Майкл Ридпат - Launch Code

Brooke turned to her family. ‘Couldn’t you have told us about this, Dad? Told me? Justin has a right to know what happened to his father. It had nothing to do with those stupid missiles after all, so you could have told us. Dad, you should have trusted me!’

‘It was my fault,’ said Lars. ‘I made him promise to keep quiet.’

Brooke looked at her father for a response, but he seemed helpless. ‘Sorry,’ he said, eventually.

A tear leaked from Brooke’s eye, and then another. ‘Justin is right. “Sorry” doesn’t cut it. I’m going to the Cottage now. He needs me. Good night.’

And with that she left the house.

October 1983, Holy Loch

I glanced back at the heather-clad mountain that rose above the ancient village of Kilmun on the north shore of the loch. It was 0800 and the sun was just rising to the east, a red glow wriggling beneath the grey cloud to paint the heather a glorious brown and purple.

Craig, Lars and I had used a brief afternoon of freedom to climb the mountain a few days before. We liked to do that whenever we could during the ten-day turnover when we were relieving the Gold Crew. The view from the summit was spectacular: Loch Long in one direction, the island of Arran in another, and to the south the River Clyde reaching up towards the metropolis of Glasgow. The other officers chose to use what spare time they had to travel into Greenock, or even Glasgow itself, but we preferred the sense of space, of clear Scottish air that the mountain afforded.

It set us up for the seventy days underwater.

I wouldn’t have long to enjoy the view. The first couple of miles of the journey out to sea were the quietest, especially in winter when the pleasure boats were either safely moored or out of the water. The submarine tender USS Hunley squatted in the middle of the loch, usually with one or two submarines snuggled up to it. At that moment there was only one tied up there: the Will Rogers , another Lafayette -class nuclear submarine, which had arrived back from patrol two days before.

The US nuclear submarines of SUBRON 14 operated out of a forward base in Scotland because from there they could quickly take up a patrol within missile range of the Soviet Union. But rather than keeping both crews for each submarine stationed in Britain, the Navy shuttled them back and forth by plane from Connecticut. I would rather have spent more time in Scotland, among the brooding hills we glimpsed only too briefly.

The loch was deep and silent. Centuries before it had been revered as a holy place after a ship returning from the Crusades sank there, filled with earth from the Holy Land. Now monsters of destruction lurked at its centre.

The submarine’s bridge was perched at the top of the ‘sail’, a structure that rose up from the hull, towards the bow, like a giant fin. There were six of us up there, crammed into a very small space. I was the officer of the deck. Then there was the captain, Commander Driscoll; Ensign Marber, the most junior officer on the boat; the quartermaster; a lookout and a Scottish pilot, a dour tub of a man with a ruby-red face who would guide us through the sea lane once we reached the Clyde. Beneath us, in the control room, the XO oversaw the navigators and the helmsman and planesman who would manoeuvre the Alexander Hamilton out to sea.

Driscoll grinned at me as he lit up a stogie and waved it to the east. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen the dawn on the way out this tour, Bill,’ he said. ‘The problem with Holy Loch is you don’t often get to see the sun. I like to see the sun before we dive. Always saw the sun leaving Guam.’

The Hamilton was my first submarine, but the captain had been XO on a boomer out of Guam. The difference between Guam and Holy Loch was only apparent on the first and last days of a patrol. The rest of the time the Pacific was pretty much the same as the North Atlantic, at least when you were a couple of hundred feet beneath it.

I was interrupted by the phone. ‘Bridge, navigator. Five hundred yards to the turn, counting down the turn.’

‘Navigator, bridge, aye,’ I answered, looking ahead to a buoy at the entrance to the loch. The Alexander Hamilton was sleek and graceful underwater, but on the surface she was a four-hundred-foot clumsy lump of metal, desperately slow to respond to her rudder. The navigators, the captain and I always had to be thinking two waypoints ahead, getting the lines of approach just right.

Time to concentrate.

Several hours later, we had threaded our way through the crowded shipping lanes of the Firth of Clyde into the Irish Sea. There was quite a chop out there, and the big submarine was rolling as it ploughed through the water, its bow-wave kicking up a surging spray. The sun had long disappeared, as had the pilot back to shore and the captain down below. Above was the dark grey of low cloud, all around the lighter grey of the sea. Out there somewhere was the Scottish mainland, hidden beneath the heavy cloak of moisture.

There were still two vessels visible, a local fishing boat ahead and a Russian ‘trawler’ three miles to starboard. These ‘trawlers’ were crammed full of electronic equipment and lurked outside the submarine bases tracking who came in and out.

The radar display showed another contact twelve miles to the north-west, out of sight in the grey murk. It was HMS Minerva , a British frigate. She had made brief contact with an Alfa-class Soviet attack submarine in the area. Once again, not a surprise.

The Alfa would try to track the Hamilton once she was underwater, taking advantage of the bottleneck we would have to pass through — the North Channel between Antrim and the Mull of Kintyre. It would be a fruitless task. We would shake her and, once we had, the Hamilton could run so quietly that the Soviet sub would never pick us up.

‘Rig the bridge for dive and lay below.’ It was Robinson, the new XO, from the control room.

‘Rig the bridge for dive and lay below, aye,’ I replied. We were answering ahead one-third at a speed of about five knots. I ordered the quartermaster to disconnect the ‘suitcase’, a portable silver case full of communications and navigation equipment used while the submarine was on the surface.

‘Clear the bridge.’ The quartermaster was first down, with the communications suitcase, followed by the lookout and Ensign Marber.

I took one last look at the wet grey world, savouring the cold mixture of air and moisture on my cheek, and dropped down the ladder myself, shutting and dogging the watertight hatch. ‘Last man down. Hatch secured. Bridge is rigged for dive.’

‘Submerge the ship,’ the XO ordered. ‘Make your depth sixty feet.’

Immediately the diving klaxon sounded twice, a distinctive ah-oo-gah blare. ‘Dive! Dive!’

The helmsman rang up to two-thirds ahead, and the planesman set the vessel to five-degrees-down bubble. The chief of the watch opened the ballast tank vents.

The nose of the Alexander Hamilton dipped forward, and I could hear the Irish Sea slurping over the deck above.

We were going down, and staying down. For more than two months.

November 1983, Norwegian Sea

‘How about Barbarella ?’

Craig glanced at the other officers seated around the wardroom table. We were four weeks into the patrol, coming up to the halfway point, and we were discussing important matters: what movie to watch that evening.

‘We saw Barbarella two weeks ago,’ said Lars.

‘Yeah, but a movie like that you only appreciate properly the second time you see it, you know?’