Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes 24 Seconds
Simon: This is Simon Perry. Today is Monday the 24th of January 2022. We’re in Fareham and Gosport Borders and we’re here to interview Ron Gordon. So, Ron, what was the date and the place of your birth?
Ron: I was born 1947 in a little village called Aberfeldy in Perthshire in Scotland.
Simon: And what were the names of your parents, I guess married and unmarried?
Ron: My dad was Robert Gordon, and my mother was Effie Gordon. Her full name was Euphemia, but better known as Effie.
Simon: And what was the … do you remember the date and place of birth as well?
Ron: My dad was born in Gander in Newfoundland, and that was 1913. I can’t remember the dates, and my mother was born in Ullapool which is north Scotland in 1914.
Simon: Ok, thank you. And what did your parents do?
Ron: My dad was mainly a labourer for most of his life. He started life in Gander as a Lumberjack. One of the facts he used to tell to me, he used to walk to work … his dad used to walk to work 10 miles to get to work and 10 miles back. My dad used to walk about three or four miles to get to work and back again, so there was no transport for them in Gander, and when he used to court when he was out there in Gander, he used to walk three of four miles to see his girlfriend and three of four miles to go back so it sort of explains my DNA where I was always wanted to be outdoors and to be fit, so it comes from my dad. My mother, she married early in her life, and she was a housewife all her life.
Simon: And how was growing up for you?
Ron: It was difficult. We didn’t have much money coming into the house. My first recollection is when I was about four or five and we’d moved from Aberfeldy. We’d been to Ireland … I’ve been told we’d been in Ireland with my dad’s work, and they were across back in Scotland and up where Faslane Naval Base is there’s a little village north there called Garelochhead, and we used to live in a Nissen hut, in Garelochhead. So, I started school at age six, and then at the age of about nine or ten, we moved from there to a better Nissen hut in a place called Gully Bridge which was further away from Garelochhead towards Rhu, where I ended up eventually. I was there until about the age of nine, and then at the age of nine we got a brand-new Council house in Rhu and then from there it was living in Rhu until I joined the Navy at the age of 17.
Simon: And so do you remember the life in a Nissen hut much?
Ron: Again it was tough. Dad was always away so it was down to mum to bring us up, but she did her best for us. It was not the warmest of places in winter ‘cos the winters were cold then, especially up north, but I don’t remember much about it. Just going to school, back home, getting the kindling for the fire, doing all sorts of chores etc. Never did much homework. It was too busy working and keeping the place going. We had … eventually with seven siblings, I had an elder sister and then there was two younger brothers, a younger sister and then twin sisters who were born in later years.
Simon: So that was after the Nissen hut?
Ron: Yeah, oh this was after, yes.
Simon: So did it feel quite luxurious then moving into the Council flat.
Ron: Oh, I still remember it to this day, just couldn’t believe it. We walked into this Council house, and it was just me and my dad, and he picked up the keys and we walked in, and we went into the kitchen, and he said, “What’s this Ronald?” “I don’t know dad.” It was a gas cooker, and we didn’t know how to switch it on (laughs) so we had to go next door to ask the neighbours to come in and show us, but it was luxurious from what we’d been used to, so yeah it was tough but … then in Rhu it was two streets of Council houses. Everyone knew everyone else. It was a close-knit society. We all knew each other. The kids knew each other, we used to go out playing all the time up the woods, playing cowboys and Indians. Even up the Tip, getting an air rifle, shooting the rats and things. Down playing football. I played a lot of football, and so never much bothered about school, but you had to go to school, and it was a nice little school, the Primary School down in Rhu, but I was always one who kept himself to himself. I was a bit of an introvert. I preferred to be out walking somewhere rather than being in the company of other guys or girls, so whenever I get every chance I would be up the hills, walking up the back of our place and Rhu where you could actually go so far up you could look over the Firth of Clyde. You could see Arran on a good day, you could see the mountains behind, I just loved it, so I use to do a lot on my own.
6 minutes 16 seconds
Simon: Spectacular views about.
Ron: Oh brilliant yeah. And then my mother used to send me up there ‘cos it still wasn’t easy. My mother used to send me up to the farmer’s fields to pinch the turnips and stuff like that for the meal. My dad used to trap rabbits, snare rabbits. I think my mum and dad just lived from week to week and then he got a really good job up in the hydroelectric system when they were building the hydroelectric schemes in Scotland, and he was away for months up there but the money was good, so it kept the kids going.
Simon: And you were saying the Primary School was more ticking in and ticking out. What happened at schooling after that?
Ron: I went to the Senior Secondary. Now the Senior Secondary was a bit of a shock to me ‘cos I was only used to … the Council kids around us and we had to get on a bus at the bottom of the hill in Rhu and go to Helensburgh, which is about three miles away to the school and because it was a Senior Secondary School, there was very few private schools around so all the Doctor’s sons, Lawyer’s sons, all the well-off people from Helensburgh their kids all went to the same school and there was me and my lot and the other guys from the Council Estate were sort of looked down on, I would say, so it just encouraged me to do well at school. My mother encouraged me in that way ‘cos she was quite intelligent.
Simon: And so did you … exams and that kind of stuff or …?
Ron: Oh yeah. Again, it was difficult because being an introvert, I didn’t make friends easy, and the ones I did you know I stuck with them, and they were all Council guys that I made friends with. I didn’t make any friends with any of the posh kids, but my mother said she wanted me to get some ‘O’ levels and so she encouraged me to do that and by the time I left school I’d got eight ‘O’ levels, so she was pleased with that, but my dad wanted me to leave school at 16 to go and earn some money, so she insisted I stayed on. And then when I had finished my school, my dad told me to go and get myself on the Dole and we call it in Scotland the ‘Bru’, short for The Bureau, and I said, “No way dad, I’m not going to the middle of Helensburgh Square.” There’s a place called Colquhoun Square and I used to see these what I called ‘down and outs’ outside the Dole Office you know with their little brown bags with their drinks in it and I thought no, it’s not for me, so I found a little part-time job working for a Garden Centre in Rhu while I was waiting to join the Navy.
Simon: And you’d planned out the transition to the Navy before that then.
Ron: I tried to join the Merchant Navy ‘cos I wanted to be an Electrical Officer, but when I went down for the interview in London, another shock to the system, ‘cos my mother always said, “Beware of those English bastards, don’t trust them” and I found them very friendly (laughs). I got down to London and I hadn’t done my homework. Then when they showed me ‘what ship of the line is this?’ I thought oh, I don’t know, and it was some of the photographs they’d sent me in the information. And then when they heard about all the sport that I was in to, badminton, rugby, football, anything sporting I would do, they said, “Well, it’s not for you because when you’re on a Merchant Navy ship, you’re away for months and you don’t get the chance to do any of that so you’re probably not the right career for you”, so I went back and then I was just out walking down the little shore at Rhu one day and when HMS Vanguard, the Battleship was coming up the Gare Loch, up the Clyde and up the Gare Loch to go for the Breaker’s Yard up near Faslane, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do. The next minute I was up their Recruiting Office in Glasgow.
10 minutes 38 seconds
Simon: Right, so that one ship was the turning point.
Ron: Yeah, it was the turning point. There was also a Submarine Base up there, a Submarine Depot ship up there called the Maidstone, and we used to see these sailors in uniform in Helensburgh and I never particularly liked them ‘cos they were always scruffy and smelly, but when I saw the Vanguard, I though no, that’s got to be it. I was desperate to get away from the village ‘cos there was no future there. I wanted something different so that’s why I went to the Recruitment Office.
Simon: And you knocked on the door and said, “Sign me up.”
Ron: And as soon as they heard I got eight ‘O’ Levels, they said, “Oh, do you want to go through for Supplementary Officer?” I said, “No” I said, “not with my background. My mum can’t afford anything like you know all the uniform and all the …” ‘cos I’d heard about what the life as an Officer required you to do, the Mess life, and I said, “No, we can’t afford that” so I went in as an Apprentice.
Simon: Could you explain a bit about that you had to buy your own personal uniforms, did you?
Ron: Yeah, you got an allowance when you joined, but if you wanted to get the best uniforms, you needed to … they gave you some forms, they cost a bit extra. Same as when I got promoted SD. You still needed a bit extra to pay for the best uniform, a uniform that was going to last, ‘cos if you were going to BRNC Dartmouth, for your Officer training, you didn’t want to be the odd one out with a tatty old uniform, a cheap one from wherever. Marks and Sparks or somewhere like that rather than Gieves and Hawkes, so it was a decision I’d already knew I wouldn’t want to go through, and I still am an introvert, but I was shy, and I didn’t want to get involved in that sort of that career path. I wanted to go and get away, be an Apprentice, learn my trade and just take it from there. No ambition, just get the hell out of that village as quick as I could.
Simon: But then learning a trade.
Ron: Yeah, ‘cos by that time my father and mother were having problems in their marriage, and it wasn’t a comfortable place to be at home, and so I just wanted to get out.
Simon: What’s the process when you go and you say, “Hey, I want to sign up.” They say, “Great, here’s the papers.” Is it there and then you sign papers, or …?
Ron: No, it was … you had to do a test. It was fairly basic arithmetic test and then they said, “Right, with your ‘O’ Levels and the test you can go through” and as I knew … ‘cos I’d left it so late ‘cos I tried for Merchant Navy first, I’d gone over the age by the time I’d have joined them it was over the age of 17 ½ which is the Apprentice, what they called the Artificer Apprentice Route, but they’d introduced a new adult entry called Mechanician Apprentice and so they said, “We can get you in as that and then you agree that that’s what you want to do” but then you were told that they would contact you and you will then be given a date to join HMS Raleigh which is a Naval Training Base down in the Plymouth area, Tor Point, and then you start there and then because we are Mechanician Apprentices, you had three days, or two days as to acquaint, just to get used to it and then you made your mind up and then signed on the dotted line for nine years.
Simon: Ok, so a sort of try before you buy, ok.
Ron: Yeah, ‘cos it’s a big commitment. They’re going to be investing in money to get you a good trade and also you’re signing your life up for nine years, so it’s two days of it when they were nice as pie, very nice people. Especially Petty Officer Petty, I still remember his name.
15 minutes 2 seconds
Simon: And then after you signed it changed a bit?
Ron: Well I still remember you got the papers there and you sign up for the nine years, and then Petty Officer Petty said, “Right, that’s it, you’re in the Navy now but there’s one thing you have to do, you have to sign here to declare yourself a smoker” because as a smoker you would get these cheap cigarettes and I said, “I’m sorry but I don’t smoke so I can’t sign it Sir.” We used to call the Petty Officer Sir ‘cos we were new entries, and he says, “No here. Listen Gordon, just sign here.” I said, “No, I can’t sign it” ‘cos my mum had told me never to sign for things that you … and so “I’m a non-smoker.” He said, “Listen laddie, you can continue to be a non-smoker but if you sign on here declaring you’re a smoker, you will get three coupons every month and each coupon gives you 100 cigarettes and if you don’t want to smoke the cigarettes, you can sell them. There’s three coupons for 10 shillings.” “Ok then” (laughs). But that’s the things I remember, you know? I didn’t have any nervousness about signing away nine years, I just wanted to be in the Navy. I just thought that was funny in trying to make me sign on the dotted line that I was a smoker.
