Duration: 1 hour 35 minutes 55 Seconds
Simon: My name is Simon Perry, and I’m here for the Submariner’s Stories Oral History Project and we are in Gosport. It is the 31st of May 2022, and I’m with …
Chris: Chris Groves.
Simon: Now Chris, thanks for having us here today. Can you tell me your name and the name of your mother and father?
Chris: So my mum is Elizabeth Groves, she was born Taylor, and my father is Adrian Groves. Both of them live in Gosport, and both are alive today in their 70s. My father and mother moved to Gosport in the early 1970s. My father was in the Navy and had joined the Submarine Service here in Gosport at HMS Dolphin in about 1970. He then did his Submarine Training here in HMS Dolphin, and served as a Weapon Engineer, an Artificer onboard HMS Opportune which he served basically 2 tours back-to-back. Spent a whole 5 years in that submarine and was based in Gosport in subsequent assignments, ending up as a Warrant Officer and then he was promoted through a scheme called ‘The Temporary Acting Sub Lieutenant’ scheme, and went off to Greenwich as a Sub Lieutenant, and at that sort of stage in time, I decided to join the Navy behind him with my sights firmly set on being a Submariner as well.
Simon: His Submariner days, how long did he serve in the end did you say?
Chris: He did 34 years. He joined in 1960 as an Artificer and spent about 10 years in General Service on surface ships, and that took us as a family, my parents were married in 1966, so I came along in ’67, and I was about six months old when dad got an assignment out to Singapore, actually to the Submarine Deport Ship HMS Forth, and so I spent two years in Singapore, not that I remember any of it. My sister, who’s also a Gosport native, Alison, was born out in Singapore. So, we spent a couple of years in Singapore, came back in ’69, and then my dad did a job over in HMS Vernon, and then joined the Submarine Service.
Simon: And what was growing up like? Were you sort of dashing all over the world?
Chris: Growing up was great really I think, as best as I can remember it. The Navy I suppose took us around, so as I say, we had two years in Singapore. We then moved from Singapore over to Portsmouth and lived in Married Quarters for a little bit of time, and then when dad joined the Submarine Service, based here at HMS Dolphin, the house prices I think were fairly steep in the sort of Alverstoke Gosport area, which is where they would have liked initially to have gone, but house prices on the Isle of Wight were much better, and so he along with quite a number of people who worked in HMS Dolphin here in Gosport, moved across to the Isle of Wight, and so we spent several years in Wooton Bridge on the Isle of Wight with dad commuting across to Gosport with many good stories about how he narrowly missed Gosport Ferries and Isle of Wight Ferries on a regular basis trying to come home with all his oppos from Dolphin who he used to travel with and car share. So yes, we had several years in the Isle of Wight. Dad, with Opportune went down to Plymouth to re-fit the submarine down in Devonport Dockyard, so we moved down to Plymouth for a couple of years, so I had done sort of Primary School … started Primary School in the Isle of Wight and then went to school in Plymouth, in Goosewell in Primary School. Came back to the Isle of Wight temporarily before we then moved across to Gosport. I think we moved to Gosport in about 1976, it may have been ’75, because we had that wonderful summer of ’76 and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee then in ’77 and I was by that stage I was at Leesland School here in Gosport. I fondly remember the Fancy Dress Parade and competition that we had for the ’77 Queen’s Silver Jubilee and then of course seeing the amazing spectacle of the Fleet Review out at Spit Head and all of the ships, of which dad, who had just left Opportune there was based in Dolphin then in Gosport, working in the Float Workshops, supporting submarines. But his old submarine Opportune which of course I had fond memories of ‘cos as a real youngster I’d spent quite a number of Sunday lunches and things down in the Senior Rate’s Mess and always found that hugely exciting, and I guess that influenced my choice of career for the future in many ways. So, we were in Alverstoke really from ’77, and then in ’79, dad got another opportunity to go abroad, and so he had a secondment for 2 ½ years to Australia, to Sydney, so he was working in HMS Platypus in Sydney Harbour. Amazing place and so was helping with the Australian Submarine Service over there who operated ‘O’ Boats as well, so he was very familiar with the Class of submarine. So, I then went to school initially in Australia. Finished off my sort of Primary School over there, and then because there was a bit of a mismatch between starting Senior School in Australia and the UK, the decision was made that I’d come back to the UK halfway through dad’s tour in Australia and go to Boarding School. And so, I went to Boarding School up in Loughborough in Leicestershire for about three years, and the reason I went there is ‘cos my mum’s parents, my grandparents lived in Leicestershire and they knew the School pretty well, so I went to Loughborough Grammar School, which was a great 3 years, an informative 3 years and mum and dad of course came back from Australia. My sister came back with them obviously and went to Bay House School, which is one of the big Senior Schools here in Gosport. And of course, I came home on holidays from my Boarding School and saw all the fun that my sister was having with her friends and the beach being close by, and Gosport being such a great place to be brought up, was extraordinarily jealous and eventually I left … at the end of 3 years, I left the Boarding School in Loughborough and came to Bay House myself. And so, I did the rest of my schooling through Bay House here in Gosport. I went from my third year all the way through to sixth form. So, I did my ‘O’ Levels and my ‘A’ Levels as they were called then. At the end of my ‘A’ Levels in Gosport, and the one thing that Loughborough Grammar School had given me was a love of sport. We played some really good competitive and quite decent standard sports, and so when I came down here to Gosport, I immediately got involved in the Rugby team at the school, but also the Rugby team for Gosport and Fareham, and then for Cricket, which I played Cricket for Gosport Borough for several years as Captain of the Colts side over here and had a great childhood playing sport here.
9 minutes 37 seconds
Simon: So, you built your social network pretty quickly when you got down here then. Seeing your sister’s social network and thinking, Oh that’s great’ but you were doing all the sports as a fantastic way of getting to meet people I guess.
Chris: Absolutely. So, I had a really broad group of friends. I had my school friends from Bay House. I also had quite a number of friends at Bay House who I knew from when I’d been at Leesland School here, so whilst we hadn’t stayed great friends all the way through, we quickly picked up on a number of key relationships. I had quite a decent set of friends from the olden days, made a whole load of new ones and then made a load of new ones through my sports, but actually through the Scouts, so I was a keen Scout here in the 11th Gosport Scout Troop, which is affiliated to St Mary’s Church in Alverstoke and is no longer a Scout Troop, but it was when I was there, so I did Scouts and Ventures all the way through that and got involved in Gosport Gang Show …
Simon: What’s Gosport Gang Show?
Chris: Gosport Gang Show is a Scouts and Guides Theatre Production basically, and it has lots of skits and musical bits and pieces. It’s a sketch show effectively if you like and great fun. So, I met a whole lot of friends through Scouts and through the Gang Show and so a good broad group of friends, and a lot of fun. And then, when I got to the end of my Sixth Form, I wouldn’t say I was massively academic, but I managed to get sort of decent grades at my ‘A’ Levels, enough to get a place at University, but I looked at sort of my options and I knew what I wanted to do at the end of University, and that was to join the Navy, you know as an Officer and join the Submarine Service. I’m not sure that I was 100% certain that it was going to be the Submarine Service when I first joined, but I suspect I was certainly 80% of my decision had been made before I joined. So, I was lucky enough to join the Navy immediately from Sixth Form, so I went down to Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in January of 1987.
