapon School effectively, Strategic School. I had all of the Shore Training Facilities in Faslane, and then I had two Sea Training Organisations up in Faslane. I had one which did all of the Sea Training of the minor War Vessels and Patrol Vessels so the Mine Counter-measure Vessels and then I had a Sea Training Organisation for submarines, which was a big Sea Training Organisation, so a great train set you might say.
110 minutes 15 seconds
Simon: A good way of putting it.
Chris: It was a great train set. It was fascinating, with a great amount of variety, so everything from Strategy and Policy right the way down to Sea Riding, Submarines and Ships whilst they were going through Sea Training. So, all of the Commanding Officers would come and call on me as they came through their Sea Training Organisations so there would be a bit of mentoring and coaching, I would see them at sea, I would be responsible for a little bit of firing of you like but mostly it was developing and coaching, an Assurance Role really. I would be the person that turned round and said, “That submarine or ship is ready for operations” including the first of the Astute Class, HMS Astute doing her first operational sea training workup. I was Captain Training North for that. I would see all of the main Courses that came through the submarine world, so I would interact with the Basic and the Intermediate and the Advanced Warfare Course and I would interact with the Perisher Course and yeah, it was a really, really good time. I was responsible … I was a member of the Selection Board for Perisher, I was part of the Promotion Selection Boards for Commanders and Lieutenant Commanders, so yeah, it was a good time.
Simon: It sounds like more things than you could do to fit into a working week (laughs). The list is huge.
Chris: I had a big team, I had 500 people, so I had about 8 Commanders that reported to me. One was responsible for the Submarine School, one was responsible for my Executive Shore and Sea Training, and I had a Weapon Engineer and a Marine Engineer and yeah, it was good.
Simon: And so you’re writing the paper about the future of the way that … the future of what was required for people within the staff within the Force, you then had got to execute there.
Chris: Well, sort of. I suppose … when I was doing that it wasn’t submarine specific, that was for the whole of the Navy, so I wrote that sort of strategy which is very much a headmark paper and a whole load of lines of activity sat underneath it and needed to be done to achieve the strategy if you like. The plan beneath the strategy and I established that and lived it for a few years afterwards I suppose and still being lived now. It’s been a little bit of refresh but fundamentally it’s that same sort of strategy. Certainly, the key tenets have been the same.
Simon: And was that the point you left the Navy?
Chris: I left after I’d been the Captain Training North. I thought I knew what my reach was. I was probably going to be a Commadore I think. Fairly safe to say I would have made it to Commadore, to the 1-star position. I don’t know that I would have made it any further, I’ve no idea. Maybe. I knew sort of what the journey was going to look like but I wasn’t really going to be in control of where I was going to work or geographically how I was going to work. There was a piece of me that just naggingly wanted to prove myself doing something different. I’m not sure that was the right thing to do, but …
Simon: You felt it strongly enough to make the move.
Chris: Yeah, I think you do a sort of cost benefit analysis if you like and then you do a kind of benefits analysis and you look at the pros and the cons and you make a decision and I guess some of your assumptions in that are almost certainly wrong. I don’t have any regrets having left the Service. I mean I do sometimes wonder what would have been. It taught me a lot I think leaving the Navy …
Simon: It must seem, to me being an outsider, a massive decision having been so … the whole time, the whole focus has been within that Force.
115 minutes 32 seconds
Chris: It was a big decision. I don’t think it was a massive decision.
Simon: What decision have you made that has been bigger than that (laughs)?
Chris: Well, it was a significant decision. Massive just sounds a bit …
Simon: Ok, a bit overblown.