Simon: Yeah, your mum’s voice coming through there.
Ron: Yeah, and that was it. You started your six weeks training, so you saw the other side of Petty Officer Petty then. Yeah, it was good.
Simon: And have you stayed in contact with anyone from those days?
Ron: There was a guy there, Andy Clark who was the same birthday as me, 12th April ’47, joined on the same day as me and he’s a member of the Submariners Association Gosport Branch, so occasionally we meet up and I found when I was playing golf a couple of years ago there was a guy there who had been in Raleigh at the same time as me but our paths never crossed ‘cos there was about six classes going through at the same time, but he joined submarines as well and he was in the same type of submarine as me, ‘Bombers’, but our paths never crossed, and we played for the same football team up in HMS Neptune at the same time but while I was away on patrol he was alongside so you’d play football for the team and then he would go away at sea and I’d be back in the sea. They named all the team, so you meet people that were there at the same time you know, but fewer now as we get older.
Simon: With the Merchant Navy, can I take you back to that? What was the reason that you’d set your sight on that?
Ron: ‘Cos I fancied doing … it would teach me a trade. It was electrical and it seemed that once you’d signed up you’d go straight back up to Stirling University and you’d do a University degree and then in between that you’d be doing bits of training to be in the Merchant Navy. I fancied doing that because it was in Scotland, it was furthering my education and at the end of it if I didn’t fancy it then I had a route out. But they found me out (laughs).
Simon: What you were saying before about being almost passing out with the path of the other guy that you were training with. It seems extraordinary that that can happen and that you would miss each other but then …
Ron: We were living in the same Mess as well, but we never met each other and even after we had been on the Polaris submarines for so long, and then he left to go on commercial submarines and I got promoted away to commercial submarines, and we were in HMS Dolphin at the same time, but we never ever met.
Simon: How weird. You said you got married. What age did you get married?
Ron: That was 1970, so I was twenty … I can’t remember. Twenty-six.
Simon: And that was when you were on the … not in a submarine.
Ron: No, I was on the training. I’d joined the Bulwark, done my 18 months training there and we went back to Mechs Course, which is your Trade Course, and while I was there one of my friends used to … I used to go up to Scotland, back to Scotland for a week’s leave with my mum, and then the other week I’d go down to Wigan and stay with this mate of mine for a week and while I was there he would take me out and around, show me the sights of Wigan, the nightclubs etc and I met my first wife when I was there, in Wigan.
20 minutes 27 seconds
Simon: Right, and how long were you married before you went into the submarines?
Ron: So, that was ’70 and I went into submarines in … I went into submarines not long after that, about another two years and then I was in submarines and by that time when I went and married my first wife, we then got a Council house in Wigan, and I was working up in Faslane Surface Fleet and then eventually got a … I volunteered for submarines, and I got a married quarter in Helensburgh, and she came up to the married quarter and joined me up there.
Photographer: Sorry, got to ask but had you ever been at sea before you joined the Navy?
Ron: Well, I’d been at sea. I lived by the seaside. I didn’t know how to swim so I never went in the sea, didn’t fancy that, swimming in the sea it was too cold up in Scotland, but I used to go on our holidays. Our summer holidays was mum taking us on the paddle steamers around the Clyde, so that was the only time we got to sea.
Photographer: And do you remember the first time you pulled out on a Navy ship?
Ron: Oh yeah, brilliant.
Simon: I’ll do that on the thing. That’s a good question.
Ron: I remember it but I was down the engines with the boiler rooms when it happened you know, so didn’t see much.
Photographer: And what was the first …
Ron: The Bulwark, a Commander Carrier.
Simon: So, how long were you a surface sailor for then?
Ron: Six years, ‘cos I did two ships.
Simon: That’s just backup by the way.
Ron: The Bulwark was … it’s called ‘The Rusty B’ ‘cos it was falling apart, but it was a great education, brilliant. There was (coughs) … we joined Collingwood to do our Electrical training after Raleigh. Did six months there and then four of us got drafted to HMS Bulwark. Four Apprentices and we got down into the Workshop, Heavy Electrical Workshop, and the Petty Officer was waiting for us, and he said, “Welcome lads, I must tell you now I hate Mech Apps. You’re taking the short route to promotion. I detest it, so you’re going to work for your living.” So, he put two of us in Engine Rooms and two of us in Boiler Rooms and he just said to me and my mate, “I want you to clear the earths in the Boiler Rooms” so we and Bloodrie went off to do that. Blood was a lot older than me. He’d been around a bit, and we got in the Engine Room and after a day or so he said, “I’ve sussed this out Ron. There’s an easy way to do this.” I said, “What’s that?” Well, he didn’t call me Ron, it was Jock. He said, “Just watch this” he says, and he opened the distribution board and he said, “Now look at these light fittings in the Boiler. You keep an eye on them and I’m going to do something.” I said, “What are you going to do Blood?” He said, “Don’t you worry about it” so I’m looking at these light fittings and one of them blows off the bulkhead. He said, “There you go, go and get a new light fitting and fit it up. The earths gone.” What he’d done, he’d got a pair of pliers and stuck them across the positive and negative in the buzz board, which blew out the earth, so it short-circuited it. “So, what happens if there’s no earth?” “Well, we’ll worry about that when it happens” (laughs). Yeah, Bulwark was brilliant because within six months of being on there, I was bringing on shore supplies onto the ship, power and generators, doing all that sort of stuff. Really good.
Simon: If you want a break and get some water, that’s totally fine.
Ron: If I can, yeah.
Simon: I’ll get this stuff out of the way for you.
Photographer: When you said the boat was a rust bucket, did that give you a sort of … ‘cos I know when I drove cars that were terrible for years I would … you sort of get to know how to drive something terrible, but driving something nice is really easy.
25 minutes 16 seconds
Ron: Oh it was brilliant, yeah, ‘cos there was always something going wrong, and I got through all the different departments, and learned my trade very quickly, you know, before I went back to Collingwood ‘cos the other thing about it was that I liked was that I was part of the ship’s first football team so whenever we pulled into port, we’d go off and play matches against other teams. When we went down to Australia, so there I am, 19-year-old, down in Australia, just joined the Navy 12 months before, it was my dream you know? Visit Australia, playing against the top teams of Australia. We played against the team that won the Australia Cup, we lost to them 3-1, and then we played against the top team La Trobe in Australia and beat them 1-0. Then after that, every time we played a game, a family would adopt you and take you home for the weekend, so I spent, you know, a couple of weekends at home with Australian families and after one of them, the last one, a guy said to me, he said, “How do you like life here in Australia?” I said, “It’s lovely isn’t it, it’s brilliant. Completely different to what we’re used to.” He said, “How do you fancy living here?” “Well,” I said, “it’s a long time away. I’ve got nine years to do.” He said, “We can get you a job as an Electrician. All you’ve got to do is jump ship, and we’ll set you out an identity up.”
Simon: How could they do that? How did they do the …?
Ron: Well, you just went missing, and after the ship went away and then they would do some documents for you, but what made me … the common-sense part of me said no, because I remembered when we arrived in Brisbane, waiting on the side of the jetty were two guys who were with Policemen, and they’d jumped ship about four years previously and they gave themselves up because they had no future. It was all very well while they were working for that company. I forgot to explain the par was, we’ll get you a job, but you’ll play for our football team.
Simon: Right, and then after that …
Ron: It was very tempting at the time but …
Photographer: It must have seemed really exotic to … well, it is really exotic.
Ron: So, we went to Singapore and Goa and everywhere like that. We were one of the last ships to sail through the Suez Canal before it shut, and we went into Aden. In Aden, we were in the NAAFI and were sat there having a beer when one of the local terrorists came in and threw a grenade into the NAAFI and it exploded but nobody got killed. He got killed by a Patrol that were wandering around at the time, just at the right time as he escaped. We played football against an Army team, way out in the desert at this Army camp. We were on the way back at night and we were told to keep quiet because some of these footballers and smokers just didn’t know how to keep quiet, especially when they had had a few drinks, so they were lighting cigarettes up and the old Army guys were pulling their hair out because this is dangerous territory we’re in and sure enough four weeks later after we’d sailed from there, there was an Army Patrol that went through there and they got ambushed and all got slaughtered, so it’s just being at the right time at the right place and the wrong time at the wrong place. It was an education. That’s definitely the best move I ever made was joining the Navy ‘cos I just grew up so quick from being this shy little boy. I wouldn’t say boo to a goose. You know, when I was in Primary school, if I was walking down the road and there was one of the girls coming up the other way, I’d cross to the other side of the road, so I didn’t have to talk to her. It was that bad (laughs).
Simon: But then exposure to the world changed all that.
Ron: Well exposure to the Navy and having a really good education, and not just education in that sense of the word but the ways of the world education as well. Growing up quickly amongst guys who were a lot older than me. Yeah, really good.
Simon: And what did that process of having your eyes opened to the rest of the world. Was it sort of, ‘Oh my goodness, this world is incredible’ or what was that transition like?
30 minutes 10 seconds
Ron: It was very slow really. I just got used to the travel and it’s always been there ever since. I always wanted to travel, ever since then. I wanted to get out of Scotland to start with but ever since … all the time I was in the Navy when I was on leave we’d always go somewhere because I wanted to see what I could. And you got paid for it, you know, I was in the Navy.
Simon: So, what shifted you from that? From all those great experiences to want to be on the submarines then?
Ron: Well, I went from Bulwark. I did … another experience, my first time at flying was we were in Hong Kong, we’d just played against Hong Kong football team and beat them 3-0 and I scored two of the goals, so I was really chuffed, and the Captain was really pleased …
Photographer: I’m glad you remember the scores from all these games …
Ron: Oh yeah. It was under floodlights you know in Hong Kong, you know, and a big crowd. There were some players there from the English 4th Division, 3rd Division, that had come across to play for them. We had a brilliant team and two days later I was flying back from there to start my Mechs Course and I didn’t want to do that. This was part of my career that I didn’t want to do ‘cos I had to go back and do this training. So, we flew back on New Year’s Day, so our leave was stopped. So, we didn’t go ashore and celebrate so we’re catching this flight at half past five in the morning, a MOD flight, and it was British Eagle, an old airline, British Eagle. It’s propellors. It had to fuel at Ceylon and then we had another fuelling stop on the way. But the one at Ceylon, we got off and we were allowed to go into the café that was by the airport there and I was in there when this guy came up to me and he says, “Oh Gordon, you remember me don’t you?” “Oh, hello sir.” It was the Captain. He’d been relieved as well. He was flying back to the UK. He says, “Did you enjoy yourself on board?” I said, “I loved it sir.” He said, “Yep, you were brilliant in the football team” he said, “but I’m not so sure I enjoyed you being on my Captain’s table on defaulters though” ‘cos I used to get in to a little bit of trouble.