Simon: Is that straight in as a sort of Officer Training? How does that work?
Chris: You go straight in as an Officer Under Training. Straight into Dartmouth, alongside the graduates that join, and alongside what are called ‘Special Duties Officers’ so the SD Officers who had come up through the ranks, so those that had been Leading Hands and Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers and had decided to transfer to the Officer branch. So, all there, and including what at that time were the Wrens, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, still with blue stripes and a separate Service to the Royal Naval Officers but they did their training through Dartmouth as well. So, I spent a year at Dartmouth, which included 3 months at sea in HMS Fife, which is a Guided Missile Destroyer basically. Very lucky to be the first ship since the 1950s to go through the St Lawrence Seaway and into the Great Lakes, so we had a fantastic 3 months.
Simon: Where is that? I’m showing my ignorance.
Chris: The Great Lakes in Canada. So, we basically visited Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St John’s Newfoundland, all in a sort of 3-month period and a great introduction into the Navy, and also a great way of building loyalty in a young man that had not … that wanted to go and see the world and the Navy were delivering in spades and allowing me to do that, so …
Simon: It’s interesting you saying about wanting to see the world. Is that the inspiration for joining the Navy, or did it just seem natural ‘cos your dad was in the Navy?
Chris: I think the Navy provides you with a package doesn’t it? So, it provides you with job security, a good remuneration package, a great pension, good opportunities, good challenge, and one of the benefits is the ability to go and see the world, and that was certainly part of the attraction of joining the Service.
Simon: ‘Cos your dad had told you stories or you’d just sort of looked at a map and thought, ‘I want to go to those places one day.’
14 minutes 54 seconds
Chris: I think, yes, so dad had been to … had visited an awful lot of the Far East in his surface ship days, of course we had done Singapore, we’d done Australia, and I had a bit of a thirst for travel, so yeah, I enjoyed that, so that was a real attractor for me for joining the Navy. There was lots of reasons, as I say. I finished Dartmouth in 1988, well the December of ’87 I suppose, but in January of ’89 I went and spent 3 months on a Minesweeper based in Rosyth in Scotland, and then I joined HMS Ark Royal Aircraft Carrier in 1988, and went out to Australia for the Australian Bi-Centennial celebrations, so again I was very lucky and ended up with a 7 month deployment out to the Far East and to Australia, going to Malta and Singapore and Hong Kong and the Philippines and Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and on to Bombay and then to Gibraltar on our way home. I had my 21st birthday in HMS Ark Royal going across the Indian Ocean, so great memories and made some really lasting relationships. Some of my best friends, even now I met on that ship.
Simon: That’s quite … a Minesweeper and the Ark Royal, quite a difference in size isn’t it?
Chris: It is, yeah, and I also spent a bit of time on HMS Hecate which was a Hydrographic Survey Vessel as well, so I spent basically just over a year doing what they called the ‘Fleet Time’ so learning how to be a Bridge Watch Keeper, how to do Navigation, a bit of leadership, how the different Departments on a ship work properly and how do they interact, and you get to go round and make mistakes and learn a bit about life on a ship. They try and give you a mix of different sizes and types of ship to try and give you a broad experience. So, I made my decision that I was going to join submarines at that stage.
Simon: What was the draw then of having had that wide variety of experiences, what drew you to submarines?
Chris: Well, I guess I was drawn to submarines through history a bit, through my dad and exposure to the Submarine Service a bit …
Simon: And going for the meals on the Sundays …
Chris: Yeah, all of that piece. So, my dad had been the Mess President of the Senior Rates Mess in HMS Dolphin, and so I had regularly you know, been into the Mess and met people and been inculcated I suppose into the Submarine Service to an extent, and so … there was one defining kind of moment I think. I was on the Bridge in the middle of the night in HMS Ark Royal, and we were partaking in an exercise called ‘Exercise Jolly Rodger’ and basically it started as you approached the bottom of the Bay of Biscay and went down past Portugal and around Spain to get into through the Gibraltar Straits, and several nations take part in this Exercise and it’s a anti-submarine warfare Exercise, so there I was sat in HMS Ark Royal with what was supposed to be the premier NATO Anti-submarine Warfare Task Group. At the centre of it we had a Sea King Helicopters and all sorts of Frigates and ships with decent submarine hunting capabilities, and I was there in the Middle Watch which is the midnight ‘til 4 o’clock in the morning Watch, so pitch black as we steamed down the coast of Portugal, and in that 4 hours, the way the submarines signal an attack to the surface ships, is they fire what’s called a ‘green grenade’ which is a flare which they fire out of a small tube. It’s called the ‘submerged signal ejector’, but it’s a small tube and it’s a pyrotechnic flare which comes to the surface and as soon as it hits the surface, it shoots out a big green flare, and that simulates a torpedo attack on s ship. Well, when I got to the end of my 4 hours, after we’d been attacked 6 times, I thought to myself, ‘umm, maybe perhaps there’s some benefits in wartime of perhaps being on the other side and being in the submarine.’
20 minutes 38 seconds
Simon: And that’s the ship doing its best and the Fleet trying to detect …
Chris: Well, we knew there were submarines around and that was the whole idea of the Exercise was to try and find them rather than them find us and avoid that, so yeah, after the sixth attack, I thought, ‘yeah, maybe submarines is a reasonable place to be.’ So, I transferred into the Submarine Service, or made my application to join the Submarine Service and that’s what I did.
Simon: So, you sort of stuck you hand up and say, “Yes please.” Is there a selection process or …?
Chris: Well, ideally if there were more candidates than places, there would be a selection process, but traditionally the Submarine Service has had to take non-volunteers to make sure they can fill all the spaces. That’s not the case now in actual fact. It’s become significantly easier to recruit Submariners and we recruit them directly into the Submarine Service before they join the Royal Navy, whereas when I joined, you joined the Royal Navy as what was called a ‘Seaman Officer’ now called a ‘Warfare Officer’ and you then split into sub-specialisation at a later date which you could then choose, or if it was a shortage category, it might be chosen for you. So, quite often that was the case in Submarine Service then, but I was a volunteer, so they take volunteers over pressed men so that was the way it ended up.
Simon: So, what’s the transition process then?
Chris: Well, you join … when I joined the Submarine Service which was in 1989, the Submarine School for the Royal Navy was based here in Gosport in HMS Dolphin, and so you joined HMS Dolphin to do what was called the ‘Officer’s Training Course’, the OTC. So, I joined and did the OTC which as I remember it was about 3 months long, and it included a whole load of education on submarine systems, how submarines operate, what the differences are between you know surface ships and submarines in terms of routines and then you learn what it is to do navigation in a submarine, significantly different to obviously doing navigation on a surface ship, although there are many similarities, but dived navigation is particularly difficult and different. And you also learn a lot about submarine warfare and how to understand what the surface picture and sub-surface picture is in terms of … there’s one key element to the Submarine Service which is around Target Motion Analysis which is using sonar bearings to work out the position, course and speed of either a submarine or ship, and so that’s very different to the way surface warfare is conducted. And you also do Target Motion Analysis using the frequency that some of these assets produce, and so you need to do some reasonably complex mathematics using trigonometry and then using some frequency and doppler techniques. So, you got to learn your particular sines and cosines pretty well.