Chris: Bit more emotional than it perhaps was and I think I learnt a lot about what’s important in life by making that decision, which I’ve been able to feed back to a few people, but it would have been nice to have learnt it earlier. I don’t know how you can do it without experiencing it, so leaving the Service without a doubt financially was an excellent decision, without a doubt. I have made far more money by leaving than I would have done if I’d stayed. I also have learnt that having lots of money, or more money, doesn’t make you any happier. It genuinely does not make you any happier. We all say that. It doesn’t make you any happier and I think what really motivates you is a feeling of self-worth and value and doing something for the greater good. Well, that’s what motivates me, I don’t think it motivates everybody. Lots of people are motivated by the size of their Bank Balance I suppose or the fact they’ve got a brand-new car or whatever it happens to be. Of course, you need enough to be comfortable, and you want enough to be comfortable, but I think what really motivates you is … I loved working with a good team doing something that was worth getting out of bed for and getting a sense of satisfaction you know at the end of the day and coming back from a Patrol with a team that has been with you for the whole Patrol with shared experiences and having done something that you can really be proud of and gone through things that have been really challenging and come out the other side better for it, was hugely motivating I think. I guess the most satisfying thing that you can do is take a ship’s company that’s new to you, is inexperienced and you haven’t been working together as a team before, and you start from the very base level and you take them through that Shore Training piece, the Simulator Training, you go to sea for the first time and you do things, build up the complexity yourself as a Commanding Officer of your operations and test your team and you say, “Guys, I don’t really like it done like that, I like it done like this” or “I don’t care how you do that as long as it gets done” and eventually you do these different evolutions for the first time and you think, ‘Oh, that didn’t go so well’ but you go back around it and you give the right direction, the right guidance, the right coaching, the right mentoring and then as time goes on, suddenly as you do them again or you do them for the third time, or the 20th time, you’re sat back as the Commanding Officer watching it and you’re thinking [snaps fingers] this is like clockwork.
Simon: Right, a well-oiled machine.
Chris: Yeah, and you’re watching your people doing a great job. You know, doing the job that you’ve taught them to do in many ways, and certainly they’re doing it in the way that you want it to be done and you’re not having to intervene too much and you’re looking at your Executive Officer and you’re saying, “That’s a different Executive Officer than the one I had 8 months ago. He’s come on in leaps and bounds and really developed and improved” and you can trust him completely, or even if you can’t trust him completely you know how far you can trust him and where you can trust him, and that’s massively satisfying, really satisfying. And then, even now, I look now my last Part 3 Officer who I presented Dolphins to, so his submarines to, is now a Captain working in Strategic Command in London, and I just think to myself, how cool is that? I played a part in that. He’s obviously done it himself but I played a part in that, and I set him off on the course and got him the right direction and he’s made the most of it.
121 minutes 13 seconds
Simon: Tending the garden and watching the flowers flourish.
Chris: Yeah, exactly that. And that’s really, really satisfying and you don’t find that in very many places. Not in the same way. You know I’ve got a team now, but teams to tend sort of form up for specific things in my business world, and it was the same when I was in oil and gas …
Simon: It’s less permanent I guess. You’ve achieved the goal so …
Chris: It’s less permanent. So, there will be a goal, but the goal is never quite as motivating either, so you might be putting together a proposal or a bid for a business opportunity, and yes, you’re focussed for that period of time, and yes there’s a celebrating success piece of it when it goes well and you win that piece of work, and that’s satisfying and you make relationships, but you don’t have … I guess because there are so many different functions in there, you don’t have the experience of all the different functions in the way that you would have experience of everything that’s going in a ship or a submarine, and so you don’t have the same way of influencing people and watching them develop and watching them flourish and seeing them progress. It’s just not quite the same. I’m sure there are places in industry where you do have teams like that where …
Simon: I guess what strikes me, just on the spur of the moment is there’s nothing as permanent is there within industry because everything changes fast, the desires of the business or the aims of the business although having a long-term strategy, there’s nothing as long-term as a Defence Policy or having the whole of the Navy working to achieve … there’s nothing as solid as that.
Chris: I suppose you’re right but there … I can imagine that if you were a member of a Formula One Racing Team, that there must be similar satisfaction in that, you know in that you’re all trained and are experts in your particular role within the team and you’re driving towards one goal and your practicing and practicing and then you see it come to fruition and you know your pit stop goes brilliantly and then your driver wins the race. I mean that must be pretty motivating I would have thought and pretty satisfying. What I have never done really is a role where I’m doing something very tangible and practical myself without being a member of a team, and achieving something for myself, so a farmer ploughing a field for example, I suspect that that’s actually quite satisfying. Starting that off, doing that, finishing it, looking at your work, then watching your crops grow and making a bit of money at the end I should think is very satisfying, in a different way.