Simon: That’s … you get pulled up in front of …
Ron: Yeah, the Commander first for the minor offenses. More serious offences you went on in front of the Captain. Once I’d started losing my shyness, I started pushing boundaries and all the men push boundaries when you’re in the Navy and you got to say, “yes sir, no sir, will do sir”. I asked too many questions. I sooned learned you can’t do it. But yeah, it was good, and so I got back, did my Mechs Course at Collingwood, two years at Collingwood. That was exceptionally good and then I joined HMS Hermes, another aircraft carrier. That was another good part of my career because I became a Petty Officer then, so I went from the Junior Rates ranks up into the Petty Officer Mess. I went up to the Petty Officers Mess but then I became the junior Petty Officer, so I was the dog’s body. I was doing all the … you know they’d come off … most of them were Flight Deck Crew. They’d come off, they’re flying at 3 o’clock in the morning, wake me up in my bunk, get me out to pour them a pint from the Bar ‘cos they were off until midday until their next fly, so I was always being treated as a Junior Rate.
Simon: But everyone had been through that.
Ron: Yeah, everyone’s been through that, you know, so you just had to get used to it, and so I did I think it was about 18 months on the Hermes, and during that time on the Hermes, I did a bit of … I was doing power line and generators ‘cos that was an AC ship now so the Bulwark was DC, old controls, the Hermes was more modern, AC, and I’d done some recruiting stuff for … they took some photographs and videos of doing things on the switchboards ‘cos they were going to use that for recruitment, and they promised me that when I put in my next drafting preference card … that’s when you put in where you want to go next after your current post finishes, that I would get my preference. Wrong. I put in for Frigate West Indies. Everyone put in for Frigate West Indies. Second to that I put something operating out south, ‘cos I wanted to go south, so they sent me to Faslane. This is Surface Fleet, working in the Workshop at Faslane. So, there I was in amongst all these submariners, working, doing the same work as them, working in the Dry Dock, working in the middle of winter. The wind whistling through outside on the submarine, doing all sorts of different work, alongside these submariners. And then as I got used to them after about a year, I just thought this is something different. They’re completely different to the Surface Fleet, completely different.
36 minutes 2 seconds
Simon: How would you describe the difference?
Ron: Well, I would say if you’ve ever seen any of these Navy programs on the Surface Fleet, there’s them and us. There’s definite between the Officers and then the Senior Rates, and then there’s the Junior Rates. In submarines to me it was seamless. They just seemed to get on so well together.
Simon: Even on shore?
Ron: Yeah, even when they went on shore, together when they went on leave, you know, when they went out for the night, the Officers would mix with the Junior Rates and I thought, what’s this all about? They still called them Sir, but they were all mixing together socially, and when the work ethic was just tremendous. There was no ifs and buts. If you were asked to work right through to midnight, to get this defect fixed, you would do it and you didn’t ask for any extra time off, you just did it, and I just thought it was brilliant. I volunteered for submarines then.
Simon: And that was because you could see it being working as a team.
Ron: Yeah, I just likes it better than what I’d been used to. And I realised then that, you know, my days of playing at that standard of football in the big ships would be gone if I was on the submarines, but it was something I could give up because of the different way they seemed to operate. It was just completely different.
Photographer: What do you think engendered that difference? What created that difference in …
Ron: It’s because of the environment you’re in. Most of the work I did was on conventional submarines and there are 70 guys there in a small tube and you’ve got to work together. You’re relying on every single person. Every single person on that submarine has got to do their job and they’ve got to do it properly or they could be the one that sinks that submarine if they don’t do it, whereas on a big ship, if you’re not doing your job, you know, it won’t cause any harm, whereas this … and the other big thing I found later on was that when I was on the big ships, you knew all about your own little empire.115 Electricians in this one Mess, you knew all those guys and what we did and where we operated but you didn’t know what’s going on in the rest of the ship. You hadn’t got a clue. And you never got involved in it. You were never asked to go out and do … find out about what happened in the Flight Deck, what happened in the Engine Rooms and Boiler Rooms, what they did. You just did your own thing, whereas if you’ve got a submarine, you have to learn every single thing about that submarine in case you’re the one man that’s in that compartment when something goes wrong.
Simon: Right. You can pick up that when you were chatting to the …
Ron: Well, I didn’t pick all of that up, but I just got this feeling that it was a different world. It was a different Navy. It was completely different.
Simon: And you could just say … so is that when you fill out the form you say. “I don’t want to go on Frigates …”
Ron: … I went to see my [inaudible] and said, “look I want to volunteer for submarines” and he was a submariner and he said, “Well, you’re making a good decision there” and another thing was that I’d found out that the position I’d been drafted into at Faslane … I’d been in there about six months and the guy I’d relieved, taken over from, was a Chief Petty Officer Gordon, and he’d gone out to the Far East to spend three years in Singapore, and I thought that sounds good if I follow him. Then after a year, the ship that was out there, the Submarine Depot ship that was out there then, was no more, so there wasn’t that position out there, so I didn’t have that position to go to next, so I thought well I’m going to go back into surface … back to sea on another surface ship and I just don’t fancy that. I’ve worked amongst all the submariners, I fancy this life, so that’s why I volunteered.
40 minutes 11 seconds
Simon: And that’s … you then have to go back and do training for the submariner part.
Ron: I put in for diesel submarines, Portsmouth or Plymouth, and they gave be Polaris submarines in Faslane. Somebody was having a laugh (laughs) so I ended up on ‘Bombers’.
Simon: Ok. So, what is the training from being a Surface Fleet to submarines?
Ron: Firstly you have to learn all about submarines down at Dolphin. It wasn’t a long course, but you firstly had to do your submarine skip training which I enjoyed thoroughly. Then you had to do your basic submarine qualifying course, which is learning all about how submarines operate and the class of submarine you are on, you learn about that. You don’t learn the detail of what you’re going to do in that submarine because then you went from there up to the Polaris School where I learnt how to be an In Watch Keeper in the Missile Compartment ‘cos that what I was drafted to, and what my responsibilities would be in there. Once I completed the training, I went as Spare Crew in Faslane. A Spare Crew is you’re doing jobs in the Workshop, assisting people onboard submarines, assisting people in different jobs. It delegates you to do these things, but the understanding is if suddenly somebody on a seagoing submarine goes sick or is injured and can’t be at sea with that submarine, one of you is going to take that place and within two or three months of me being a Spare Crew, I was suddenly on a Bomber that was due to go to sea on patrol.
Simon: Is that a way of them sort of easing you into the process then?
Ron: Well, they could have just drafted me straight into a submarine, they could have done. They wouldn’t have eased me into it. It was just that I was lucky that I was on Spare Crew, and I was married then as well. In the married quarters so it was nice to go home every evening, but I was Spare Crew, so I spent a few weeks across in Coulport in this submarine while we were waiting to go to sea ‘cos I wasn’t a decision whether we go to sea straight away because the Renown was due … it was HMS Renown, was due to go into refit. The refit is in Rosyth had been extended because there had been strikes in Rosyth so the submarine that was due to come out wasn’t ready to come out, so they decided to send Renown on a short patrol. Normally you go on an eight-week patrol, but they decided just to send it on a four-week patrol. So, I went to sea on this submarine for four weeks and in that four weeks, I had … my boss saw me and he said, “You have to pass your Part 3 in that four weeks.” Part 3 is when you learn that the layout of the submarine, what everyone does in each compartment, and then you get an examination by the First Lieutenant, the second in command of the submarine, and you have to pass out before you become a qualified submariner, so I had to do that.
Simon: Was that shorter than normal then, the four weeks?
Ron: That was crammed in a bit more yeah, ‘cos normally you get away for eight weeks and you’ve got that time to be able to complete it before you finish your patrol. At the same time, I had to boff up and learn how to pass my … I had to go from a Petty Officer to a Chief, so I had to learn how to do an exam, so I passed the Board. So, you sit in front of a Selection Board, a Senior Officer and a Senior Rating and they examine you and they either decide whether you’ve passed or you’ve failed, so I did all that as well.
Simon: Both of those in parallel.
Ron: Yeah. So, I passed my part 3 in the last week when I was at sea on the Renown, and then once we were back alongside, they then arranged my Board and I passed my Board when we got alongside, so I became a Chief Petty Officer then.
Simon: That’s a tremendous change over that short period isn’t it?
Ron: But the one thing I really remember about Renown to this day is that this is my first trip on a Bomber, and my job was in the In Watch Keeping area and one of the Supervisors in there, my bosses, he had been … he was a Chief Electrician so he wasn’t a trades person but a Chief Electrician, and he’d been on the Vanguard, the ship that I saw sailing up to Faslane for the Breakers Yard, so he used to tell me all these bits about it so it was really good.
Photographer: And how was it joining … ‘cos obviously you were saying how tight the crew are together, how was it being the new guy in that … the new man?
Ron: They welcome you. Yeah, you’re in there, you get to know the guys, and your Part 3 is a great way. You’re going round the submarine, you’re meeting everyone, and you soon get to know as many of them as you can in that short period of time because it was full on. You’re doing … in the Missile Compartment you’re looking after the environment that the missiles sit in, so you’re keeping them safe, so they’re ready whenever to be launched. God forbid. That’s what your job is. So, you’re doing that so you’re four hours on, eight hours off and when you’re off watch, you’re either sleeping in your bunk or you’re around the submarine learning all about the other parts of the submarine and at the same time as boffing up for my Chief Petty Officer’s Board, which was very important to me as well.
46 minutes 14 seconds
Simon: So going to Chief Petty Officer is something that you apply for, and they say, “Yes you can” and then you …
Ron: part of the Mechanicians career was that you got to Petty Officer automatically, but then you had to pass a Board to get to your Chief, and then you had to pass another Board to get to your Charge Chief. You’d get there eventually but you had to take this Board, so it wasn’t automatic all the way, so you had to put some effort into it. So, it was part of the promotion structure. And that’s the one thing again I realised that by ending up in Bombers, … by that time I still hadn’t got my ambitions. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I’m newly married, got kids at home, that’s all I was interested in was go to sea, do my two months away and then coming back and seeing my family and see how they’re getting on. Spend as much time with them. I didn’t really think about the structure of what I was going to do in the future. I never really did anything about that until later on when I was on Resolution, which was the next submarine, so I did my four weeks on Renown, I did what I had to do, came off there and then I went and joined Resolution.
Photographer: What year did you join Renown?
Ron: It was ’71. ’71 I think it was. No, I joined Spare Crew in ’71. I joined Renown June ’72 and October ’72 I joined Resolution and I was on there for six years. In the end, I did 10 patrols away between Renown and Resolution.
Simon: And when you’re not on a patrol, you’re back at Base or … it’s not like they’d say, “Oh, go and have a holiday.”
Ron: No, it’s … the routine was there are four submarines in all. One’s in Refit all the time, one’s in a big D and D, another one’s alongside …
Simon: What’s the definition?