Simon: That’s the point you realised why you’d learnt then at school was it, ‘cos that was always the head scratcher wasn’t it? Why am I doing this?
Chris: Yes, exactly, why am I learning it? It is the only time I think I’ve ever (laughs) properly used … although when you do learn it and use it then you start to use it in some very strange places. So, the Officer’s Training Course is kind of split between three different elements, so you did the Systems section, where you’re learning about submarine systems. We then went off to Greenwich and we spent a period of time at Greenwich, the Naval College that was there then, and did what was called our ‘Greenwich Nuclear Course’ and unbeknown to many people, around the UK at that time we actually had a small nuclear reactor in the College at Greenwich, the Nuclear College, and so we did I think it was about 6 weeks of the Greenwich Nuclear Course, learning about the reactor and Nuclear Systems. Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Chemistry and Reactor Physics, some Metallurgy and all sorts of interesting elements, to give you enough information to become the Officer of the Day that has charge of the Nuclear Submarine really, or the Officer of the Watch that has charge of the Nuclear Submarine when at sea. And then once that was completed, you then went back to the Submarine School and you did the Warfare Phase and that’s where you learnt the Navigation and the Warfare elements that I was talking about, Time Motion Analysis and Periscope Watch Keeping and how to use a Periscope, how to look through it, how to do a proper all round look in a Periscope and keep yourself safe.
26 minutes 35 seconds
Simon: So, that’s the major difference between sort of taking the Officer route compared with … people who aren’t on that route specialise and you have an overview of everything that’s onboard. Would that be fair?
Chris: Well, you can specialise as an Officer as well, so you can be a Weapons Engineer or you can be a Marine Engineer, or you could be a Logistics Officer, but I chose to join the Navy as a Seaman Officer, what’s now called a Warfare Officer, and so Seaman Officer, or the Executive Branch was the only Branch that could have Command of the submarine, or a ship, but Command of a submarine, and so as a Warfare Officer you spend your life on the Bridge or in the Control Room for the vast majority of your career, moving up through the various positions. Starting off with the less responsible roles but usually important in terms of correspondence and looking after the casing of the submarines, the outside metal covering of the submarine if you like and doing various seamanship elements and you’ll be the Divisional Officer to a group of Ratings also so, I had a lot of the Sonar Ratings and some of the Junior Weapon Engineers were in my division. You then move up through the various positions in the submarine, so what tends to happen is you get a piece of training, you go off and do your first job and get some experience using that training, and then you then go ashore for a further piece of training back at the Submarine School generally, and then you move up to the next kind of position of responsibility. So, in submarine terms, we used to do what’s called the ‘Officer’s Training Course’, go and do your first job, come back, do your Intermediate Warfare Course which prepares you to be a Navigator and to be effectively the Second Officer of the Watch, so supporting the Officer of the Watch in the Control Room when dived, and you would then, once you had done that role, you’d go back to the Submarine School. You’d then do the Advanced Warfare Course which then prepared you to be the Watch Leader or the Officer of the Watch in a submarine. And once you’d done those three courses and those three jobs, you’re then in a position where you’re able to be selected to go and do the Submarine Command Course. Most people do some other jobs in between those sea jobs. Some people do more than one of those sea jobs before they move on to their Warfare Courses and a lot of people do shore roles and broadening jobs in between so, it’s not as simple as saying three courses, three jobs and go to Submarine Command Course. You’re usually picking up quite a bit of other experience along the way.
30 minutes 7 seconds
Simon: You have to do a Part 3 as well do you?
Chris: Yes, so once you’ve finished your Officers Training Course, which is your Part 1 and Part 2 training effectively, you then go to sea and do your Part 3 Training which is where you take your knowledge that you learnt ashore in the Officer’s Training Course, and apply it to a real submarine, whichever submarine you’ve been appointed to, and so what you’re endeavouring to do is make sure you understand all of the systems onboard the submarine. How it interacts, understand all of the routines, the Standard Operating Procedures and Emergency Operating Procedures and at the same time, as an Officer, you’re learning how to be the Officer of the Day, so that when you’re alongside in a submarine, you can look after the submarine and be the Captain’s Representative onboard.
Simon: That’s an extra dimension to the Part 3 that everyone else does is there?
Chris: Yes, so the Part 3 that a Rating does would not include the Officer of the Day elements of it, so the Officer’s Part 3, whilst they’re similar in terms of what you have to learn around routines and stations and how a submarine operates and where all the systems and valves onboard that submarine are, the Rating would be expected to learn all that too. But on top of that an Officer has to demonstrate that he can understand what the responsibilities, the extra and additional responsibilities that are required to be the Captain’s Representative or the Officer of the Day.
Simon: Do you get more time to do your Part 3 than … it sounds like the extra dimension might take you …
Chris: You tend not to get more time. You just have to get on with it and learn it. You tend to get about 3 months, something like that to do your Part 3. It really depends on what operations, what running the submarine is doing in those 3 months, so you can’t really pass your Part 3 or attempt your Part 3 if you haven’t had sufficient seas time for example, or any sea time. You could be unlucky and join a submarine which was alongside perhaps in deep maintenance for those 3 months, and so some people take a bit longer but normally about 3 months.
Simon: And did you, when you completed your Part 3 … ok, well let’s not get to that straightaway. How did you find the process of the Part 3? Was it nerve-racking or did it feel ok?
Chris: I think it felt ok. It was … one of the nice things about the Part 3 is that one, you’re quite young, you’re a Trainee and therefore you are almost expected to make mistakes, and so it’s a time where you can, as long as you’re honest and as long as you’re trying your best and as long as you learn from those mistakes, then you can’t go wrong really. In order to get the most out of your Part 3 time, you need to rely on the experience of your crew around you. That includes the other Officers but also the Senior Rates and Junior Rates and you are absolutely reliant on your Junior Rates and Senior Rates to help you get through the process. At best you’re a reasonable person and best you get on with them and appreciate them or life can be really quite hard. So, I really enjoyed my Part 3 time because in some ways, it’s not that you’re making best friends with the rest of the ship’s company, but you do have a relationship which is special in that Part 3 time, especially if you’ve made some effort to forge those relationships. It’s interesting that I’ve served in quite a number of submarines obviously, and I probably remember my first submarine’s ships company better than any of my ship’s company. Even when I was in Command, where I absolutely knew everybody onboard, in memory terms, it might be an age thing, I’m not sure, but in memory terms I can almost remember my entire ship’s company in HMS Opportune and diesel submarines.
35 minutes 33 seconds
Simon: Have a sort of mental walkthrough and still see the faces and …
Chris: It might be that you’re young and your memory is great (laughs), but it was a special time and good fun.
Simon: And were they still doing the Dolphins in the rum shot that you then had to catch in your teeth?
Chris: Yes, and that still happens today.
Simon: Oh does it? I thought maybe it had stopped.
Chris: Still happens today. You pick your time to do it …
Simon: I thought there’d been some problems with people not catching the Dolphins in their teeth (laughs).
