Midge Ure – One of the first to do SMQ vs Part 3

The new way of doing it when I joined then was this Submarine Qualification Course. It was 10 weeks of almost … when I say a back shift, we’d go in at 4 o’clock, and we’d work through ‘til maybe about 11 o’clock at night, so during those six or seven hours, we would do a couple of hours in the classroom, we’d break for something to eat, and then we’d spend three of four hours in a submarine that was parked alongside the wall in Faslane.

So, it was mixed. It was a blended learning solution.

Simon: So, you’re doing stuff in the classroom that you’d then go and practice?

You’d go down into the submarine and actually look at. Ok, so you’d then go down and right, this is the bit of kit we were talking about, this is how we operate it, this is the switch, and this is the spanner to use on that.

So, whatever it was, whatever system you were … so you had to do an element of … to get through the entire suite of systems onboard a submarine, it would take those 10 weeks. So, you would build up knowledge all the way through and then …

Simon: This was on nuclear?

This has always happened on submarines, but I happened to come in at a time when the SMQ was brought in as a way of doing it. What you used to get given, you used to join a submarine, get given a big book with all those systems in it, go and find them, and that was your Part 3. So, your Part 3 …

Simon: So you had it easy is that what you’re saying? (laughs).

We were the beginning of the new culture where we look after people a bit more. Back in the day, you got given your Part 3 task book, and you went off and you did it. You weren’t allowed to eat in the Mess, you weren’t allowed to enter the Mess, you weren’t allowed to involve yourself in any Ship’s Company events or do’s or anything onboard.

You were a Trainee up to the point where you were signed off. And that signing off is ultimately, whether it was SMQ or Part 3, you get a series of tick lists you have to tick and assure people that you know the system, that you can trace it. So, on submarines, you generally have a chat about something, a system and how it works, you show someone how it works and then you bring all the systems together and you do what was called a Part 3 Board, or an SMQ Board.

You will sit down in front of a delegated Panel of experience, so it might be an Officer, a Sailor and an Engineer, and you sit there and you have to satisfy them, that you are a Navy Submariner and that they can trust you to go off and do stuff on your own.

And at that point, if they say you’ve met the qualification, you the get given the famous Submariner Dolphin shoulder … you know the Dolphins that we wear, I don’t know if you’ve seen them, they’re little gold dolphins we wear on our back. So, you get presented then on successful completion of either your Part 3 or the new version SMQ.