Ron: An Engineering Development. You’re just doing maintenance period, but lots of big deep maintenance, a deep maintenance period. And so, you had the one submarine that would go on patrol, and once it was out on a certain area, it then becomes the submarine that’s on patrol and the other submarine’s coming back. So, they never pass each other, they don’t say anything ‘cos one has got to be dived and not detected. Once that’s happened, then the other one can come in on surface and come alongside. So, if you’ve come off patrol, you’d come into Coulport, which is the Armament Depot where they keep the missiles under the hill opposite Faslane. Massive big Depot. All these rockets are under the hill. You’d offload so many missiles. You were never allowed to say how many you offloaded ‘cos it was all kept secret, and then the next five days you’re handing over to the other crew, and the other crew then would go on crew, and you would go off crew. That on crew would then take the submarine back round to Faslane and then they would start to do all the maintenance and you would support them. As the off crew, you’d come onboard and support them ‘cos you knew what defects … you’d reported all the defects. You’d know what defects had to be sorted so you’d go onboard to help them. Then after they’d gone through maybe a month alongside, or two months, the other submarine is due to come back, that submarine goes out and you’re left there as your crew. Your opposite crew have gone to sea now and they’re away for two months. So, you then go on two weeks leave and then when you come back, you’re then working within the Workshops there, so you’re doing day work. And you do all sorts of different work. Some of the stuff we used to do, we used to work for this Officer, the guy who I worked for when I was in Surface Fleet, my Divisional Officer we worked for him ‘cos he was working for a charity organisation, and they would get all these old toys come in we’d do them up and then the Lions Groups would give them to the kids like myself. Myself had been in the Council Estate, ‘cos that’s what we used to get from the Lions Group and we had Christmas presents, they used to bring round the parcel to us. So, we used to do work like that. And you’d sometimes finish at midday and go home, so you spent a lot of time at home.
51 minutes 45 seconds
Simon: Because when you’re on the submarine, it’s so intense that you’ve got to have a balance with that.
Ron: Yeah, and you’re not in contact with your family. There’s only one way traffic and that’s into the submarine. There are not any communications coming out, and once a week you would get a what you called a ‘family gram’ come in, so that’s a telegram of no more than 40 words that’s been screened by people to make sure there’s nothing bad news in there, and you get that once a week. You open it up and your family have … you hear what’s been going on. It’s raining again in Helensburgh, things like that.
Simon: I guess the messages as you said there can’t be something to rise your emotions.
Ron: You can’t say ‘little Johnny’s dead.’ Johnny might be the dog but you can’t say that, so they take stuff like that out. They censor it.
Simon: Do they almost get training, the families get training in what they can and can’t say or …
Ron: They don’t know what gets censored, but you used to tell them, don’t put any bad news in there and don’t put any cryptic stuff in there. Just say ‘kids doing well at school’, and that sort of stuff. It was just to know that everything’s ok.
Simon: But that was important to have that contact.
Ron: Oh yeah, and if you didn’t get that family gram, people used to get really depressed, obviously because they think something has badly gone wrong.
Simon: Right. If I’m not hearing anything, then goodness knows what’s happening. And so, could we talk a little bit about the family side now of with you being away for two months, that’s an unusual thing for a family structure isn’t it although you were saying that when your dad was working, he was away for a long time. So, is it a similar thing to that or is it different?
Ron: No, there was more support. ‘Cos you’re in a Married Quarter Estate, there were similar people in similar situations. There’d be groups that got together, the school kids were in similar situations as well, so it was a big, big family. I mean it takes a special person, but you know they get on with it.
Simon: There’s a sort of the combined parenting your wife did and then the combined support from the other people round the Base.
Ron: Yeah, but it gradually got on top of my ex-wife. It just became too much for her ‘cos when we … I was on Resolution for six years. Four years of that was in Faslane. The last two years we went across to refit in Rosyth, and when we were coming to the end of that and were going to go back in the cycle, she said she wanted me to leave the Navy and I said, “No.” I said, “Why do you want me to leave the Navy?” and she said, “I want to see more of you and the family.” I said, “Well, I want to see more of the family, but I want to finish what I’m doing now and then I’ll be having a shore job” and she wouldn’t have it so we ended up going our separate ways.
Simon: I guess that having that sort of closeness of the community around as well, can be a benefit and a burden sometimes, of having …
55 minutes
Ron: Oh, there’s a lot of chit chat. The one time we … when we came out of refit, you then have to, when you’re ready, go and sail across to America and be examined by the Yanks, and what they’re doing there is doing this thing called ‘Dayso’ is checking that you’re fit to handle nuclear weapons, and so …
Simon: The sort of psychological side?
Ron: Practical side as well. We were the port crew, so we took the submarine out there. We went into Port Canaveral, met the Yanks there, then every day you’d go out for an exercise and you’re exercising that you’re firing the weapons. You’re not actually firing the weapons, but they throw all sorts of defects at you, and they see how you react. The prime aim is that you’ve got to get all those weapons fired off within 15 minutes of the signal to launch them, and they throw all sorts of stuff in there to try and put you off just to see how you handle it. So that goes on for about 10 days and then the other crew flew out. They then took over and we went on leave. I went up to see my sister that I hadn’t seen for 16 years in Racine in Wisconsin. That was all organised, the flights were all organised, everything was paid for. You know, they did all that for me, while the other crew did exactly the same thing. They were put through the mill, and then at the end of that period, they then had the task of firing a real rocket, just to check that all the systems worked.
Simon: It’s a rocket without a war head.
Ron: Yeah.
Photographer: Sort of those early ’70 times, were really pretty tense Cold War wise weren’t they?
Ron: Oh yeah, well we just missed the Cuba crisis. That must have been really tense onboard because things build up. You get a signal every week come in to fire your weapons and if the Captain and the First Lieutenant decipher it and then they say the say it’s a weapon system readiness test, so it’s just a test. That can come in at any time, so they’re just checking how the crew react. It can be the middle of night, it can be at breakfast, it can be middle of the day. It just comes in at any time.
Simon: And you’ve got no idea if it’s real or not until …
Ron: Until they tell you. You’re sent to Action Stations and then they say weapon system readiness test and then you go through the motions of firing the weapons. There’s a simulation system that you go through. You’re at a certain depth.
Photographer: Did it make you acutely aware of that sort of threat or do you think it becomes …
Ron: No, because when you get … when you go on to Bombers, you have to get personally vetted and they do give you a thorough going over about asking you what would you do in a situation if it ever came to that, you know, about pressing the button and they do check that mentally you’re right for it. Also check that you’re not going to be blackmailed, that you won’t give away secrets and all that sort of stuff. And then when you’re at sea, now you try and imagine it. In the Senior Rates Mess Deck, it was I’d say one and a half times the length of this room, this area here, so another half on there …
Simon: 10 foot or so.
Ron: … and then you’d have probably back to the end of that wall there, and that’s the Senior Rates Mess. You’re in that Mess, it’s where you eat, you talk to your mates, you socialise, you watch your movies etc. You don’t feel any emotion ‘cos you’re down at 400 feet or whatever, 300 feet. You go to weapon system readiness test now and again, you go and do your Watch Keeping, you do your hobbies, you do your fitness and all that sort of stuff. It becomes a routine, and you don’t realise what you’ve got. You forget all about it, but the only time I ever used to become very aware of it was because I was in a Missile Compartment, we used to do these … what happens, you’ve got this rocket that sits inside this metal tube, and it’s ready there waiting to be fired. There’s a gas generator on the side which if it ignites, it sends this hot air underneath that mixes with water and causes expanding steam and ‘zzzit’ the rocket is launched. So, whilst you’re at sea and you’re not launching the weapons, they’ve got four massive, big liquid springs underneath there which the rockets can bounce on to stop any vibration affecting the gimble of the gyro in the rocket head. So, every once a patrol, I used to have to get into each tube, go in there with this liquid spring gun and the other guy would sit outside and he would pressurise it and I had to attach it to the liquid spring to get it up to 19,000 psi, just to check that it would work ‘cos when you launch, you have to make those springs rigid so it’s a rigid platform. And you’re under there and you’re looking up at four massive rocket nozzles and you can see little bits of stuff dripping down from it and that’s when you realise, oh my God, this is for real. That’s the only time.
60 minutes 53 seconds
Simon: And they are armed and ready to go?
Ron: Oh they’re armed and ready to go, yeah.
Simon: So, how long does it take to get out of that thinking of ‘oh my goodness’. I guess you just put it to the side of your mind and get back to watching movies and doing that stuff.
Ron: Oh yeah, you just have to. You can’t think about it all the time, you’ve just got to do your job. And that’s what it’s all about, it’s just doing your job and keeping the submarine ‘cos what we celebrated recently was 50 years at sea undetected.
Simon: Yeah, that’s phenomenal.
Ron: Yeah, never been detected at sea despite the Vigil program that came on. A load of crap but good drama, but you know we never got detected. When that submarine’s out on patrol, there’s only about four people who knew where the submarine was. The Navigating Officer, maybe his Senior Rate, and then the First Lieutenant and the Captain would know exactly where the submarine was. The rest of us just knew we were heading north ‘cos the water was getting colder.
Simon: You could feel that inside could you?
Ron: Well there’s water that comes through the submarine. It comes in from externally that the guys back aft knew that the water was getting colder, so you knew you were going north.
Simon: So, it’s not that you turn the taps on and it’s feeling chilly, it’s …
Ron: No, you’re heading north. But you don’t really want to know anyway. If the weather gets rough up top, you just go further down to 600 feet, and you’re stable and the only time you come up is when you have to do the exercises to launch your weapons or you come up to stream a wire that stays underneath the water that gets the communications from the Headquarters, Northwood and that was it.
Simon: Northwood, that NATO Headquarters was it?
Ron: Well it’s the UK Headquarters.
Simon: With the life onboard, how important was … my understanding is that all watches are kept on UK time. Is that right?
Ron: Yeah.
Simon: And how important is the food?
Ron: Food is very important, extremely important. It was the social event of the day. On the Bombers and even more so on the diesel boats, ‘cos you’re in such cramped conditions, you know there wasn’t much to look forward to. On the Bombers, you had all these different things you can get up to, but on the diesel boats they were different. So, food was very important.
Simon: So, everyone loves the Chef, if they’re producing the good stuff.
Ron: Yeah, most of the time, yeah.
Simon: And now when you’re not onboard, does food seem less important than …
Ron: Yeah, it’s just … it’s where you socialise. You socialise when you’re eating, you’re talking to each other, you’re talking about what the movies is going to be that evening or who we’re playing games against that evening. Are we doing the Sod’s Opera, how’s that going?
Simon: What’s the Sod’s Opera?
Ron: It’s when we put on effectively a pantomime. We did one on Resolution where it was absolutely brilliant, but it caused a few problems because some of the guys dressed up as women and they looked very attractive (laughs). And they get together, and they just do … we go in the four ends of the forward compartment …
Simon: I was wondering where the Theatre was.
Ron: Yeah, it’s the big Junior Rates Dining Hall and the guys would do their act whatever it was, Sod’s Opera there and this time it was ‘Blackie’ Blackmoor, Gordon Blackmoor was on the organ which was operated by a vacuum cleaner blowing the air into it (laughs).