Chris: There’s always been some stories about that and more fool the person that doesn’t catch the Dolphins properly (laughs). But there have always been a few splutterers if you like who’ve choked a bit. Whether that’s on the Dolphins or rum I’m not completely sure. I know that one of the things that did tend to be quite a large slug of rum, a good two fingers as we say, up the glass, and some people don’t get on with rum as well as others, and so certainly when I was in Command and I was giving out Dolphins to my ship’s company, which is a great thing to do, one of the real, real privileges of Command, I would always have a bucket alongside just in case.
Simon: So, Part 3 is done, and then actually we’ve been through quite a lot more of that. Three layers of Training after that haven’t we? Did you do that 1,2,3 straight like that or did you do other roles in between?
Chris: I was very lucky with my career. I was one of the last diesel boat Officers.
Simon: Oh so despite having just done stuff in Greenwich, you did diesel boats, or did the Greenwich Training come after the diesel boats?
Chris: So no, I did a … there used to be a separate Officers Training Course for diesel submarines and a separate one for nuclear submarines and as the number of diesel boats reduced and the number of nuclear submarines increased, they decided to do a single Officers Training Course which included the Nuclear Training, no matter where you were going, so I was the only person on my Officers Training Course who went to a diesel submarine straight away. Which was a great place to cut your teeth. No automation, or minimal automation, and so when you learnt your systems, the valves, pumps, gauges etc that were attached to those systems largely were operated manually, and you needed to know where they were and you needed to understand and how to operate them and in what order to operate them to get the submarine to do things that submarines should do. And by that I mean … the submarine has to be the right weight when its dived, and so we call that ‘being in trim’, and so trim consists of being in the right state of bodily weight, so making sure that you’ve got the submarine ballasted correctly, so you’ve got the right amount of water in the various tanks so that the submarine is the right weight, and then you have to worry about how that weight is distributed as well, so what you don’t want to be is out of trim by having too much of that weight for’ard or too much of that weight aft, ‘cos you end up with a bow down or a bow up problem. What you really want to try and do is trim that submarine so that you’re in the correct trim for the depth that you’re at, and that you’re generally at periscope depth. You want to be trimmed by 1 degree down by the bow and there are good reasons for that at periscope depth because if you come across something which you need to avoid on the surface and you pick it up too late, then you may need to go deep, or to go deeper quite quickly, and so better to be pointing in the right direction than not, so bow down is always good. The other piece that you really want to have to consider I guess in bodily weight terms, is that as the submarine changes depth, then it experiences more compression from the pressure of the water around it, and so the volume of the submarine changed and therefore being at the right weight at one depth is not the right weight at another depth, so you get heavier as you go down because your volume shrinks and so as you go down in the submarine, as you go deeper in the submarine, then you need to pump water out of the submarine to account for the fact that your bodily weight is getting heavier, to remain in trim. So, another complication of what we call ‘ship control’ in the submarine.
41 minutes 8 seconds
Simon: Right, I never, right. I guess it’s for a sort of person in the street, it’s quite hard to get your head round that something that is not changing weight might then be more dense, but that it’s just a concentration of the effectively the air onboard.
Chris: Well it’s all about Archimedes Principle. Not the concentration of the air but it’s Archimedes Principle so what effectively you’re doing, by compressing the submarine, you’re changing the volume, so therefore the buoyancy changes.
Simon: The physical structure gets compressed?
Chris: Yes.
Simon: By the pressure of the water.
Chris: By the pressure of the water outside. That’s different for the different sizes and different Classes of submarine, but we have a set of calculations and tables which tell you broadly how much for every 10 metres worth of change of depth you need to either pump out or flood in depending on whether you’re going up or down, and you always used to remember it by … I used to remember it by the phrase ‘down and out’. So, if you’re going down, you need to pump out.
Simon: So I may be distracted us there. We were talking about the three levels of training you went through. You did it one after the other did you? The Officer Training.
Chris: Well I can talk a little bit I suppose about my submarine career from that perspective, so after my Officers Training Course, I was really lucky and went off to a diesel submarine, HMS Opportune, and I did my Part 3 training onboard HMS Opportune and then spent about 18 months on the submarine and left her to go to the Intermediate Warfare Course in HMS Dolphin. The Intermediate Warfare Course is split into two bits really. It’s split into about a 9 week Navigation Section, where you learn how to become a submarine Navigator, so that includes Pilotage and Surface Navigation as well as quite in-depth and complex submarine Navigation, including all of the Navigation instruments and Inertial Navigation Systems and it culminates really in a 2 week period at sea, or it used to culminate in a 2 week period at sea onboard a Navigation Training Ship called Northella, where you went and you spent a week sort of training and then a weeks’ worth of assessment, which was quite high intensity actually, and it was a Course that could be failed. So, there was a bit of pressure and you then successfully completed that and then went back to the Submarine School and you did a Warfare Section where you learnt how to support the Officer of the Watch in keeping a good awareness of the picture around you and how to fight the submarine. I finished my Intermediate Warfare Course and then was very lucky to go and be selected for a shore appointment, so I went as a Submarine Controller up in the Northwood Operational Headquarters for the Submarine Service. An organisation called CTF 311. From CTF 311, Commander Task Force 311, we were responsible really for the control and safety and direction of all submarines under our Operational Control, so all of our UK submarines when they were in our operational area, and also foreign submarines that came into our area because we had agreements with NATO that we did, so all the routing of submarines and the exercises and operations.
45 minutes 19 seconds
Simon: So, to put it into person in the street terms, it’s a bit like Air Traffic Control but under the sea is it?
Chris: There is a large element of that, exactly that. So, you don’t know exactly where the submarine is but because you’ve given it routing and area that it can be in, you know where it isn’t, if you like.
Simon: Ok (laughs).
Chris: So, the whole idea is, one that submarines don’t bump into each other, and two, that in a nasty situation where a submarine has an incident or an accident and ends up on the bottom of the ocean, when you lose communications with it downstream, you have an idea of the area where you need to go and search. It’s an important part of it.
Simon: What is the idea of the Northwood part? Is that to give you a bigger picture of what’s going on rather than just focussing on an individual submarine?
Chris: Well, it’s a job that requires a Navigationally Qualified Officer to do because of the routing and what’s called the ‘sub note’ which is the signal which describes exactly what route a submarine has to go on, and so you have to understand what constraints the submarine can do. You need to understand a bit about submarine operations and so it’s generally done by Navigationally Qualified people. Not 100% of the time but it generally it is. It was a brilliant experience in terms of you get to see it first-hand. Flag Officer Submarines, the Rear Admiral that runs the Submarine Service and Operations, being briefed around Submarine Operations on a daily basis. You were involved in that briefing, you saw the decision making, you got an awful lot of experience by seeing how Commanding Officers and Command Teams interacted with the Headquarters and you saw how incidents were dealt with and you saw good examples of communications. You saw bad examples of communications and so through experience, you learnt an awful lot from that role. It certainly set me up for the future I think doing that job. You also learnt a lot about operations with other nations, so you had other NATO nations and particularly the US where you were operating, and I also learnt a lot about our SSBN, our deterrent submarines operations which I’d never been exposed to before. So yeah, a really good experience and I left from there and …
Simon: How long were you there?
Chris: I was there for about 18 months, just under, and then went down to Plymouth, where I joined an SSN, a Hunter Killer Attack Submarine …
Simon: That’s your first nuclear then?
