Brian Wood – Going ‘ultra quiet’

I mean everybody onboard a submarine is responsible for keeping quiet themselves, and all their surroundings and the machinery that they operate, so everything is sort of rubber mounted as such, all the machines that make noises is all rubber mounted or on floating platforms as such, and obviously you’ve got to maintain all that lot as well, so you make the least noise as possible.

And there’s different quiet states that you go into, where you can’t do certain activities. You can’t watch films or you can’t play cards because people are banging the cards on the table or something like that, so you know you’re doing some very quiet stuff when that goes. So, there’s different quiet states and everybody’s responsible, each person onboard is responsible for their Department and their individual quietness onboard.

Simon: Are you getting to the state of tiptoeing around or …?

You can put mats down, especially in the Engine Room because you’ve got metal plates in the Engine Room and if you’re going into what they called the ‘ultra-quiet state’ you get the ultra-quiet mats out and lay them down and there’s the least amount of movement about the submarine as possible.