Chris Groves – What can go wrong onboard a submarine

Simon: And what are the things that can go wrong? Is there a sort of a short list or …?

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.