David White – First time doing SETT

So, you’re there for six weeks and after you’ve done two weeks in the classroom you have to go to the Tank and do your very first Submarine Escape Training and of course… 

Simon:  You know that’s on the horizon, you can see it getting closer?  

Oh absolutely, I mean everyone knows, everyone’s heard stories about it, and most of them, I think they’re just designed to frighten you because that’s what Matelots do, but yeah, every day you walk down past the Tank to get to the Submarine School, they make you walk by it and you know, there’s a 100-foot column of water in there and at the end of four days I’ve got to go in the bottom and go to the top.

Now when my dad did it, the tank was only 38 feet high. 

Simon:  Was it? 

This replaced the old tank in 1952, well no they built it in ’52, it commissioned in ’54, and so yeah, you know, because you haven’t been in there, you haven’t seen it, you haven’t done it, your mind just runs riot and two weeks before we did it, a guy died and so the Tank was shut for about a month while they had the inquiry and everything else, so ours was put back two weeks. 

Simon:  Which I guess then, that incident happening, your trepidation is even higher? 

Yeah, absolutely because I mean, you know, you hear all the horror stories, you know, if you don’t blow out your bloody lungs will burst and you’ll turn inside out and of course that’s not how it happens at all and now, having been an Instructor there on and off for 10 years I now know the science of it, but that’s what you think when you get there and of course the Instructors are all bloody posers, strutting around with their goggles and nose clips and everything, thinking that they’re God’s gift, but you know, they’re also very, very professional.

I know I would say that, but even going back to that day in 1967 when I first did the Escape Tank as a Trainee, they were so professional and you just felt, ‘I’m alright here, all I’ve got to do is what I’m told’. And so, we got through the Tank without any disaster at all ,

And it’s true, you know, there’s this old adage that the first time you go in there you’re papping yourself, the second time you think, ‘Mmm, this ain’t so bad, I can do this.’

By the last time on the Thursday when you finish the deep run, most of them say “Can I do that again Chief?”