Chris: The first nuclear submarine called HMS Splendid. She was coming out of a very long refit. She’d been in refit for about 5 years down in Plymouth and so we were coming towards the last few months in refit, and so my wife and family then moved down to Plymouth and we lived in Plymouth for that sort of 6-7 months and then the submarine did a Base Port change to Faslane, which was its home Port after the refit. And then I was very lucky as the Navigator to experience the Operational Sea Training as the Navigator which is a really good training experience. Not necessarily a pleasant training experience but it’s really beneficial and you learn an awful lot from it. We were the first nuclear submarine to go both south and north through the Suez Canal doing a period of operations in the deployment out to the Far East, so I took Splendid to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and then to Singapore for a maintenance period and then up in to the Gulf as well, so doing dive transits of the Straits of Hormuz which is a brilliant experience and visits to Dubai. This would have been back in 1994, and whilst I was doing that work up, prior to going on that Patrol as the Navigator, my second child was born, so my son was born, Nicholas, who is now a Submariner in the Submarine Service now, so I missed his birth. I was on the work-up at sea when he was born so he was 8 days old when I first saw him.
50 minutes 47 seconds
Simon: Physically you’re there to see him.
Chris: Yeah, first saw him physically, he was 8 days old. I had a long weekend and then went back to the submarine to finish to work-up.
Simon: They’d have a special thing of ‘well, you child’s born so it’s only right that we take you home’ …
Chris: No, it didn’t used to be like that. It’s probably more like that now. There aren’t too many people that miss births now. We try and arrange for reliefs or whatever, but then in those days that wasn’t the way things were done. So yes, I missed the birth and as I say he was 8 days old when I first saw him. I had a long weekend, 3 days, went back to the submarine, carried on. We then came back alongside and we had Easter leave, before we then deployed for this 6-month deployment, so he was … when I got back from the deployment, he was some 8 ½ months old and I’d seen him for 2 weeks and 3 days.
Simon: What’s that like, do you feel ‘oh, I wish I’d seen him born, or …’ it’s just not part of it ‘cos you know it can’t happen?
Chris: Of course I would have liked to have been there at the birth, but has it really affected certainly our relationship and that sort of thing? No, not affected the relationship with my wife or the relationship with Nick, so that’s alright. Although he occasionally when he’s feeling like it will turn round and say, Well, you couldn’t even be bothered to be at my birth dad, so …” but it’s mostly in jest I think. I think we knew that I was going to be on work-up when Nick was born and we had put contingencies in place I guess so Claire had got my sister and her mum as a birth partners all lined up and ready to go, and they discussed it and knew it was going to be like that. So, I guess we had just come to terms with it and it was just part of Naval life really.
Simon: I guess coming from a sort of Naval family, there’s a sort of understanding that these things happen I guess.
Chris: Yeah I think so, and Claire … I haven’t really talked about Claire, my wife. She and I met at Bay House School in Gosport, and so we had been going out with each other since the early 6th Form, and so my whole Naval career she has been part of it and so …
Simon: Did she have a connection with the Naval world?
Chris: Her dad was a Royal Marine Bandsman, so yeah, and her grandfather was a Naval Lieutenant Gunner who had been based here at St Vincent in Gosport for many years as a Lieutenant, so yeah, really close and her mother … they’d moved to Gosport in the ‘40s just after the war, in about ’48, something like that to a house in Village Road in Alverstoke, and her father was the Manager of Lloyds Bank in Gosport High Street for many years.
Simon: One Bank to still have a High Street presence (laughs).
Chris: Yeah, absolutely.
Simon: They were key figures in the community in those days.
Chris: They were. I mean they were the people you went to see if you wanted to buy a house and they literally could say yes or no. Most definitely.
Simon: So, you were saying about the nuclear submarine you were on and the birth of your son.
Chris: Well I took Splendid as a Navigator out to the Far East and then we came back from the Far East …
Simon: Suez Canal as well. That’s on the surface you go through or was it …
Chris: Yes, on the surface. You can only do it on the surface through the Suez Canal, but we did … literally as we left Faslane, the first place that you can realistically dive is at the Cumbrae Gap, which is the entrance to the Clyde Estuary, the Clyde River, and we dived there and we did not surface again until we were dressed off north of the Suez Canal, so we dived transit all the way down through the Irish Sea, all the way down past Portugal and Spain and through the Straits of Gibraltar, dived all the way down through the Straits of Messina and we surfaced off the Suez Canal. The Captain was absolutely adamant that we were going stay dived and at any time we could be dived and so I can remember surfacing and then again when we got to the south side of the Suez Canal, as soon as we were clear of the navigation channel, we were dived again and we dived down through the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb and down past Aden and off to Diego Garcia, and we didn’t surface until we were a mile off Diego Garcia.
56 minutes 17 seconds
Simon: And the reason to do that was because no one knows where you are or just because you could, or …
Chris: Because that’s how submarines should transit. You know they’re called submarines for a good reason. And nuclear submarines particularly, you can do the speed and transit at reasonable speeds in a nuclear submarine in a way that you probably didn’t do in a diesel submarine.
Simon: It’s a lot faster under the water than on the surface is it?
Chris: Yes, it is. So, you would end up on a diesel submarine you would tend to travel from A to B to get from A to B on the surface and then do dived operations and then to generate the transits you would surface again. Not all the time. You could transit dived, but you have the complexity of having to recharge your batteries pretty regularly and so you either transit very slowly and then snort occasionally, or you can transit … snorting is the process of charging your batteries by putting a mast up which allows you to take air into the submarine, and an exhaust mast which allows you to get rid of the exhaust from the engines which are used to then generate electricity, so you have an engine with a generator on the end which then generates electricity and recharges the battery. On a diesel submarine, if you’re doing a reasonably fast transit, you either need to be snorting all the time or … well, you need to be snorting all the time.
Simon: How did you find the first time you went under for such a long amount of time then? Did it feel any different?
Chris: You mean different from being dived in any other submarine, or the first time I dived?
Simon: The transition from the diesel when … let’s do the first time you dived, because that’s a really interesting one anyway, and then go back to the other one.
Chris: The first time you dive … I had done a 1-day submarine acquaint whilst at Dartmouth, onboard HMS Conqueror when the Captain was a Commander James Burnell-Nugent who went on to be the Second Sea Lord as a Vice Admiral. In fact, I think he went on beyond that to CIC Fleet after that, so he was the Captain of that submarine at the time and I can remember doing two things on that one day. One thing that the Valiant and Churchill Class submarines could do was a thing called ‘going on the step’ so if you were on the surface, you could trim down aft and you could get yourself to ride on your own bow wave effectively, which gave you several knots more, so you could do, by memory, about 17 knots or something I think, and on the surface which was unheard of in the Trafalgar and Swiftsure Classes which couldn’t do that. So, I was lucky enough to be on the Bridge for going on the step in HMS Conqueror, which was my first experience of Bridge Watch Keeping and doing that which was phenomenal, and then dived in Conqueror for a few hours and anybody who tells you that they’re not just a little bit nervous in their first dive, is fibbing I think.
60 minutes 11 seconds
Simon: You’re the first to say it actually, so far.
