Colin Clarke – Weapons Weeks and Inshore Ops on Perisher

There are a couple of key elements to the Perisher. There was the Weapons Weeks, where you’re actually conducting attacks with practice weapons on Warships, and there was what they called the ‘Inshore Ops’ phase so this is where you were trying to gather intelligence, or maybe you were trying to get through a minefield, you were being prosecuted by helicopters, other Warships.

They’d put small boats out just to make life difficult for the Trainee from the better phase. One of the things, as I say, with those two activities, which were quite different really, each submarine would have 4 practice weapons onboard, and during the course of the Weapons Weeks, you’d start with single ships, so 1 ship against the submarine, then it would work up to 2, then 3, and eventually you’d be at 4 ships all prosecuting the submarine, making life more and more difficult and each day, one of the Duty Captains would get to fire all 4 of those torpedoes.

And then they’d have to be recovered, so a Torpedo Recovery vessel would be part of that overall activity. They’d go and recover the torpedoes and then they’d go to a buoy, and we’d go to a buoy with them and we’d reload from the Torpedo Recovery vessel back down to the submarine, then the Weapons Engineering Team would recharge those practice torpedoes ready for the following morning.

So, part of my role back in those days as the Upper Deck Party, the Casing Party, would be part of the Weapons Loading Party as well, so not only did you have a 5 0’clock start in the morning, you were now in the dark hours, loading weapons ready for them to be charged overnight ready to do it all again the following day, but once you’d finished your loading those weapons, then the Liberty boat which was running, would take you into Rothesay for example or into Brodick, depending where you were, and of course you’d have to have a few beers.

Then we’d get back onboard about midnight, not 100 percent, ready for a 5 o’clock start and you’d do that day in day out.