Simon: What do they make the pipes out of for the organ?
Ron: Oh I can’t remember.
Simon: Is that someone in the Machine Shop?
Ron: They made them up, I don’t know how they did it, but they did it, and so yeah, you just make your own entertainment.
65 minutes 9 seconds
Simon: I mean you’ve got the lathes or whatever down there. Someone comes up with an idea, someone showing impetus and …
Ron: You’ve got 160 odd plus guys there, someone’s going to come up with different ideas for things to keep you amused. You have a rough idea of how long you’re away for, but you don’t exactly until the Captain comes on the broadcast and saying we’re on our way home. And then if you get told that you’ve got an extra week out ‘cos the other submarine’s not ready, that’s when morale just hits rock bottom, ‘cos you’re so ready for going home and then suddenly it’s another week away. You’ve been out there for eight weeks but suddenly that week seems a long way away, you know.
Simon: How then do you get your head back in to you’ve got a week to do. Everyone sort of slowly moves into a …
Ron: Yeah, you just have to. To me, I just get on with my work and bury yourself in the work.
Simon: ‘Cos when you’re there you’re busy, so the harder time is when you’re not busy and having your time off.
Ron: You’ve got to have something to do to keep your mind going. And everyone finds something to do, whether it be doing fly fishing things, you know.
Simon: They’ve all got to be quite small scale haven’t they?
Ron: Yeah, there’s guys who did knitting, a lot of people read. I used to take lots of books with me. I used to do a lot of fitness stuff as well in the Missile Department, just keeping fit. I used to cycle for nobody’s business for miles, miles.
Simon: And when you’re on the bike, are you thinking about cycling along a country lane?
Ron: No, most of the time thinking about work, you know, what I had to do, what’s the other next thing to do. I’d come on Watch and if it’s during the … normally when I went on the bike it was during the night shifts, you know, the midnight to four and the four to eight shift when there were less people around, and I’d get the maintenance all set up. We’d start with the maintenance and then we’d have a cup of tea and a break and then I’d say, “Guys, I’m just going in the tubes.” I’d go in there for half an hour riding then and thinking about you know, what else we got to do, and then come back out again.
Simon: A bit like meditation. Sort of clearing your mind.
Ron: Oh clearing your mind all the time yeah, ‘cos in later life when I was in civvy street, the Manager just down from me, he said to me … at lunchtime I said, “John, I’m off out for a run.” He said, “Oh you’re not going for a run are you?” I says, “Yeah.” “Oh God, I know what’s coming next.” What do you mean, John?” “You’re coming back with all these bright ideas aren’t you?” ‘Cos it just stays with you, you know, I’d be thinking about all different things. You think about different things, how to do work better, and it’s a nice way, when it’s nice and quiet and exercise at the same time.
Simon: Yeah, you don’t get that clearness of thought … so, the hobbies. What were other people doing then? You say making flies for fly fishing.
Ron: There’re all sorts, you know. Some doing model making, everyone had …
Simon: And that was only on the Bombers because there was the spare space.
Ron: Yeah. And the SSN’s. I never served on an SSN, but I assume they would do the same as well.
Simon: And what was your longest deployment did you say?
Ron: My longest deployment was nine and a half weeks I think.
Simon: And was that sort of eight weeks and then another one and a half tacked on the end.
Ron: Yeah.
Simon: And when you come off, do you then learn where you’ve been?
Ron: No, and you don’t really bother. You come off and you’re in a process in those five days of handing it over to the other crew. You meet your family, you come into Coulport, and the support crews would have arranged busses or told the families and they’d be there in their cars or whatever to meet you when you get alongside the jetty in Coulport.
Simon: What’s that like though?
Ron: Oh, brilliant, except once when I grew a beard on patrol, and I came off and I was walking along the jetty and my kids were running towards me and daughter ran right past me. She didn’t recognise me. I’d been away for two months, and she was about five or six at the time, just didn’t recognise me.
70 minutes 6 seconds
Simon: Yeah, here’s daddy with a furry face (laughs). And the children, did they ever talk to you about what life was like when you weren’t there? No, that sounds wrong. I guess when you’re growing up in a family, you don’t know any other thing do you, so it’s not …
Ron: They don’t know any different, and they had all these friends around who were similar. They were in the same boat, so to speak.
Simon: One question I’ve got here is about did you ever experience fear when you were onboard the submarine? I remember you talking about looking up at the missiles but …
Ron: No, well that wasn’t fear, that was just awareness wasn’t it? But the only time really was … we were out on a Bomber on Resault on an Index. Now, on this Index the man in charge of all the submarine fleet was onboard, Flag Officer for Submarines, and an Index is, you know, you go out after you’ve done your maintenance period alongside and you go out for an Index to check the submarine out. All sorts of dives and angles and stuff. Just make sure it’s ready to go to sea, and we were out and in the middle of the night, I was on Watch in the Missile Compartment and there was this flood alarm went off and it was ‘Flood, Flood, Flood, Emergency Stations, Emergency Stations, Flood, Flood, Flood, Flood in the fore ends’ and immediately the submarine just went like that. Front end went down, and I thought, ‘shit’ ‘cos it must be a flood fore end. There was a moment of fear and panic but then your training sets in and you think, right, what’s happening? The strange thing about this incident and I’ve talked to one of my mates about it recently, is that when these Bombers are at sea, I don’t know if it happens now but in my day you could still have two pints of beer a day, the guys on board. I didn’t drink, I didn’t drink it at all, I just kept mine for when I got back alongside, but we had a trouble stowing these kegs of beer at sea, so somebody came up with this idea that in between the missile tubes, the 16 tubes, you’ve got this guide rail that runs right down there and then the alignment systems there’s little windows that look into the gyros on the bombs, and when you start to fire them, this alignment gear goes right down between them and looks in alternatively to these missiles just before they’re firing them just to get the right data in there ready for them to be launched. Underneath that they decided they’d put these brackets and weld them on and then put all these kegs of beer underneath there. So, they did that before we sailed, they’re all underneath there, brilliant idea. Unfortunately, they didn’t account for the submarine doing a bow down angle like this and the next minute I’m hearing all this crashing and banging and what had happened is that the weight of these kegs had gone right against the stanchion, the bracket right at the end of this row, all the way underneath the tubes, and it snapped it off straight and these kegs of beer started tumbling down. Now that was in the upper level. There’s three levels in the Missile Compartment. The middle level is where we were, where we monitor the missiles and then you’ve got a lower deck which is where the gas generator is and where you get access to underneath the rockets. These things just came tumbling down, started to tumble down from the upper hatch, and just as it happened, my AB who was on patrol down the lower decks, opened the hatches. “What’s going on Ron?” I said, “get your fucking ass back down and shut the hatch.” He shut the hatch just as this beer barrel just right on top of him, on top of the hatch. So, that was fear and then I thought I wonder what depth we’re going to, and I looked at the depth gauge and we were actually going up the way. So, what had happened is in Bombers, in the Control Room, you know if you surface and dive a submarine, you flood the ballast tanks and then if you want to surface, you blow the ballast tanks. On the Bombers there was two blowing panels, two parts to it, forward and aft and seemingly there’s been a false alarm been happening with the flood alarm in the fore ends, and it invariably went off now and again just for no apparent reason, and the Watch Keepers in the Control Room had been aware of this, so they waited until they got confirmation that it was a real flood alarm, so they delayed five seconds. But in the middle of the night, for some reason they hadn’t done a proper handover to the guys that were on the panel, and when the flood alarm came through, the guy on the after panel reacted straight away while the guy on the forward panel knew they had to wait for a … so he didn’t know, so he blew aft so the after end of the submarine went ‘pfhht’ so that give us the effect that we thought we were sinking, but actually once they realised what was happening, they blew forward as well but by that time the submarine is like that, and all these barrels are tumbling down and then we surfaced. Of course, Flag Officer of the submarine wasn’t impressed by this but that was the closest on a Bomber. They’re very, very safe. The air you breath is purer than the air you breath ashore. The radiation levels onboard a nuclear submarine are less than the radiations ashore and the water you’re drinking is pure water.
76 minutes 29 seconds
Simon: Is there a taste or a smell to the air? Can you tell …
Ron: No, no. Put through the electrolyser, and it smells like natural air but we’ve hear stories on the Vanguard Class when they’ve been away for three months that when they surface, when they go up in the Conning Tower and breathe normal air, some of them feel a bit sick ‘cos they’re not used to it. ‘Cos they’ve been three months dive with this unnatural air, pure air.
Simon: Are you able to talk about the sort of missions you did, or I mean you don’t know where you were …
Ron: All I know is that as soon as there was any contact anywhere, the submarine turned and moved away from it, and stayed quiet. Just stayed quiet, as quiet as possible. I remember jogging in the Missile Compartment at some stage at the lower level. They piped through to me, “Can you ask Chief Gordon to stop jogging ‘cos he’s making too much noise”.
Simon: They could hear it on the sonar.
Ron: Yeah, they could hear it on the sonar.
Simon: So, that thing of walking around the submarine, tying everything down, making sure it didn’t rattle is all part of it.
Ron: Yeah, it’s all part of it, yeah. Securing for sea and making sure there are no noises that could be heard by an enemy.
Simon: So, you described how you were doing the fitness level for you jogging or riding the bike. ‘Cos everyone must be sort of fighting fit on board. How did they keep their fitness levels?
Ron: Not everyone did. There was only a few of us that did it. Most of them were quite happy having a couple of pints of beer and hit the hay and just going about their business, doing their job.
Simon: But they’re all relatively young so the metabolism is fast enough to stay fit.
Ron: Some of them were away on the weight already.
Simon: I mean is there space for … I guess I’m thinking back to one we went to in the Museum. That all seemed pretty tight in there. I wouldn’t think you’ve necessarily got space for people that weren’t fit.
Ron: Well, if you saw the food you ate on there and they had no exercise onboard there at all and if you’re away for a long time you do put on weight ‘cos there’s no exercise, there’s nothing else for you to do. If you can put weight on easily, you’ll put it on easily there, which I did, ‘cos I wasn’t exercising.
Simon: Despite all of the fitness.
Ron: No, on the diesel boat I did. The diesel boat I was on, we managed … whenever we came alongside, we always got the football team and try and get them a game and we also tried to keep as fit as possible and we actually got through to the final of the Mini Ships Cup and got beat by a submarine refit group who were guys in Portsmouth Dockyard, so they weren’t at sea, and they beat us in extra time when we just tired. But we managed to keep fit for that. But that’s unusual.
Simon: You mentioned a time when you’re in between being away. What about shore leave when you were abroad? Did you have that?
80 minutes
Ron: The only time I was abroad was when I went to America. On the Bombers, you just go out from Faslane and dive. You go out for two months, whatever, you don’t go anywhere and then you come back. See a lot of people love that type of life because you knew exactly … you could plan your life.
Simon: Right. That calendar block is …
Ron: You sort of knew, you had a rough idea when you could be back and when you could go on your holidays. You didn’t know the exact date, but you could plan things, so a lot of people liked it.