Chris: Am I? Yeah, I think anybody who isn’t a little bit nervous. It’s not nerves … you’ll certainly have got thoughts going through your head as to ,’oh, I wonder what’s going to happen next?’ and ‘I do really hope that we’re going to get up again’ and so I think, you know, those that aren’t just a little bit nervous. But you always remember I think, your first dive. It becomes fairly routine after that, or quickly becomes routine although there is no such thing as a routine dive. When you’re diving a submarine, you go from a positively buoyant stage to obviously a negatively buoyant stage to get yourself under the water and that change in buoyancy is not necessarily risky but there are things to be done, routines to be done to make sure you do it right.
Simon: That’s interesting. I guess perhaps as an Officer and having an overview of all of those things, you have a different perception of it. You’ve got an overview of a lot more of the details and what’s going on. Your brain is whirring ten to the dozen I guess as you’re imagining all of these things going on around the submarine, whereas perhaps if you’re focussed on a task within the submarine it seems just something that’s happening.
Chris: I think there is some truth in that. So, whilst everybody does their Part 3 training and therefore has been in the Control Room and witnessed a dive and has done the required learning to understand the systems that are required and what you do and why you do it, I guess when you’re a Warfare Officer, particularly a Warfare Officer, you’re learning some of the elements of submarine control and ship control and the navigation areas and the warfare areas in much, much more detail and depth than a normal Part 3 training would require. And also, of course you are, as you move up through the different roles as a Warfare Officer, you then become responsible for some of those things, so you move into a position where you are responsible for the bodily weight of the submarine, the trimming of the submarine. You’re responsible for diving the submarine for example, and so therefore it’s beholden upon you to understand one, what you have to do and to know what you have to do, but also understand what the different interactions, things that are happening around the submarine and what’s required to be done by all the various areas to make sure that the submarine dives safely.
Simon: And how did it feel … that’s really interesting hearing about the first experience, and the first one of going from diesel to nuclear for that long period of time.
Chris: Not really a big difference I don’t think. You will spend reasonable periods of time dived in a diesel submarine, so the length of time diving was not particularly an issue. I likened it to working in an office with no windows really, and the routine that you’re running on a submarine, so you’re in 2 Watches. 1st and 2nd Watch. 1st goes from 7 in the morning ‘til 1 in the afternoon, 2nd Watch goes from 1 in the afternoon until 7 in the evening, and then 1st Watch takes over for the evening and so you’re doing 7 ‘til 1, 7 ‘til 1, or 1 ‘til 7, 1 ‘til 7, depending on which Watch you’re on, and you get yourself in to a routine. Takes a few days to get used to.
Simon: What physically or …
Chris: Yeah, you’re generally pretty tired because you’re getting yourself used to one sleep a day to maybe two sleeps a day and not very long sleeps at that. In reality, ‘cos you’re om Watch for 6 hours and then you’re off Watch for 6 hours, but in your off Watch you’ve got to eat, wash, do all the other bits and pieces and as an Officer generally you have a bit of work to do to, that needs to be done. So, certainly as the Navigator, I would try and get 1 Watch where I really got as much sleep as I possible could, which was probably about 4 ½ hours out of a 6 hour Watch, and then the other Watch you would just have to do some work, so whether that was Navigational Planning or your Divisional work or Administration, Correspondence stuff or whatever, and so I would tend to come off Watch, have lunch as quickly as I possibly could, work for a few hours in the afternoon and I would then usually have maybe an hours sleep before then going back on Watch. Just a quick one before going back on Watch. So, I think the most you probably got in terms of sleep in a day was maybe 5 ½ hours, sometimes less.
66 minutes 7 seconds
Simon: And has that stayed with you since you aren’t on the submarines?
Chris: No, not at all. I’ve always enjoyed my sleep and that hasn’t changed. Being a Submariner hasn’t changed that much. I haven’t had any problems, and never did when I was actually serving in submarines making the transition to being able to sleep properly again (laughs).
Simon: Do you learn to fall asleep quickly?
Chris: Um, I didn’t learn to. I never had any problem with it.
Simon: You’re just knackered.
Chris: Yeah, I never had any problem getting to sleep. I always found the bunks were comfortable enough. Enough space. Just used to … yeah, I’d have no problem getting to sleep. The worst thing was waking up, and sometimes … so normally I was pretty good. When I was in Command I was pretty good at being able to be shaken and being able to take a brief and understand it and remember it. There were a couple of occasions when I was in Command where I was obviously shaken just at the wrong time in your sleep pattern where I just couldn’t … I needed to slap myself around the face and get my feet over the edge of the bunk and get my feet flat on the floor before being able to converse, but most of the time I was fine.
Simon: So, you were talking about the sleep patterns and the work patterns and on for one Watch, off for another Watch and back on again. I guess that’s covered that bit hasn’t it?
Chris: Yeah, I think so. So, I guess a bit more about my … when I’d finished with HMS Splendid, I was very lucky again and was given another shore appointment where I worked here in Gosport in the Submarine School, so I taught Navigation in the Submarine School. I was the Warfare Training Officer Navigation. It’s a brilliant job, so I spoke about that sort of Intermediate Warfare Course being split into two halves. One was a 9-week Navigation Course and the rest was the Warfare Course, so I was responsible for that 9 week Navigation Course, so I spent 7 weeks teaching them everything from Tidal Theory to Astronavigation, to Inertial and Underwater Navigation. Bottom Contour Navigation and all sorts of interesting submarine techniques, and then I’d take them to sea for the 2 weeks onboard the Navigation Training Ship Northella, which was fascinating. Got me really in-depth experience of a whole cohort of Junior Officers coming through that Course which I would like to think I sort of influenced positively. Made some really good relationships for the future through that and after that I stayed at the Submarine School and went on to the Advanced Warfare Course.
Simon: Can we talk a little bit … I’m going to try and keep a mental note of the Advanced Warfare Course. The Navigation side, it’s kind of upside down for I guess people on the street. You have valleys and mountains but they’re under the water, or am I being completely fooled by thinking that way?
Chris: I guess Navigation now is all done through satellite navigation and GPS on the surface …
Simon: But there’s still a mapping of the … what do call the bit under … the seabed I guess.
Chris: Yes, the bottom topography, or the pethrimetry.
Simon: Pethrimetry?
