Submariners Do It Deeper - Part 1

Between 1975 and 1985 I served in the Royal Navy as a marine engineering technician or as the Navy has it a Marine Engineering Artificer, or Tiffy for short. Like every other ex-serviceman or woman I have stories about my time in the 'Andrew' and although my stories are totally unique they are at the same time exactly the same as many other peoples and I hope will have little resonance.

So here goes, a little glimpse into my life in a blue suit........

During the first year of my Apprenticeship, and this was a proper apprenticeship before the rise of the 1 day a week for 18 months Modern Apprenticeships that we have now, all of the baby Tiffs were marched into a lecture theatre to listen to a sage and erudite Warfare Officer tell us all about the life expectancy of modern warships should World War 3 break out.

I forget the exact numbers now but it went something like this :-

Major Warship - 10 mins of combat time

Minor Warship - 15 mins of cambat time

Submarines - 36 hours of combat time

Now I am many things but I am not stupid and a quick glance at the numbers convinced me that Submarines was where it was at. I became even more convinced when I found out that submariners recived an additional financial incentive in the form of Special Service Pay - about £4.50 per day at the time. Three years later as I neared the end of the classroom phase of my apprenticeship, I remembered this lecture and so at the appropriate moment in went my papers to volunteer for service in submarines.

I like to tell myself that the Royal Navy recognises talent when it sees it but it's more likely they were desperate. In either case I was accepted and off I went to start my submarine training at HMS Dolphin in Portsmouth.

My time at Dolphin was a blast. It finally felt as though I had joined the mans Navy and at last was working towards something a bit more productive than the Maths, Science and Engineering syllabus of the previous three and half years. There were many new things to learn during basic submarine training but virtually all of it revolved a single theme - safety. Submarines are by nature a very hazardous environment in which to work and live and it was therefore really important that we small boys were properley prepared before being let loose on 3500 tons of Her Majestys finest nuclear submarine, jam packed with all manner of buttons to press, switches to switch and valves to open or close which if pressed, switched, opened or closed at the wrong time or in the wrong sequence could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences.

The most unpleasant of all possible unpleasant consequences, is the one that finds Her Majestys finest nuclear submarine lying incapacitated at the bottom of the ocean having experienced a thing called sinking.

But the ever practical Royal Navy had thought of this and so we young, innocent, oh so gullable baby submariners were heartened when told that the final bit of our course would be spent learning how to escape from a submarine at depth. To facilitate this training the Navy had built a really lovely swimming pool filled with warm water lovingly known as The Tank. As swimming pools go this one was something else, about 30 feet in diameter and over a 100 feet deep. The idea being that we could practice escaping from the submarine and ascending to the surface and safety.

I always had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it was good to be prepared for the worst. On the other hand, what were the chances of a submarine sinking in a hundred feet of warm water.