Simon: And when you did have the chance of getting off in America, is there a sort of a wild … you know you’ve been confined in this area, is there some wild release when you’re onshore?
Ron: No.
Simon: Everyone’s pretty level headed I guess on a submarine.
Ron: Most of them were, yeah.
Simon: Ok. Actually, that would be useful now is … can you list the submarines that you were on and the dates that you were doing that?
Ron: Ok. Right, I was on Renown June ’72 to October ’72, so that’s the one where I only did the four-week patrol, and then I was on Resolution from October ’72 through to April ’78. Then I was on Porpoise, a diesel submarine, target submarine from June ’79 through to September ’82, and then I was on Ocelot from October ’85 through to October ’87. Then I did sea running and sea riding on quite a few nuclear submarines and other diesel submarines when I was [inaudible] trials.
Simon: Could you explain what that is?
Ron: It’s when you go … when they come out of their either refits or the long maintenance periods, you go to sea and then you check out their sonar systems. You check out the radar systems and everything else as well, but I was a Sonar Trials Officer, so I go to sea and check out the sonars were working correctly.
Simon: And you do it in familiar land, so you know what stuff looks like, is that how?
Ron: Well, you dive … one of the areas we go to is … we went out to Stavanger in Norway. There was a range out there where you could check all the equipment ‘cos you knew exactly what the bearings were of everything, and they were set up for it, for doing that. There was also a place off Fort Lauderdale, the Andros Islands called the AUTEC. There’s deep water out there where you could do trials out there as well, so it’s those sorts of areas. Then there was BUTEC off the Kyle of Localsh in Scotland. There’s deep water up there as well, so these were the areas you’d go to do all these sorts of trials.
Simon: And that’s a sort of tuning in … you know where the map is …
Ron: Tuning, making sure that everything, all the sonar systems work correctly, the bearing accuracy is correct. The same with radars, you know they make sure their distance accuracy is correct, the bearing accuracy is correct, so that’s what you did. You had to trial all that to make sure it was correct before you gave them a Sea Acceptance Pass for the trial.
Simon: So, that was latterly after you’d been …
Ron: Yeah, that was coming towards the end of my career.
Simon: So, that’s before you went to SETT was it?
Ron: That was after I’d been to SETT
Simon: Ok.
Ron: When I left Porpoise I did the SETT.
Simon: And that’s something you volunteer for, going to SETT is it?
Ron: They offered it to me, and it was obviously … I had to volunteer to it ‘cos you don’t just say well you’re going to that, just make or do. I had to go up and I was saying to Julian that I got a call from the pointer saying, “Would you like to be Docks SETT up at the Escape Training Tank, so he told me to get off my backside and go and have a look and see what it was all about, and when I saw what it was all about, I said, “Yeah, I’d like to give that a go.”
Simon: But you’d been through that training already had you.
Ron: I’d only done the escape. I don’t know how much Brian told you how long it takes you to qualify to become a Member of Staff. It takes about six months. You have to do all sorts and as an Officer, you had to do a ship’s divers course as well, so you had to do what you call equivalent to sub-aqua diving. You had to do a four-week course in ship’s diving. You also had to do the six months in the Tank where you had to do every single position in that Tank, you had to be capable of doing it, and so many a time when I wasn’t at the top of the Tank doing the lecture, I was in the water at the different blisters, coming out and looking after the trainees or down at the bottom. And then when we did the demonstrations, I’d take a bucket on my head and make the ascent from the bottom. You also had to do a descent from the top of the Tank, all the way 100 feet to the bottom and then get into the bell. And then the final one that you had to do, you had to make an ascent with just your swimming trunks and goggles on and nothing else, no buoyancy aids, take a big deep breath in the bell at the bottom of the Tank, and then control your ascent just by blowing out. So, you’re blowing out and the bubbles are going up slowly ahead of you and as long as they’re going up slowly ahead of you, you’re still rising, you’re fine. If they suddenly get ahead of you and then you sink, you’ve failed, and you have to try and have another go at it, or if it’s worse and you overtake your bubbles, that means you’re going faster, and you’ve lost control. And so, you have to do two runs, like that from the same depth, and both times, the other Members of Staff that qualify, they come out and as you’re going up, they start blowing bubbles, so you’ve got to try and distinguish which bubbles are yours. And all it’s doing is making sure that you’re aware. At any time during the training when you’re looking after trainees, that you know exactly where you are in the Tank. What amount of air is in your lungs, that you’re not going up through the water without blowing out in case you damage your lungs, so that’s why it’s six months it takes you to do it.
86 minutes 53 seconds
Simon: Is that repeating, repeating, repeating.
Ron: Yeah, all the time yeah.
Simon: So, that’s what the training seemed to be Brian was saying today. Well, the phrase he used was ‘sort of brain-washing people into …’
Ron: Oh yeah, when you’re taking trainees through it, you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, until you action it.
Simon: … and it just becomes something you react to and do then. And so, you, they said, “We think we’d like you to be there” and you said, “Ok, I’d like to do that” and then you were there for a total of four years, is that right?
Ron: Yeah, but before that I had to come off the Porpoise, I was 16 ½ stone so I wasn’t the fittest of guys, so I had to get fit, so I went up to the Tank and saw the Doctor and said, “What’s the best way for me to lose weight and get fit?” and he said, “Jogging, that’s the best way.” So, I said, “Whose the best guy to go out with here?” “Well Bat Masters.” He was one of the Petty Officers. He said, “If you can get to go out with him at lunch times, he’ll get you going.” I didn’t know this guy was one of the top runners (laughs) but he eased me into it, but by the end of it he was giving me some gip, you know. I came out back of there and I was just crawling in through the door at the end of it, but it had the right effect. I lost 2 ½ stone and I got fit as hell and I was ready to do the diving course and do all the other stuff. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do it if you got that determination to do things that you’ve never experienced before in your life. I went up to Scotland and from a submarine I did an ascent from 300 feet and it’s completely black when you come out of the submarine. You don’t know whether you’re moving or not, but they teach you how to put one arm in front of the other and one leg behind and corkscrew up and when you hit the surface you actually take off. It’s a great feeling. Yeah, you actually leave the water as you go so fast.
Simon: I guess that’s … I mean what we saw in the tank today was brighter than daylight. Consistent light the whole way up, but in a real-world situation it’s dark.
Ron: If you’re in a Loch in Scotland, if it’s been raining, you know it’s normally raining, you’ve got all the peat coming down the hills and that’s going into the water and that makes it nice and black, so when I was coming up, it didn’t get light until about 30 feet from the surface.
Simon: And that’s what probably a couple of seconds between 30 feet and …
Ron: Yeah, you come up at 10 feet a second, so it’s three seconds.
Simon: And how different was the escape from the submarine to doing it, apart from the darkness, how different was it?
Ron: Nerve-racking. Shitting myself (laughs) … oh sorry! Well, you think about it. You’re in a tin coffin, very narrow, it’s …
Simon: Was this a single person escape tube?
Ron: … suddenly … a single person yeah, so you’re in there and it’s pressurised, and the pressure is doubling every 4 seconds so you’re trying to concentrate, keep your ears cleared, and then suddenly the hatch opens and all the cold-water floods in and then phht, your buoyancy takes you off and you’re outside the submarine and you’re on your way, and for the next 20 odd seconds, you’re wondering are you really moving or not.
90 minutes 36 seconds
Simon: That’s with the … do you have the orange zip up hood on?
Ron: Yeah, the orange zip up, you don’t do the free ascents outside of the escape tower ‘cos it’s too cold.
Simon: And so you having that experience of doing it for real, did you then take that experience back to SETT and then help people understand …
Ron: Yeah, you teach them how to do it. What was introduced, was one of the best ways I’ve ever seen it to be explained. ‘cos the worry is people not blowing out enough, when their lungs go, and what they used to do was to get … you know the old wine boxes? When you take out the inside, the bit of silver with it, you know. So, you take one of them down to the … empty of wine by the way, down to the bottom of the Tank in the bell, and then you just put some little bit of air into it and then you’ve got the camera on that, and you just release it and the buoyancy starts to take it up, and you’re doing you’re instructions, then this is you coming up though the water. If you don’t blow out, this is what’s going to happen to your lungs, and they can see it on the camera going up and up and about 30 feet from the surface when the effect of the atmospheric pressure takes more effect as you get closer to the surface, you suddenly see it go up and ‘phhzt’, bang! They think shit, that’s what can happen to your lungs.
Simon: Yeah, it focusses the mind.
Ron: That was a good training aid that. It was always, you know, I remember when you had to keep focussing the staff because sometimes some of them a bit blasé so I remember we were on the last day of training before I went to refit, ‘cos that’s the purpose I was appointed into the Tank because I was an Engineer and I was going to help take it through the refit, whereas before it had been Seaman Officers doing it and they always made a bit of a mess of it, so I had my Engineer’s head on for this. We’re doing training and some of the guys were skylarking around in the water because it’s the last day, looking forward to not having to do this for a while, and I said, “Stop training, guys you’ve got to focus. Any accident could happen at any time.” “Ok boss, yes sorry” and they got back to their job and blow me, somebody collapsed in the line, the next guy that came through (laughs) and of course they did their job and got him in the decompression chamber. Took him down to 100 feet, sorted him out, brought him back up slowly and he was fine.
Simon: Right. So that was the decompressor chamber at the top?
Ron: At the top, yeah. They had to be … it was a 24/7 job, because not only were you doing this as your job and you couldn’t go and piss up the night before and come in and do that job, also you were on call for the SPAG Team, so you had to do that as well, so that was something that was just part of the job.
Simon: And SPAG is the Submarine Parachute Assistance Group. And you get to be part of that having proved yourself in theTank did you, or does everyone that was at the tank …?
Ron: Not everyone does it , no. Just certain members who can be part of the team that fly out to an area if there’s a stricken submarine and you drop a rigid inflatable down and then you track it and then you inflate it and then you drop an underwater telephone over and you try and make contact with the stricken submarine.
Simon: So, the RIB goes down, sits on the surface.
Ron: Yeah, you come out in your parachutes, you follow …
Simon: Into the RIB.
Ron: Yeah, it goes down on a pallet. In the back of a Hercules, it’s in a pallet. It’s not inflated, so it’s thrown out with a parachute, and you chase that parachute. And when you get down there, you sever the lines that let the pallet go, and then you get it inflated, and then the six of you get onboard, and then you start making communications with the stricken submarine.
Simon: And that’s done by dropping a telephone down?
Ron: An underwater telephone, yeah.
Simon: Where does that …?
Ron: Its battery operated.
Simon: How do they get the handset or am I …?
Ron: Yeah, you’ve got a handset with the underwater telephone and then the submarine has got its own underwater telephone. They’ll be listening and you make communications.
Simon: So it’s not like there’s a wire between …
Ron: No, just transmitting sound, just like underwater.
Simon: ‘Cos they’re not like in mission mode, they’ve got two-way communication at that point.
Ron: Yeah, yeah.
Photographer: So is that a different frequency to radio frequencies ‘cos radio won’t travel through water.
Ron: Yeah.
