by James Jinks
These flotillas were commanded by seasoned submariners who had served with distinction during the Second World War. From 1945 to 1947 the 4th Submarine Division was commanded by Captain Ben Bryant, a swashbuckling, no-nonsense submariner, tall, with a seadog beard and arrogant eye, with a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and two bars and a Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) won in the ‘S’ class submarines HMS Sealion off Norway and HMS Safari in the Mediterranean.68 When the 4th Division arrived in Sydney in 1949 it was commanded by yet another distinguished wartime submariner, Commander Ian McGeoch. During the war McGeoch had successfully patrolled the waters of North Africa and the Mediterranean in command of HMS Splendid, sinking numerous German warships, for which he was awarded the DSO and DSC. In 1943 a British-built Greek destroyer under German control attacked Splendid, scoring a number of hits with depth charges. Though wounded in the eye McGeoch was able to raise the submarine to the surface. For twelve minutes, while the crew abandoned ship, McGeoch remained on board until it sank. He was taken prisoner. Though now blinded in one eye he spent most of his time in captivity trying to escape by various means, including digging a tunnel from an Italian hospital, jumping from a moving train while he was being transferred between prison camps, leaping from a moving car and even attempting to enter the Vatican. He eventually escaped by trekking 400 miles across Italy into Switzerland.69 Another submarine ace, Captain Anthony Miers, the former CO of HMS Torbay, commanded the 1st Submarine Squadron in Malta between 1950 and 1952. Known as ‘Crap Miers’, in addition to winning the Victoria Cross for a daring and successful raid on Corfu Harbour in 1942 he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Bar for ‘courage, skill, enterprise and devotion to duty’ in numerous submarine patrols. His ruthlessness, however, had to be reined in after incidents in 1941 when Torbay had machine-gunned German soldiers in the water.70
A number of distinguished wartime submarine aces also commanded the submarines assigned to the flotillas. Tony Troup, the youngest officer to command a submarine in the Second World War (he had been given command of the training submarine H32 in June 1943 at the age of twenty-one), commanded various submarines before holding a series of senior appointments in the Navy. Arthur Hezlet, the former commander of HMS Trenchant, who had destroyed a heavy Japanese cruiser in 1945, for which he was awarded a bar to his DSO and the Legion of Merit, the highest award the United States can bestow on a foreign commander, also remained, as did John Roxburgh, widely regarded as one of the most effective and ebullient submarine commanders to serve in the Royal Navy during the war. (At the age of just twenty-three he had been given command of HMS United and over an eleven-month period survived torpedoes, bombs and depth charges and sank some 12,000 tons of enemy shipping. While in command of HMS Tapir, he was also responsible for the last British submarine success of the war, destroying Oberleutnant Gerhard Meyer’s U-486, which had sunk the troopship Leopoldville off Cherbourg with the loss of more than 750 American soldiers.)71 But with the war over, many submariners were demobilized. Many wanted to leave. They were burnt out and had had enough. ‘At the end of the war I was thirty-five and I looked fifty-five,’ recalled Commander William King, ‘I was a wreck, physically, morally, socially, financially and in every other way. I wanted to get out of the navy, but of course they wouldn’t let us go. It took me two years to struggle out by writing letters.’72
Those who remained were joined by the first post-war recruits to the Submarine Service. Some, such as John Hervey, who later rose through the ranks to become a Rear Admiral, volunteered after being inspired by an account of the rescue of American submariners from the USS Squalus, which sank off the west coast of New Hampshire during a test dive in May 1939. ‘I thought those are the sort of people that I’d like to be with and so I was always intent on joining despite a lot of pressure put on us to go into flying because the Fleet Air Arm was the big thing just after the war.’73 Before the Second World War the Submarine Service had an abundance of volunteers. The service attracted young, ambitious midshipmen eager for responsibility and the opportunity of command at a young age, sometimes as early as twenty-eight. It also appealed to those seeking a stable and healthy work/life balance. Life was predictable, planned around the static or semi-static depot ships that made up the flotillas. It was also relaxed. Many submarines tended to operate three days a week, which allowed the crews to spend time with their families. Money was also an incentive, probably the biggest factor in producing so many volunteers. Submariners were entitled to specialist pay, known as Submarine Pay, which was often enough to make the difference between a young officer getting married or remaining a bachelor. In 1939, a Lieutenant’s pay on promotion was 13/6 per day, with an extra 6/- a day Submarine Pay.
The Submarine Service suffered from severe manpower shortages throughout much of the early post-war years as it struggled to recruit adequate numbers of officers and ratings. Prior to the war submariners were nearly all regular servicemen who had volunteered for service. But by September 1942 only 69 per cent of regular officers had volunteered for service; the rest had been drafted. Reservists were also recruited and by 1941 half of all submarine officers were reservists, and their numbers increased steadily, peaking in 1943 at 60 per cent. The service expanded relatively slowly compared to other branches of the Navy, from 2909 regular ratings and 474 reservists at the beginning of the war to a peak of just over 9000 officers and men in September 1944. The high casualty rate meant that over 10,000 ratings were trained between 1939 and 1945, peaking at 3221 in 1943. Many were ‘Hostilities Only’ men, drafted against their will, an unpopular practice that in 1941 led some men at HMS Dolphin to refuse duty. Others deliberately committed offences to have themselves debarred from submarines.74
After the war, demobilization and the release of many ‘Hostilities Only’ ratings led to a severe manpower crisis in the Submarine Service. By April 1946 the position was so serious that Admiral Creasy was warning that ‘unless additional personnel arrived within the next 10 days he would not be able to keep 45 submarines in commission, as well as those in reserve’. If the crisis persisted he estimated that by 10 June he would only be able to man 31 submarines, 22 submarines by 29 July and just 18 submarines by mid-September 1946. The Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sir Rhoderick McGrigor, acknowledged that ‘drastic steps would have to be taken’ and many young officers and ratings were once again drafted or ‘volunteered’ for service from other branches of the Navy.75 This unpopular practice continued well into the 1950s as the service continued to fail to attract sufficient volunteers.
