Chris Groves – First dive in a submarine

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.

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.