95 minutes 41 seconds
Simon: And how many of those missions did you go out on?
Ron: I did 20 from … the first one, it’s hard to believe this but when I was going to do the first one, I said, “What training am I going to get?” and they said, “Well, what training do you expect? You’ll get a parachute, and they’ll tell you what to do when you get there.” I thought, well I expected there’s be some training, so they sent me down to Poole, Royal Marines SBS place, and they’ve got a rig there, the parachute harness and then as your feet hit the water, you’re meant to release the parachute so that it doesn’t drag you through the water, and so I went down there with this Doctor from the Tank and when we got there the harness wasn’t working. So, my training and this Doctor’s training consisted of, going into this presentation room, a Theatre where there was a platform, and he says, “Right, pretend you’re on the back end of a Hercules. You’ve got a red light and a green light there, you’re all fully booted, you’ve got your parachute on and you’ve got your reserve parachute on.” I call it emergency parachute but reserve parachute. He says, “Just walk forward, you’re in a stick of six of you, the back end of the Hercules is down, and then when you see the light go red, you move forward and if there is a guy in front of you, wait until there’s nothing there, and then you step forward, and then you count to four and you check your parachute has opened and if it is open, then you steer in the direction of the package that you’re chasing.” That was my training.
Simon: You had no other parachute experience. My goodness!
Ron: The next time I did it was for real. They took us up to RAF Lyneham to do … we had this annual exercise and this one was going to be done in Gibraltar, so we went up to RAF Lyneham with the SPAG Team, and when we got there the Boss guy, my Boss got us all briefed on what was happening, so we got changed into the wet gear, we all stood around …
Simon: That’s like a frogman outfit is it?
Ron: Yeah, that [shows a photograph] that’s us at RAF Lyneham getting ready to go onboard the Hercules already in your gear, so we got on board there and the next minute we’re flying off to Gibraltar in that gear. No toilets (laughs). Anyway, the next minute we’re doing … the RAF Hercules pilots had decided they’re doing some low flying training around the Welsh mountains, so they’re flying around the Welsh mountains like this and we’re looking out the side of the aircraft looking at these mountains come flashing passed us, and thinking ‘Oh my God, they’re doing this on purpose’ ‘cos by the time we got to Gibraltar, we wanted to get out that aircraft (laughs), and so that was my first experience. I still remember to this day because as trainees, we had to be the last lot out, so there was SBS there, there was SAS, there was the Bomb Disposal Teams, any teams that needed to go and parachute into water, would do their training with us because they organised this annual exercise. So, they threw out the rigid inflatable, and then the Marines went off, SAS, and the next minute we’re hearing, “Oh my God, the parachutes not open” and I looked at this Doctor. I said, “They didn’t fucking tell us about this did they?” (laughs). And what is was, it was the parachute on the rigid inflatable package, so it just crashed into the sea and went into smithereens, and we jumped out and followed it down. And what there is, there’s a small ship down at the bottom, it’s called the Dropping Zone ship, and on there is the Flight Lieutenant who’s the guy in charge of the exercise, so he’s watching whose coming out and there’s safety members in rigid inflatables around to go and pick up the guys as they hit the water. Anyway, five of us, me included, did as we were told. We followed the package and then 100 feet before you hit the water, you turn in to it. You’re going down wind, because you’ve got a 16-knot wind and a four know forward speed of the parachute, you’re going at 20 knots. So, you turn in to wind so you’re going to hit the water backwards, and as soon as your feet hit the water, you collapse the parachute, so you don’t get dragged through. If you don’t turn in to wind, as soon as your feet hit the water, you’re getting dragged forward at 16 knots and it’s very difficult to get your hand up to collapse the parachute, so it’s important you turn back in to wind. The Doctor hadn’t done that. Of course, the rigid inflatable … the Safety Team had to come in and go straight into the back of his canopy and collapse it. ‘Cos he’s a Lieutenant Commander. When we get back on to the Dropping Zone vessel, the Lieutenant has a real go at me. He says, “You put everyone at risk because we had to go and rescue you, there’s other people out there that might have got into trouble, and you put them at risk because you didn’t follow instructions and turn in to wind. Remember you’ll do that this afternoon.” “Yes sir.” So, we packed all the gear, went in to HMS Rooke, then later on that afternoon we came back out again, took off and went back round. This time, we’re the first group out. Now, because I’m the heaviest, ‘cos I’m still heavy, despite having lost that weight, I’m the front end and in the first stick out, I’m the one at the beginning. It was alright being last, you just follow the other guys and suddenly it all disappeared and … and I’m stood there and I’m looking down 2000 feet, and I’m thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ It’s just one of those moments you think, ‘Oh my God.’ Anyway, we got the nod to dispatch us, so the light went green and off I went. And it was a brilliant feeling, ‘cos you’re off and the Rock of Gibraltar is there and you’re chasing this package and you’ve got time to admire it all, and then 100 feet, turn in to wind, landed and we got onto the rigid and there’s five of us, not six. Our Doctor friend is not there. As soon as we left the aircraft, he’d turned in to wind, he’d went the other way (laughs).
102 minutes 46 seconds
Simon: See, he remembers not to forget but he remembered too early (laughs).
Ron: So, I think it was Brian or somebody like that who was the safety number on board the Geraint, radioed to the Lieutenant, he said, “What do we do about this?” He says, “Just have a look and check he’s alright, but let him swim the way back” (laughs).
Simon: Not to be forgotten.
Ron: Yeah, it was a bit of fun that, but it just shows you how things can go wrong not listening to what you’re meant to do. Yeah, just simple. I mean I did it on my last parachute jump. We did the night jump off Jersey, and I was a bit blasé, near the end of my time at the Tank, it was my last parachute jump, it was night time and you’re in the full gear and part of the gear is your knife, which is in your sheath there. Anyway, we checked each other, and we got through and off I went out and as I counted to four, I suddenly felt a bang right across there, somewhere. And it was my knife, had come out of the sheath. I hadn’t checked it was secured properly and it just swung up and hit me right there. Of course, when I landed in the water and they dragged me onboard, blood was everywhere. That could have been a lot worse, and it was just so careless of me, and it could have just happened to anyone. Just not paying attention. You take it for routine and that’s what I try to get through to my guys at the Escape Tank all the time. You know, that was four years of just being on the ball all the time. And it was good for later life because you never know what’s going to happen. Never.
Simon: I guess that thing of … something that’s dangerous that you then repeat so many times as you say becomes blasé to it, and what did you come up with as a way of re sort of grounding yourself in what you were doing then?
Ron: Well I always made sure that if I had a procedure to follow, I’d make sure I followed it to the letter.
Simon: No matter how many times you’d done it.
Ron: I mean I’d already done that in my previous life. I mean when I was on a Bomber, when you come back from a DAYSO in America, you come back and you go through the same process in Britain in Coulport, around there, the UK Inspecting Officers onboard put you through it again, and it’s one day … it was the last day of the Ops and all we had to do was fire. Instead of missiles being in the tube, you had what we called water shots, so you had a tube full of water and you fired the gas generators. They would launch this water tube as if you were firing a missile and we went through the routine and we came to tube 16, and we pressed ‘Fire’ and nothing happened and it was a miss-fire. I was at the panel when it happened, and I turned to the Inspecting Officer and I said, “I didn’t see you remove the fuse” ‘cos they normally take a fuse out which would cause a miss-fire. You’d see them do it, so you knew a miss-fire was coming. He says, “No, Ron, this is for real.” So, what had happened, for a miss-fire is that the firing signal has got all the way down to the gas generator and it hasn’t cooked off, so it could be cooking away there. So, what you have to do is keep that tube hatch open, just in case it fires. So, you’re meant to keep it open for half an hour, and then you assume that nothing’s going to happen, so you shut the hatch. As that was the last tube we had to fire, and we went back alongside. I’ve never seen so many Trials Officers leave that submarine so quick, because they knew this was a false alarm. It had never happened before, a miss-fire. So, I then had to get my two Chiefs to go and then offload this gas generator, and I said, “Whatever you do, make sure you’re following the book”. I went away to see my Bosses and say what the plans were for the rest of the evening and then I came back to see how these guys were getting on and I couldn’t believe my eyes. They didn’t even have the Procedure Book open. They were just doing it by the way they’d always learned it, and because this gas generator wasn’t quite perpendicular, vertical, to get it out you had to slant it a little bit. It was the only one that you had to do that. It was a known defect, but you had to be very careful when you did it. But these two idiots had pulled on it with a pulley too hard and jammed it, and they jammed it, and they were kicking it and banging it (laughs) and I said, “What did I tell you guys?” They said, “Oh, follow the procedure.” “What have you done?” “Not followed the procedure” so I says, “Stand down, let’s dwell a few marching paces, let’s think about this and see where we go from here. But the first thing you do is get the book open at the right page just in case an Officer walks through.” So, it’s all about procedures yeah. It did give me a little bit of fear, thinking about that again ‘cos it’s the unknown, and when they took that gas generator back to the States and checked it out, it was a real miss-fire, the only one that had happened in al the years they’ve been firing those gas generators, it was the first one that had ever had a miss-fire.
Simon: And if it had gone off?
Ron: Oh, it would have fired that massive expanding gas bubble from the bottom of the tube and it …
Simon: Sufficient to lift a missile.
Ron: … would have … but if the hatch had been shut, it would have ‘phww’ come out whatever weak spots it’s got in the missile tube. That could have been quite nasty. For those people in the Missile Compartment for definite.
Simon: Goodness! So, when …
Ron: You’re in safe hands (laughs).
Simon: When you’ve had an experience like that … actually we’ll come on to that, ‘cos I was going to ask you about life after the Service. I will come back to that. Actually, why don’t we talk about that now? You’re leaving the Service. After SETT, that was … SETT was where you finished was it?
Ron: No, I went on to … I’ll try and remember, I went on to the Ocelot in refit, but I always had the submarine in refit, so that was a shore job and that was brilliant, but what I did forget to say was when I got divorced from my first wife after Resolution and when I joined the Porpoise, I had custody of my kids, so I was a single dad as well as going to sea. Luckily the two kids were in Boarding School.
Simon: What age were they then?
Ron: They were 11 and 13.
Simon: Being looked after at school.
Ron: Whenever there was any problems, I was lucky my ex-in-laws would take them home ‘cos they had lived up there. It was up in a place called Fyling Hall up in North Yorkshire they were in school, so they went across to Wigan to be looked after there if I was a sea somewhere.
110 minutes 16 seconds
Simon: That’s a sort of military Naval School is it?
Ron: No, it was just a Boarding School for boys and girls. ‘Cos you can get an allowance for that. I’d seen it coming that my wife was going to think about leaving us, so I just thought if she’s not going to take the kids with her to America with her, because she went to America, and disappeared for a while. [Can you excuse me for a moment I’ll just go to the toilet.
Simon: Of course yeah, no problem at all.]
