Steve Thorpe – Bomber in the Cold War

Simon: And is there a role that supports what are commonly called the ‘bombers’?

So, in the Cold War, it was a lot more prolific and Russian submarines were around … well they are around a lot now but, when a bomber would go out, they would send an SSN out with it, called ‘delousing’, so to attract the attention away from any potential submarines that are there listening, and the bomber would just dive and disappear into the abyss.

Simon: Ok. And I guess then the fact … that must be quite exciting to know you are all on a combined sneaky mission or whatever?

Yeah, and that’s all part of it. To gel the crew so everybody’s involved in it, so when you tell people to be quiet onboard, they understand why, so you would always go back aft and explain it to the Marine Engineers, so they understand where we are, what we’re doing and why they need to reduce the crew noise as much as possible for that reason.