Chris Groves – Part 3 for Officers
So once you’ve finished your Officers Training Course, which is your Part 1 and Part 2 training effectively, you then go to sea and do your Part 3 Training which is where you take your knowledge that you learnt ashore in the Officer’s Training Course, and apply it to a real submarine, whichever submarine you’ve been appointed to, and so what you’re endeavouring to do is make sure you understand all of the systems onboard the submarine.
How it interacts, understand all of the routines, the Standard Operating Procedures and Emergency Operating Procedures and at the same time, as an Officer, you’re learning how to be the Officer of the Day, so that when you’re alongside in a submarine, you can look after the submarine and be the Captain’s Representative onboard.
Simon: That’s an extra dimension to the Part 3 that everyone else does is there?
Yes, so the Part 3 that a Rating does would not include the Officer of the Day elements of it, so the Officer’s Part 3, whilst they’re similar in terms of what you have to learn around routines and stations and how a submarine operates and where all the systems and valves onboard that submarine are, the Rating would be expected to learn all that too. But on top of that an Officer has to demonstrate that he can understand what the responsibilities, the extra and additional responsibilities that are required to be the Captain’s Representative or the Officer of the Day.