70 minutes
Chris: Pethrimetry is the is more around the speed of sound in water and the way that sound travels through that water. From a Navigation perspective, on the surface it’s pretty much identical to being in a surface ship, to navigate. Once you get under the surface, then you have two states effectively. You’re either at periscope depth or your below periscope depth. We call it ‘deep’. So, when we say we’ve gone deep in a submarine, it means you’ve gone below periscope depth. And periscope depth is a depth at which you can raise a periscope above the sea surface and see around you, but it’s also the depth at which you can raise any of the masts on the submarine so you’re communications antenna or your radar or your snort induction or your diesel exhaust mast, and so all the time you’re at periscope depth, you can effectively use the same navigation aids as you would do on the surface, so you’ve got a GPS antenna for example on the top of one of your periscopes. You’ve also got the ability to raise radar and operate radar, so you can use radar for navigation and collision avoidance. Once you get below periscope depth, you lost that ability to be able to fix your position using normal means, so tell where you are from GPS for example, because the antenna’s below the surface, and so what you’re really then relying upon is your ability to navigate without those fixing aids so as long as you know your position when you leave periscope depth, then you can, knowing the speed you’re doing and the course that you’re doing at any stage, you can work out where you should be through a system of what’s called ‘dead reckoning’. What a Navigator would call dead reckoning, ‘cos all you’re doing is you’re calculating ‘I’ve been doing that course and that speed for a particular time. Therefore, I must be there’. Just speed times distance, and then you have to apply to that the current or tidal stream that you’re experiencing or expecting to experience and so that gives you an estimated position, so if you’ve done a particular course and speed for a length of time, you can then tell what the vector for the tidal stream would have been for that same time. You apply that to your dead reckoning position and you get an estimated position of where you are. And then, as a Submariner, you know that there are some errors in that calculation. Perhaps your log was telling you that you were doing 10 knots but it might be slightly inaccurate. Your gyro was telling you were steering a particular speed but it might be slightly inaccurate, and so what you do is you put in a number of errors which include your gyro and your log and also your calculation of tidal stream which could be wrong, to make sure that you can define what we call a ‘pool of errors’ so it’s a geographic puddle if you like of water which you must sit in. And as long as you can drive that puddle of water, that pool of errors, around the ocean without it touching any navigational hazards then you will stay safe. Fundamentally that’s how you do it manually. Backing that up nowadays is an Inertial Navigation System which is an electronic automatic system which knows a start position and through accelerometers and gyros can then work out where you are at any given time to an error and we generally have back-to-back systems so two systems working back to back which are effectively checking each other. So, that’s the Inertial Navigation System. And then we have a bunch of techniques for fixing our position when we’re dived, so when we can’t put up our traditional fixing methods, GPS and that sort of thing, then what we’re starting to do is use … you talked about bottom … the seabed. Well, that seabed is mapped pretty accurately, and is reflected on Admiralty charts and you know what the depths are for the position you’re in and then you can then use the bottom contours and your Echo Sounder to then try and fix your position using bottom topography.
75 minutes 4 seconds
Simon: Right, so you sort of say, ‘this looks familiar … so I know where I am because I …’
Chris: Yeah, there’s a bit more science in it than that but yes, and there are a number of techniques that you can use to check your position against the chart against the bottom topography. So, that’s fundamentally what you’re doing from a navigation perspective.
Simon: Ok, thank you for that.
Chris: That’s alright.
Simon: So, you said you went on to the Advanced Warfare.
Chris: So, did the Advanced Warfare Course. A 6-month Course and it’s absolutely designed to prepare you to be able to keep the submarine safe and fight the submarine when you’re the Officer of the Watch and therefore you’re the Captain’s Representative in the Control Room for 12 hours a day. So, there are 2 Watches and you have 2 Watch Leaders, and those Watch Leaders will have both done the Advanced Warfare Course.
Simon: So, that’s a different shift to everyone else then.
Chris: No, same shift. It’s the 2 Watch system that you’re doing 6 hours at a time, but in a day you’ll do 12 hours in charge of the submarine. And so, it starts off with some refresh of Warfare elements that you’ve done before but then takes you on to an advanced level of Warfare, so you learn much more about the weapon, the Command System, the Control System, the Sonar and the various sensors that you’ve got and how to operate the submarine in different environments. The different warfare disciplines that you might get involved in the submarine, so anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, Special Forces Operations, Intelligence Gathering, indications and warnings, so you’re ability to understand what’s happening around the submarine, is absolutely your responsibility ..
Simon: Could you go over that last one again? Understanding what’s going on around the submarine, so that’s taking a read of all the sensors and figuring out threats, or …
Chris: So yes, understanding what the threats are around you, whether they be enemy or friendly effectively ‘cos everything’s a threat really in terms of shipping and keeping yourself safe and keeping yourself safe particularly in the vicinity of fishing vessels. Clearly they’re dragging nets under the water which can be problematic for a submarine obviously, and then it’s also being able to monitor what’s going on around you, not just visually but understanding what the intelligence picture is around you from radar transmissions and communication transmissions and those sorts of things. You’re constantly trying to keep that picture for command. So, a key element of that is understanding how to safely operate the submarine. How to operate in close proximity to Warships and other vessels and how you can keep the submarine safe using the periscope and then how you can keep the submarine safe using dived sensors when you’re below periscope depth. And that’s another Course which is assessed. You go through some periods at the end of it where you’re being assessed from a safety and a tactical perspective, in the Submarine Simulators at the Submarine School. So, I did that Course and then I was really lucky to get selected for a small ship surface Command, so I went off and I was the Officer in Charge of the Sussex University Royal Naval Unit, and also in Command of HMS Pursuer, which is one of the P2000 Patrol Boats, so I did that for about 18 months.
Simon: That’s normal surface ships then is it?
Chris: Yes.
Simon: Is that quite normal to go onto a surface ship?
Chris: I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but it’s not abnormal. So, there’s an element of luck but there’s also an element of getting selected for that particular privilege and it is a privilege, so I had 18 months really where I had a small ship’s company of only 5 people, the crew of the Patrol Boat, but I also had another 4 Royal Naval Reserve Training Officers at my University Royal Naval Unit in Sussex, which is on the Falmer site at Brighton, and then I had a Chief Petty Officer who was my Coxswain, who looked after that Unit at Brighton, and a Secretary and I had 55 University Students that were members of my Unit, and we took them to sea and gave them experience of the Navy and gave them some Leadership Coaching and Development and gave them some general Naval Training and some Navigation Training and really influenced in a great way some young and up and coming individuals at University, really with the idea and design to influence the future movers and shakers in society really, such that when they’re running companies or they’re …
81 minutes 13 seconds
Simon: Oh so they weren’t Naval people?
Chris: No it was not a recruiting organisation. It had a side effect which often led to people wanting to join the Navy, which was great, but actually it was equally as important to influence them such that when they were employing people, they would have a positive view of the Navy which meant that they would release people to go and be Reservists and do time for the Naval Reserve and would also be supportive of the Navy generally and the Armed Forces generally which is a good thing.
Simon: Right, ok.
Chris: It was a great experience, lots and lots of …
Simon: So, you’re doing that remotely from a boat … [Alexa responds] … you were doing that from the PT2000?
Chris: P2000. So, I was … my routine would be to go down to the Brighton site for most of the working week, and then at the weekends you would take 13 students off to sea for a weekend, take them to sea and teach them a bit about what it was like to be at sea, and then 3 times a year, you would do a longer deployment in the ship where you would take 13 students and you’d do 2 weeks in the Easter and 2 weeks at autumn, and then you’d do a 6 week deployment in the summer where you’d do three lots of two weeks basically where you’d take 13 students on each occasion. We’d go off to the Channel Islands … did a lot of the south coast, did the Netherlands and northern France, and did Spain and western France. Did a lot on the Channel Islands …
Simon: You got free reign to where you want to take it.
Chris: Not complete free reign but quite a lot of free reign. Yeah, it was good. We would normally deploy with a couple of other ships of the same type, so we used to join up mostly with the Southampton University Royal Naval Unit and the Bristol University Royal Naval Unit and we’d go as a three ship and that would allow us to do sort of manoeuvres together and support each other and that was good. And share a bit of the planning which is really important when you’re on a 6-week Patrol. You have a 6-week deployment, you didn’t really want to be doing all of it.