125 minutes 12 seconds
Simon: So, the future for you is either running an F1 Team or becoming a Farmer (laughs).
Chris: One of the most enjoyable jobs that I did, I did two jobs before I joined the Navy, and I have to say I enjoyed both of them. One, I was a Kitchen Porter in a Hotel but I didn’t find kitchen portering particularly challenging and so I could do that pretty quickly and I was pretty organised, so the Chef used to get me to do all the prep mof the starters and then over a period of time he had me making all the starters and then as life got busy, he actually had me doing half of the Cheffing as well, so I had to do Kitchen Portering, do all the starters, do half the cooking, and I loved cooking. I still love cooking now. It’s one of the things that I … if I want to relax and enjoy myself, cooking o9s one of the areas that I do, especially if you’re working in a kind of stressful environment or you’re coming home and you’re under stress, to cook well you have to lock yourself into the kitchen and you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. You can’t think of anything else, and so that’s one of the things I do for relaxation. The other thing I really enjoyed, bizarrely, I was a Brickie’s Labourer, and I loved it. There was some routine in it, there’s a bit of teamwork in it, there was some physical effort and you had to be quite organised so you had to make that batch of cement at a particular time, you had to get the bricks in the right place, you had to get the cement shoved around and then you had to make some more cement and then you had to get some more bricks. It sounds ridiculous but actually come the end of the day you’d done a day’s work and there was also a bit of banter so that team work and there was a bit of humour in it. I enjoyed it, it was great.
Simon: And to see a physical rendition of the work you’ve achieved at the end of the day as well.
Chris: Yes, you get the satisfaction of doing that, it was great. And I even now look … I walk around ‘cos I was living here when I was a Brickie’s Labourer and most of the roads in Alverstoke or Gosport I have built a garage or the extension on that, or I remember doing that porch, and I still know the Bricky who I used to work with who now has a Building Company and does all my building for me, so it’s great. We often reminisce, it’s good.
Simon: I mean that would be a wonderful place to end but I’m really tempted if we can to talk about the SETT and when you were overseeing that. This project is funded by Gosport and the SETT is a major part of that. When you were overseeing that, was there anything of particular note? What sort of period was that that you were doing that?
Chris: I was responsible for the SETT from 2012 to 2014, and in that time we made the decision that we would stop all Pressurised Training in the Submarine Escape Training Tank, which having gone through that whole process myself, several times, four times I think I went through that piece of Escape Training, so doing the whole of the Tower from the bottom to the top and doing the 9 metre and 18 metre locks and taking a good deep breath, I was the Captain that had to take the decision and certainly communicate the decision, I didn’t take the decision alone, but had to communicate the decision that we were going to stop all Pressurised Training. There were a lot of people, and the Staff particularly obviously of the SETT who thought that was an awful thing. The reality of it was that we had injured a number of people through the Training and the issue with it was that you’re ability to deal with pressure as in hyperbaric pressure is a physiological thing, and you can’t predict how everybody’s going to deal with it. Some people’s ear drums are susceptible to bursting, some are not, some people have issues, have bends under pressure and hyperbaric injuries when you wouldn’t predict them to happen, and so over the life of the Submarine Escape Tank, we’d injured a few people, a couple of fatal accidents or incidents and when you looked at that, you can’t justify it. You can’t justify the risk that you will kill somebody else at some stage and there’s no mitigation from it, and no excuse and no reason for it. And so, we took a risk-based decision that we would stop Pressurised Training and that we would replace that training and make it better through other types of training media. So, some of that involved really, really good high resolution training material and DVD and Video and so one of the last things we did before we … so we stopped Training but we kept the Staff qualified to do it so that we could do some very high quality Training Videos of it that would last the length of the time and then we worked out how we were going to bring in a new facility which is now based up in Faslane, called SMERAS, the Submarine Escape Rescue and Abandonment System, and we made the training more realistic. We now have much colder water, we have sea state, we have wind, we have rain, we have environment, we have all of the experiential elements of Training that you need to have in an Escape or an Abandonment scenario, but without putting people under hyperbaric pressure, and so you still go up into the Submarine Escape Tower, you still have the suit on, you still have preparing the space for escape, you have the plugging in your suit into the air system and it all sounds as it would do. The water comes up as it would do but rather than you then coming under pressure, you simulate the opening of the tower and you then get the individual to come out of the tower and find some self on the