Chris Groves – Example of someone not making it through Perisher

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.