Ian Moore – The Loch Long tragedy
1977, January, Loch Long. I was on the Orpheus, we were doing four-man chamber trials, which is exit re-entry. HMS Orpheus was the first boat fitted with a 4-man chamber which allowed us to be able to remain dived while we could have Special Forces, SAS, SBS, enter into that chamber, we could flood it up, equalize it and they can swim out through another hatch which allowed them to be able to hit the surface and go ashore without us having to surface the submarine to let them off.
We were doing trials in Loch Long, and a submarine, when it’s dived, has an equal trim with the salinity of the water around it. So, in sea water, the submarine will actually have a certain buoyancy that will hold it in position.
In Loch Long, there’s an awful lot of rivers that run into Loch Long, and those rivers are fresh water. We ran into one of those fresh water layers while we had four men inside the chamber.
I was on the Chamber Team, and I had an indication that the upper lid of the Chamber was open, which meant that the four guys were about to exit. Just at that moment in time, we hit this fresh water layer and literally the submarine dropped like a stone. We went from 60 feet to 120-130 feet …
Simon: Because of the weight of the submarine, no salt in the water.
Because of the weight of the submarine, no salt in the water so that made the submarine very, very heavy, and it just literally dropped like a stone and we went from 60 foot to 120 foot in the space of 10 seconds. At 90 feet, the Engineer in charge of the routine, he would normally contact the Control Room, call the Chamber Emergency and the submarine would surface.
By the time he’d actually got hold of the microphone, called up the Control Room, called the Chamber Emergency, the submarine surfaced. By that time, we’d already hit 120 feet. We came up to the … did an Emergency Surface, came up onto the roof, so we were sat on the surface. Two of the Marines had managed to escape.
The other two Marines, we didn’t know where they were. We’ve got a Safety Number, who immediately exited the submarine, went down to the Chamber itself and jumped into the Chamber to check if anybody was in there and it was clear there was nobody around. Two of the Royal Marines had already been picked up by the Safety Boat, but those two others that weren’t around, we didn’t know where they were.
We then spent the next 12, 16 hours or so, just literally skirting around the Loch Long itself and searching along with various other boats that were part of the exercise as well. More boats arrived from Faslane. They helped join in with the search.
That went well into the evening where we were using searchlights and various other things to look for … but we never actually saw them again. These were Special Forces guys who were trained to survive in any given situation and when they left us, it was a live exercise, they were fully booted and spurred, they were fully armed. They were Special Boat Squadron, they were Specialists, they were Special Forces and we lost them.
Simon: It clearly still affects you.
Yeah, it does. After so many hours of searching around, we were sent back to Faslane to await a Board of Enquiry which we knew was going to be coming up, and in the meantime, the following morning, one of the Marines was …
Simon: If it’s easier, we can stop.
No it’s fine. I’m ok. One of the Marines, he was found by a civilian out walking his dog about 6 o’clock in the morning. He’d washed up on a beach on the side of Loch Long. He’d called it in to the local Police. The Police came out.
They called in reinforcements who also contacted the Military and probably the funniest part of this is that when the Military turned up, not only did they take the civilian into custody, but they also took all the Police Officers as well, and they made them all …
Simon: They’d seen things that they shouldn’t have seen.
They’d seen things that they shouldn’t have seen and they made them all sign the Official Secrets Act which didn’t go down too well obviously. The second Marine, he was found 3 days later at about 80 feet down. He was dragged up by a fishing net.
They brought out a fishing net and they were going round dragging everything because he was found, because of his buoyancy, he was found at neutral buoyancy, where he wouldn’t go up and he wouldn’t go down. He was just stuck in a layer, and they literally just fished him out just using a fishing net.