surface that you put him into the pool of water as though he’d got to the surface as though he was at the top of the tower as it used to be in the Escape Training Tank. And then you go through the process of what you need to do on the surface without experiencing the going from the submarine to the surface. And whilst that used to be a thrilling ride, the risk was not worth the gain. The reality of it was that you were in very warm water. It was light, it was in a controlled environment, you were attached to a wire and so once you had gone through the … and the pressurisation rate in the Training Tank was much less than the pressurisation rate would be if you were doing it for real, and so you went up through the Tower and you ended up on the surface having been able to see everything out of your visor and enjoy the ride as you went up to the surface, and it was good fun. It was great fun. There was an element of anxiousness attached to it but once you’d come out of the Tower and you were on your way up to the surface and you could breathe with your head in air, it was good fun, it was a great ride. It was a great theme park ride really in many ways, but the reality of it was there was risk in there and the experience was not really the experience that you were going to get. What did it do for you? It gave you confidence in the equipment and it gave you confidence that you … having experienced what you were going to do that you could get to the surface. Of course, there is a reality around what depth you can escape from, so if you’re not on the Continental Shelf, you’re not going to escape from your submarine. You physically can’t do it and so in actual fact the vast majority of time that we’re operating submarines, we’re probably in depths where you wouldn’t be able to escape by that anyway. So, that whole risk, it was a really big risk balanced decision, a pain v gain kind of decision, so that was my legacy and from a SETT perspective I was the person that stopped the Pressurised Escape Training. It was not popular.
136 minutes 35 seconds
Simon: The way you describe the Faslane version, it strikes me that the … I can totally understand what you’re saying about the pressure … people feeling confidence, I can get out and I’m going to up there in 10 seconds and this is how it felt, but the reality is probably is they spend a lot more time on the surface than the 10 seconds, so by you having the rain simulation and the waves and wind blowing, that’s the harder part is it?
Chris: Well, the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to get to the surface, you’re hoping that maybe you’ve got somebody there in attendance but maybe you haven’t and so you then are getting into your own individual life raft and you’re going through the drills of keeping yourself as warm as you can, as dry as you can, and safe. And that actually is the worst-case scenario is when you’re up there and it’s a sea state of whatever it happens to be, that’s not a lot of fun.
Simon: So, you’re preparing people for that part.
Chris: That’s one of the elements you’re preparing them for. You’re still preparing them for exactly the same as you did before in terms of going through the whole process of preparing to escape, sorting yourself out in the Escape Compartment, then getting out of the submarine, but just not doing it under pressure.
Simon: The pressure is higher in the Scottish one is it? In the Faslane one is it than it was at SETT?
Chris: No, so there’s no pressure.
Simon: Sorry, I’m using the wrong word probably. The speed of the filling of the chamber that they’re in …
Chris: Well, it’s realistic but what you’re not feeling is the pressure, the hyperbaric pressure that you need, because the pressure inside the submarine is normal atmospheric pressure basically, broadly, and then depending on what depth you’re at in a distressed submarine, depends on how much pressure is there outside, so at some stage when you get up into the Escape Tower, you shut the bottom bit of the Escape Tower. In order to open the top bit of the Escape Tower, you’ve got to flood water into the Main Tower and you’ve got to equalise the pressure between the Tower and the outside pressure, which means that you’re pressurising a tin can that’s human being sized if you like, to the same pressure as the water is outside. You can’t do that slowly because that’s really dangerous, so you’ve got to do it pretty quick, The reality of it is that you’re probably going to burst both eardrums. The pain in that is actually the pressure going onto the eardrums. Once the eardrums are burst, you’ve got what the SETT Staff would call a ‘free flood head’ and there’s no pain on the eardrums any longer and your eardrums will fix and that happens really quite quickly ‘cos time under pressure is what gives you hyperbaric injuries, the bends and things like that. So, what you want is the least time under pressure as you possibly can and then it’s the change in pressure which gives you issues, but all the time that your head is in air, you can carry on breathing normally ‘cos you’re breathing the air outside your lungs is the same pressure as the air that’s in your lungs, so you can just keep breathing that. As soon as your head goes into water, you must keep blowing out, keep blowing out, keep blowing out because the air inside your lungs as you reduce the pressure, as you come shallower as you’re coming up through the water is expanding, so you just have to keep blowing out and keep blowing out and keep blowing out, even if you don’t think you can, you’ve just got to keep blowing out.