Ron: When I was a single parent on the Porpoise, people said, “How the hell did you deal with it?” I said, “Well I’ve been through tough times before when I was young and other times, you just have to deal with it. You can’t bury your head in the sand. You’ve got to face it and get on with it.” And I organised and worked closely with the ex-in-laws, and they were brilliant. He was an ex-Miner down in Wigan, a Coal Miner, and they were very, very good, so they stayed in my custody whilel I was at the Escape Tank and then near the end of the time at the Escape Tank my ex-wife came back and said she was missing the kids. The kids had been missing her, my daughter, and so they went off to America so that’s where they are now. I’ve got six grand kids from across there and three great grand kids across there, so that’s where they spent a lot of time talking about going travelling. When I was in the Navy, every year we would be across, me and my current wife, would be across there visiting my kids in America, all over the place. And then when we left the Navy, it was every two years, and then lockdown it’s been a while since we’ve been across there.
Simon: When you decided to leave, or is it that you’re there for a fixed period and then you know when you’re going to leave? How does it ….?
Ron: When I was at the end of my time, so that was 32 years, they gave me an extension because nobody could fill the job. I was in a brilliant job, another great job. The last six years I was at Submarine School in HMS Dolphin, and I was Procurement Officer in there. I was responsible for all the training equipment in the School, maintaining it, so the team maintained it and the building, and also I was responsible for procuring new equipment, so I could go across to America, to Information Technology Conferences and where of all these new equipment’s were, so I had a brilliant time there, and then last year, they couldn’t find anyone to take my place, so they said, “Would you mind an extension?” So, I said, “Yeah, ok.” Both sets of parents had died so it was a pretty traumatic time particularly for my wife ‘cos she’s from Gosport. She’s lived in Gosport all her life, except that she was born down in Somerset, but her family have been in Gosport all her life and all her family are here. It was an horrific time for her, so a year’s extension was brilliant. It couldn’t have been better timing. Then at the end of that year, I phoned up and said, “Could you give me an extension until I’m 55?” you know so then that would be good. Then I could think about retiring. They said, “No Ron, we’ve got somebody to replace you.” I said, “Well you’ve given extensions to other guys that are on the same course as me.” “No Ron, we can’t do it.” He said, “We can give you another year’s extension.” I said, “No, that’s just putting off the inevitable about leaving and getting into civvy street” so I told them no. As soon as I put the phone down, I thought oh, what have I let myself in for (laughs). I’m giving this job up, another year of it, but it worked out right because two months later this young lady walked into my office and said, “Would you like to come and work for us?” And that’s who I’ve worked with for the next 13 years. Facilities Management Company working in the Portsmouth area providing all the facilities for all the Naval Training Establishments. I’ve stuck here so it’s good.
Simon: So what’s that … using your organisation skills to make sure …
Ron: Yeah and recruiting people to take over Navy jobs with the authority … you know it’s cheaper to provide civilians to do that work, you know like Unit Personnel Offices where you’re organising pay, Chefs, Instructors, all jobs that didn’t require the specialist knowledge of a Navy guy. And that was a decision that was made at highest level across in Navy Command, that they would need to cut their shore-based costs so they could support the Fleet. So, they provided the … you know they’ve changed massively the Training Establishments where it used to be all Navy people, it’s now mostly civilians, except for the specialist areas.
115 minutes 42 seconds
Simon: And those people haven’t been through … it’s more valuable to train someone to be doing Naval stuff, submarine stuff than …
Ron: Yeah.
Simon: So, the transition to civvy life was relatively easy in that case.
Ron: This lady offered me a job, so we got the terms right and then I said, “Well, I need to … I’ve got six weeks terminal leave. I’m going to take it, because we’ve got this holiday planned to go to New Zealand. Is that alright?” She said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” So went six weeks leave, New Zealand, Fiji, then came back and started in a civvi … and the one thing I realised straight away. I touched base with this experienced Facilities Manager who’d never been in the Navy, and I went, and I said, “I’ve got to go and see him.” So, I went and saw him, talked to him and I said, “What do I need to ..?” He said, “Ron, the first thing you’ve got to do, you’re working for your … whoever’s paying you is the one you’re working for. You’re not working for the RN any longer.” I said, “Good, got that.” And so, the worst thing about ex-Navy people is that they think they’re still in the Navy. Especially if they’re working in a Training Establishment where you’ve got all your mates around. So, I went back into the Submarine School with this job I’d got, and these two ex-Lieutenant Commanders who were buddies of mine soon realised that they couldn’t get what they wanted from me, and they didn’t like it ‘cos they thought, you know, that they could get something extra out of the contract, but they couldn’t, ‘cos this guy taught me, so it was just a new job, a new life.
Simon: Same setting.
Ron: Same setting, but different …
Simon: … but different Paymaster. So, how did you square that circle then of them …?
Ron: Oh they could either like it or lump it. ‘Cos I had my guys, I had to keep my Boss happy, you know, the one who’s paying me. One of them was alright with it.
Simon: I guess it’s … that’s one of the … what’s on people’s minds having been in one organisation for a long time, transferring to something else, but that sounds like it was pretty much painless.
Ron: It was for me because I had the right attitude, but some guys they just thought they were still working for the Navy and some of the ladies did as well that were in Admin, who had been ex-Wrens and that or who were in Admin working for the Navy and suddenly it became somebody else’s responsibility, but they were still working for the Navy. Very difficult to get them to get their head round the fact that they were getting paid by somebody different, so they’ve got to do what that somebody different is saying. Not the Commander is saying it, your Boss is this person. It was a very difficult time, that transition. But I enjoyed it. I mean I enjoyed myself there just as much as I enjoyed in most of my Naval career. It’s still a comfortable environment. It wasn’t too difficult.
Simon: We’re drawing to a close now. You’ve been incredibly generous with your time. You’ve been in Gosport a lot, you’re still near Gosport. What does Gosport mean to you or what’s your association, what’s your feeling towards it?
Ron: Well the fact is that I met my wife in the Escape Training Tank, she was a Typist in there, so I’ll never forget that. Her family all live in this area, and I just love it. Whenever I was up in Scotland, at Faslane, I always wanted to move South and I always wanted to move to HMS Dolphin, and I don’t know what was drawing me here, you know, it was just that I wanted to be South. And once I arrived here and started living here, I just love the area. I like going back to see … I’ve not got much family left in Scotland now ‘cos there’s only one other sibling left now, and she’s in Bristol, but there’s other relatives up in Fort William in Scotland, so I like going back there to visit. It’s nice for a holiday, but I wouldn’t swop living here for living up there. I just love this area and there’s nothing better, during lockdown, was getting on my bike and cycling all the way down the bus route, all the way into Gosport. Got into the Ferry Port and sitting there watching the world go by. It’s just lovely. A lot of people run Gosport down, but I just love it. And it’s got a lot of connection. You know I was with the Navy, the Submarine Escape Training Tank was a big part of my life, especially meeting Helen there, so that’s why I love it.
Simon: And finally, is there anything that we didn’t speak about that you’d like to talk about?
Ron: Yeah, talked about fitness in the Navy, how difficult it was. One little amusing thing. Well, you might think it’s amusing, but it just shows you my attitude to fitness. And I still like to think, despite having had a few issues recently and still try to keep myself fit. When I was on Porpoise, we’d done this big exercise just outside the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic with all the other ships and foreign ships, and we went back into Gibraltar, and when you get back into Gibraltar, it’s when they organise all the inter-ship competitions, and we pulled into Gibraltar on the Porpoise, and our Captain had forgotten that these sports events were going on that we were meant to supply teams. I was the Sports Officer at the time, so as soon as we get alongside, he got the signal, ‘what teams have you got to represent football, hockey, and Top of the Rock Race?’ he said, “You’ll be sharing your team with the Dutch submarine that was alongside when you are playing against these other ships.” So, he called me to his office, and he said, “I’m not letting anybody go ashore until we’ve got these sports teams sorted, Electrical Officer.” “Ok Boss.” So, I went round the boat, said,” You’re not going to get any leave until I’ve got these teams sorted, so I need five guys for the football team, and I need about six guys for the hockey team.” So, I went round and eventually after about an hour and a half, and of course everyone’s getting impatient ‘cos they want to get ashore, ‘cos you always lived in Hotels when you went on a diesel submarine. If you went anywhere like Gibraltar, you went to hotels and you got a lovely shower and a bath and everything, so these guys were getting impatient. Anyway, I went and saw the Captain, I said, “Os” I said, “I’ve got everything sorted. We’ve got five names for the football team, six names for the hockey team but I haven’t got anybody for the Top of the Rock Race. Just nobody’s interested in it.” He said, “Well there’s only one solution then isn’t there, Electrical Officer, you’re it.” So, I said, “What? It’s tomorrow Sir”. He said, “Yeah. We’ve got a cocktail party tonight haven’t we?” “Yes.” “You’ll be it in the morning won’t you?” So, to cut a long story short, I had to do the cocktail party ‘cos I was the Wine Officer as well, so I had to arrange all the cocktails for the cocktail party, then you have to imbibe when you are there, then we went ashore afterwards. By next morning I’m off up to the bottom of the Rock to run all the way to the top (laughs).
Simon: Which is how far?
Ron: Oh, I can’t remember but it was a bloody long way, that way, so … but I did it. I completed it so that’s the sort of theme that’s been right through my life. I was part of the Field Gun Crew when I was at Collingwood, I did Field Gun Crew at Dolphin, part of football teams, rugby teams and that’s the great thing the Navy gives you. It gives you that opportunity to keep fit. I’ll just show you this. I’ve got a picture here. This is me when I did the New York Marathon in 2004, at the end of it. That’s me having finished it, saying I’ll never ever do it again (laughs).
Simon: You don’t look bad, you know you don’t look … it’s a still photo, so I can’t see all the puffing and panting.
Ron: That was the end of it. I didn’t know where I was at the end of it. No, that’s it.
Simon: Ok, I had one final question actually which was about the camaraderie that you have with submariners, and that’s something we spoke about you, when you first got onboard and them being welcoming towards you. Can you describe that feeling of closeness, the brotherhood with the other submariners?
Ron: It’s very hard to describe because you’re still … I left the submarine service in ’98, and I’m still part of it. I’m in the Submariners Association, we meet regular. I’m always involved in something. We do Zoom meetings and then you do all the business and at the end of it somebody starts telling dits and you just remember it all. You know, you just have a great time and it’s the biggest family. A close-knit family, other than your own family, you’ll ever know. It’s just brilliant and then what we find is that it’s that close that we’ve got … whenever any of our guys cross the bar, we do a proper funeral for them. We’ve got the White Ensign on their coffin, we parade our standards, but also their widows, we keep in touch with them afterwards, and then every year, we give them a Christmas lunch. There’s 33 of them and we give them a lunch at one of the local Pubs, just to keep in touch with them.
Simon: So, it’s even beyond them when they’re not around, still the closeness is there.
Ron: And they realise it as well. The ladies, they appreciate it ‘cos they know that submarines were all part of your life. It got into your blood really. And I saw that straight away when I first saw them at Faslane. Didn’t realise then how good it was until I got into it.
Simon: That’s brilliant. Thank you for your time today. Thank you very much.
Interview ends
127 minutes 24 seconds
Transcribed February 2022
