Richard Humphreys - Under Pressure

The Royal Navy newspaper Navy News visited the submarine to celebrate 21 years of the deterrent patrols in 1989. Here’s me posing for photos next to one of the torpedo tubes. ( Navy News/Imperial War Museum )

When the boat was on patrol, there was a separate team of electrical engineers who kept vigil over the nuclear missiles in a cordoned-off area in the missile compartment. As well as loading the missiles onto the boat at the armaments depot, they packed the conventional torpedoes at the forward end of the boat and maintained them throughout patrol in the lower end of the fore ends, or ‘Bomb Shop’ as it was known. The team was supplemented by radio operators who looked after all the communications coming from the Command Centre at Northwood in north London, and who were based in the wireless room.

The engineers ensured that the nuclear weapons and torpedoes were safe through a system of round-the-clock, fail-safe checks. Their thoroughness and knowledge were vital, for at any time before a patrol began the men from the ministry in the form of the NWI‡ team could arrive for a snap visit and ask some pretty awkward questions, under the auspices of a weapons inspection. This could result in the WEO or any member of his team being relieved of their duties. This actually happened on Resolution , where a WEO was removed due to a perceived lack of knowledge on the day. At the time, we thought his had been a strange appointment, as the individual concerned had come from a Special Forces background and was thought to have been a serving member of the elite SBS. While that’s great in its own right, it hardly qualified him for a life under the sea in charge of nuclear weapons.

The marine engineering branch, led by the MEO, were tasked with looking after the boat’s propulsion, mechanical and life-support systems, and were split into two operating areas: aft (the back end of the submarine) and the control room, and everything forward of that. Aft of the missile compartment was their main focus, principally the manoeuvring room, for here were the controls that looked after the functioning of the reactor. Up to six people managed the detailed switches, pumps, hull valves and other bits of kit to make sure the reactor and its associated systems functioned correctly

The wrecking team manned the control room’s systems console, where they assisted in diving and surfacing the submarine, raising and lowering the periscopes, and monitoring oil pressures. They were also responsible for the diesel back-ups and maintaining the battery, should we ever have needed to use it in the event of the reactor being shut down. As well as maintaining their favourite bit of kit, the garbage and sewage systems, they also ran the laundry on 3 Deck, where clothes tended to come back as smelly as when they went in.

The final department was the supply branch, whose sole function was to ensure the boat had all the necessary food, drink, toilet rolls (essential, obviously. I never fancied using my hand to wipe my arse) and any other vital spares necessary for a ten-week patrol. This department was headed up by the supply officer and staffed by chefs, who did a superb job cooking three meals a day, plus snacks for months on end in the most testing of working conditions. Next time you’re in a restaurant, take a good look at the kitchens and all the chefs toiling in those cramped, hot and pressurised environments. Now, while they might be able to go for a fag break or some fresh air halfway through their shift, you can’t do that in a submarine. It’s torturously hot and stifling in the galley, with fire hazards aplenty … a total shit-show where miracles daily occur in keeping a crew fed and watered non-stop for three months, all of it happening in around 15 square feet.

The supply branch was completed by the stewards, who served the officers meals and drinks in the wardroom, and then did a shift on ship control, driving the boat with its changes of course and depth. And lastly there was the leading writer,§ who could usually be found holed up in the ship’s office doing all the coxswain’s admin; he also took his turn at flying the boat as well.

Then there was the doctor, who occupied a small sick-bay on 2 Deck, where he treated physically sick sailors. Don’t assume there were any mental health considerations, mind you. If someone rocked up and complained, ‘I’m not feeling that great today, Doc. Can we have a chat about it, please?’ the main gist of the doctor’s response would be, ‘Yes, of course, now fuck off.’ He also doubled up doing a turn on ship control, where he helped look after the pitch and depth of the boat while it dived and was at periscope depth. The occasional failure to carry out that part of his obligations resulted in him being on the end of some almighty bollockings from the captain.

That said, these always seemed to wash over him, for he was not easily irked. I guess doctors don’t get intimidated that easily. Although he was an officer with the rank of surgeon lieutenant, the doc I served all my patrols with preferred the company of the junior rates and drank heavily with us, always first in the queue for the pub on a night out and one of the last home, as well as being a heavy smoker. I’m not sure how he would have been judged by modern-day NHS standards, but he was great company – thoroughly entertaining, clever, level-headed and entirely unflappable. That said, I’m not sure I’d have wanted him taking my appendix out or resetting a broken bone.

The other major feature of the submarine particular to the nuclear deterrent was that it was made up of two crews, Port and Starboard (my crew). While one crew was out on patrol the other crew would be on the piss, on holiday or on training exercises. The main reason for this was maximising the amount of time any one of the four submarines could spend at sea. On these training exercises, we’d go to a simulated control room in Plymouth, where we’d practise both attacking and evasive manoeuvres in front of teaching staff who would judge our performance. It would be back-to-back, full-on attack-simulation training, with the warfare team under the leadership of the captain.

We liked these simulations. It made for a nice change to practise attacks on enemy ships or submarines, and they kept our hand in, for our main task on patrol was to evade and hide, not to engage or investigate like the SSN hunter-killers, or the diesel submarines that spent their patrols intelligence-gathering in Soviet waters and tracking enemy submarines. On the attack drills I usually found myself paired up with the captain as his periscope assistant. This consisted of helping the team effort by working out my own range of given target/targets using the angle of its bow and a 360° protractor slide-rule. The captain could then choose to ignore it, use it, or refer to it as a ballpark figure to help him with his own calculations. This full-on training lasted around a week, and to relieve the stresses of the day we partied hard in Plymouth. It led me back to some of my old ‘run ashore’ haunts on Union Street that I’d first encountered near the end of my basic training.

Aptly named, Boobs nightclub left little to the imagination; drink was consumed on an industrial scale, one-night stands were commonplace, with women and sailors in various states of undress while still in the club. Full-on debauchery ran amok, and I remember a particularly frantic half-hour of my own in the ladies’ loos. The night would usually end side-stepping vomit or fighting men, occasionally women, or both at the same time, always alcohol-induced. Once, on exiting Boobs en route to our favoured Chinese takeaway, I saw a sailor come hurtling through the window; landing with panache, he dusted himself down and strolled off into the night like a gracefully listing galleon.