140 minutes 53 seconds
Simon: When I’ve spoken to other people they‘ve sort of described feeling like they’ve got no air left in their lungs and then half a second later, my lungs are full again.
Chris: You’ve got to keep going. And you mustn’t hold your breath because you’ve got …
Simon: I’ve heard about the taps on the stomach.
Chris: Yeah, you have no nerves in your lungs and so you can’t feel your lungs when they get over pressurised if you like.
Simon: I heard about the wine bags as well (laughs).
Chris: That’s right, they always give … and so they always used to do that as part of the demonstration to show what would happen if you decide to hold your breath.
Simon: Has the technology changed as well in that there’s now the Rescue Submarines that weren’t there before or …?
Chris: Well they’ve been around for quite a while, the Rescue Submarines, so in actual fact the Rescue Submarine … all that’s doing is preventing you from having to do the in the Tower flood and equalise in the Tower and then do the ascent. What they’re doing is, they’re keeping you at the same pressure that you submarine’s at, so they’ll come down to the submarine, hopefully you won’t have any pressure. The pressure inside the submarine will be the same as the pressure at the surface and so they come down, they clag onto the top of the Escape Tower, you open up the top of the Escape Tower and people get out of the submarine straight into the Rescue Vehicle. You shut the hatch and off you go to the surface and you never have that pressure transient at all. You stay broadly at the same pressure as all the way throughout, so the risk to the individual is very low, and therefore that’s your primary method of escape if you can possibly do it.
Simon: Have there been escapes from submarines since the SETT closed?
Chris: What do you mean have there been escapes? You mean trials or …
Simon: No, real world.
Chris: No. I think the last time, I’m not certain but I think the last time anybody escaped from a submarine for real was, other than in trials, so we’ve done Class trials actually at sea but the last time I think was HMS Artemis in 1971 alongside in HMS Dolphin when they left a hatch open and basically the submarine flooded and sank alongside, and I think the after end of the submarine was under the water and they did escape from the after end of the submarine, but it was very shallow.
Simon: So, that justifies the decision to close SETT then because it hasn’t been used in the real world.
Chris: Well, we haven’t had a submarine accident since the ‘50s so you could say in the whole life of the SETT, I don’t think we’ve had a submarine accident. I think that’s right. I think the SETT was 1956 or something like that, somewhere around that so I don’t think we in the UK have lost a submarine since we haven’t … I don’t know if that justifies it. I wouldn’t say that. I guess, well it was a risk-based decision that was made and I think the solace I take in that I know that the new Submarine Escape Rescue and Abandonment System gives much, much better and more appropriate training in many, many areas, and I can say this because I’ve done it. Yeah I have confidence in escape, but I also know how unrealistic that training was, and is having confidence in it enough to justify the risk. You kill one person, is that acceptable? Discuss I suppose.
Simon: Ok, thank you. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that I should have spoken to you about?
Chris: Crickey, I’ll think of something when you’re gone (laughs). I dunno, you’ve got more than enough I think.
Simon: Yeah, it’s been fantastically interesting and one to hear the progression of your career but also so many different … there was so many times that I wanted to interrupt and find out more information so I held back on that, but it has been fascinating to hear the whole gamut of experience and also the higher levels as well. It’s fascinating, great, thank you very much.
Chris: That’s alright, I hope it was useful.
Interview ends
146 minutes 24 seconds
Transcribed July 2022
