Chris Groves – Intermediate Warfare Course, then Northwood for CTF311

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.

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?

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.