Simon: I can see the advantages to the Navy as a whole for that. Why do they put you through that at that point do you think? What are they rounding in you?
Chris: I think it doesn’t matter what size of ship or submarine for that matter, Command can be a pretty lonely place, and the ability to be able to lead in environments where things go wrong like at sea, is an incredible experience and really does prepare you for decision making and judgement I think going forward, so the near misses and incidents both from the personnel and from a ship perspective just helps you prepare and make you a better Officer in the future I think. You gain much better to cut your teeth on a small ship like that, than perhaps a bigger ship, so I think it was a great preparation for me, and I was lucky to get it ‘cos not everybody did. And just to be there as really the only experienced person to be able to make some of those decisions and judgements and to be on your own and have to do it yourself is a great, great preparation for what was to come. You know, when it came to driving a nuclear submarine later on and then being the Commander of an Aircraft Carrier.
85 minutes 30 seconds
Simon: So, what followed that?
Chris: Well, I went from my P2000 and HMS Pursuer, and went and joined one of our Trident SSBN Deterrent Submarines, so a much bigger submarine and I was the Watch Leader which also involved being the Navigator and Tactical Systems Officer of HMS Victorious, and so based up in Faslane, so the family moved up to Faslane and we had a really good 18 months, nearly 2 years as a Tactical Systems Officer of Victorious in Faslane. We had a really good time from a career and from a family perspective. I ended up getting promoted to Lieutenant Commander in that role, managed to get myself a bit of early promotion, which was nice to get, and towards the end of that job, I also got selected for Submarine Command so it was a good couple of years. I ended up doing … so the Deterrent Submarine work tend to be two crewed, so you have two crews and you swop over crews and you effectively take the submarine, the handover date, crew handover. You then finish a Maintenance Period which is generally relatively short. You then go through a Fourth Generation work-up phase where you prepare yourself to go on Patrol, and then you go on to a Deterrent Patrol, and you come back and handover to the next crew, so you end up with what’s called an ‘On Crew’ and a ‘Support Crew’ period of time, so when you’re in Support Crew, the other crew has the submarine and there are some advantages with that, so from a personal perspective and personal life, you get a bit more certainty to plan your life and get a bit better work life balance than perhaps you do in a Hunter Killer Attack Submarine, and I was lucky enough actually we ended up doing the Millennium Patrol, so it was in the days of Y2K Compliance, if you remember that and worrying about what was going to happen when all the clocks rolled over at midnight of the Millennium.
Simon: Only to find nothing happened (laughs).
Chris Yeah, only to find nothing happened, so that was quite fun. We were on Patrol for that whole period so I missed the Millennium.
Simon: Were you on the surface for the midnight rollover?
Chris: No, we weren’t. We stayed dived and so your job in a Deterrent Submarine is to stay covert and to make sure that you’re not detected basically, so that didn’t change for rollover or for the Millennium, so we we did have a few contingencies in place just in case, as you can imagine. But as it was, we were all there waiting for it and counted it down and nothing really happened, so we were there with all our automatic systems basically in manual, and then we slowly switched on all our automatic systems, found out there were no problems and we carried on. That was broadly the way it went. Although I do remember that the Prime Minister had asked to be briefed of there were any issues, so it was in the Prime Minister’s mind. He’d been briefed on it so yeah; it was good experience. I went from there I went …
Simon: With the switch to bombers, how did that …physically a larger space inside as well as externally, is that right?
Chris: Yes, there is, although I wouldn’t say it … it is noticeably larger but it doesn’t have a huge effect on running the submarine, if you like …
90 minutes 6 seconds
Simon: You’re still in the same windowless office and …
Chris: Yes, it’s still in an office with no windows, and you just have a slightly different role, so it’s probably not quite as varied as a SSN’s running in operation, but strategically in many ways more important. Much more important. It’s the Nation’s number one defence priority, so how you operate that submarine and the nature in which you go about your operations is really important, really important. So, different challenges. One of the key challenges on there is making sure that your ship’s company and your Watch, if you’re the Watch Leader, are prepared for any eventuality and because a good Bomber Patrol or a good SSBN Patrol is an uneventful and quiet SSBN Patrol. You can find yourself hopefully with not too much to do all the time and so a good Watch Leader in a submarine is constantly preparing his Watch and training in his Watch to make sure you’re ready for whatever might come. And motivating your Watch to do that is a really important …
Simon: Keeping people alert essentially is it?
Chris: Absolutely. Keeping them alert, keeping them ready, keeping them prepped and trained to do the job for when you need to. ‘Cos the one thing around a submarine is things can go wrong pretty quickly, and your ability to be able to do the initial actions and the emergency operating procedures and know them, is essential. The rest of your ship’s company is reliant upon you to do it.
Simon: And what are the things that can go wrong? Is there a sort of a short list or …?
Chris: There are some fairly obvious ones. Fires, floods, I’m not suggesting that these happen on a regular basis but they are the things that can go wrong and do happen. You don’t generally have floods from sea, but you hope you don’t, but quite often you’ll have an issue with a valve or you’ll have an issue with hydraulics. I mean valves fail, things go wrong when you’ve got high pressure systems so air and hydraulics which you would hope would be kept inside the systems. Can sometimes find themselves not staying within the system and the services that are supplied by those hydraulics and air are consequently affected if something goes wrong like that, so your ability to be able to react very quickly to make sure that the submarine can stay safe when the hydraulic system is not able to be used for the planes or the steering, the rudder or operating masts or whatever it happens to be. There are good contingency plans in place and you just need to make sure that you’re able to respond to what happens in the appropriate fashion and within the appropriate time.
Simon: Ok. So, you were then selected for …
Chris: Submarine Course, Perisher Course.
Simon: How did that … my understanding is that if you fail that, you leave the Submarine Service.
Chris: Fundamentally you don’t necessarily leave the Submarine Service, but you have a choice to make. You’re not going to go back to sea in a submarine in a complement position if you fail Perisher. You can opt to stay in the Submarine Service where I guess your promotion prospects are somewhat limited by that choice. You’re certainly not going to make it to the top. Doesn’t mean you can’t be promoted through staff roles and there’s a real requirement for having staff submarine qualified Officers. The other thing that you can choose to do is go down the surface ship route, so you can transfer to become a Principle Warfare Officer, so you go from having done Submarine Command Course to then going down surface ship warfare route which can be quite successful for a lot of people. People tend to do quite well on that Course, because they’ve been I guess steeped in Warfare from a very early age as an Officer in a way that in surface ships is less in the earlier stages of your surface ship career.
Simon: So, I’m conscious of time and I’m also conscious that we’re … feels like a natural break because to going on to the Perisher stuff. I wonder if we could organise another session, another time? Is that good?
Chris: Yes, I think that’s a good idea.
Simon: Because it seems like we’re just about to get on to oh, another exciting part.
Chris: Are you alright with that?
Simon: So ok, well thank you very much for your time.
Chris: Have you got time to do that?
Simon: Yeah, totally. I had a feeling that this was going to be a detailed one, so yeah, totally. Thank you very much for your time so far and look forward to arranging the second one.
Chris: That will be great Simon, thank you.
Interview ends
95 minutes 55 seconds
Transcribed June 2022