In 1949, the submarine fleet numbered 65 submarines, 34 of which were operational. To man these submarines and to accommodate the various shore-based posts, as well as those submarine-qualified COs who were unavailable due to their service in the General Navy, 111 submarine-qualified Commanding Officers were required. To maintain these numbers 36 new junior officers were trained each year, at the rate of about 12 every four months. 16 officers undertook the Perisher course – the maximum that could be accommodated due to the availability of target ships, submarines and first-command appointments.76 There was also a wartime requirement for 88 ‘young’ Commanding Officers, whose seniority, as Lieutenant Commanders, was less than five years. Past experience had shown that as a general rule older Commanding Officers were ‘unlikely to inflict damage on the enemy, and should not be appointed in command of operational submarines in time of war’. These figures varied according to requirements, as did the necessary number of ratings. By the early 1950s, an average of 150 were undergoing training at any one time
The Service struggled to maintain these numbers. By 1952, there were 3564 ratings in the Submarine Service, an insufficient number to allow the manning of all operational and reserve submarines. In September 1952 FOSM was forced to inform the Naval Staff that ‘owing to the lack of manpower it will shortly be necessary to place three submarines in reserve’.77 Part of the problem with manpower was that the Submarine Service no longer
appealed to those who wished to find a healthy work/life balance and see more of their families. With comparatively few submarines, all of which were increasingly required to undertake a significant and ever-changing number of tasks, often in scattered, faraway places, post-war life in the Submarine Service was increasingly characterized by continual and unpredictable disturbances.
Pay was also no longer the incentive it had once been. In 1949, a Lieutenant on promotion received £1.1.6 per day, plus 4/- Submarine Pay, an 18 per cent addition compared to the 43 per cent it had been in the pre-war period. Other branches paid more. For example, those serving in the Fleet Air Arm earned between 9/- and 12/- Flying Pay per day. Income tax, which was nearly double what it had been before the war, also had a significant impact on Submarine Pay. ‘In the eyes of the present day young officer the 4/- a day, reduced to little more than 2/- by Income Tax, is likely to appear insufficient compensation for the physical discomfort of life in a Submarine,’ noted the Director of Naval Training in November 1953.78 In 1953, the final intake of Sub-Lieutenants to start their Submarine Training comprised just three volunteers and nine non-volunteers.79 In November 1953 the Navy was forced to introduce new rates of Submarine Pay in an attempt to attract more volunteers. Commissioned Officers, Senior Commissioned Officers, Acting Sub-Lieutenants and Sub-Lieutenants received 7/- a day extra, while Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders received 8/- a day. It had little impact.
One such Royal Navy trainee who received a letter in 1954 notifying him that he had been ‘volunteered’ for submarine training was a 21-year-old Lieutenant, John Woodward, nicknamed ‘Sandy’. If he really hated it, the letter told him, he could apply to leave in eighteen months and would be out in three and a half years. Either way, Woodward was now a pressed man and so began a career in the Submarine Service that would end thirty-one years later:
all these years later, it emerges as nothing short of an inspired appointment for me, because in a submarine, you are required to become a responsible citizen from Day One. You have to grow up, quickly. The Submarine Service is nothing like being on board surface ships, which by and large tend not to sink, and anyway, if they do, are inclined to do so rather slowly, providing a very sporting chance to its company of surviving the event. In submarines, which are apt to sink rather suddenly, you are expected to understand and to be able to work every bit of equipment on board. I was thus required to become not only a semi-engineer, but also to learn in turn to be the Gunnery Officer, the Navigation Officer, the Communications Officer, the Electrical Officer, the Torpedo Officer, the Sonar Officer, before I could hope for front-line command in about six years’ time. Suddenly I was to be permitted, in a position of responsibility, to undertake the very kind of work I had always liked most. It was exactly right for me – though I did not of course know it at the time.80
The Royal Navy’s submarines were of course much smaller than most surface ships, but they were very complicated and, as Woodward indicated, it was essential that all the crew were trained in the operation of the boat. There was a certain basic submarine knowledge which all officers and men had to possess irrespective of specialization or seniority. The Engineer Officer, for example, was taught the rudiments of attacking technique because he would form part of the attack team when at sea. He also received a small amount of training on wireless telegraphy (W/T) methods, weapons and officer-of-the-watch duties, while at the same time learning about his principal job on the main and auxiliary machinery, systems and maintenance routines.81
Classroom instruction was supplemented by days at sea in a submarine, where trainees were allowed to operate machinery, work the hydroplanes, which controlled the depth of the submarine, and get an idea of life on board. ‘We were made to understand the maze of pipes, cables, hydraulic systems, air systems, water systems, sewage systems, ship control systems, torpedo firing systems, engines, batteries, electrical systems, motors, pumps, valves, cocks, gauges, masts, periscopes and switches,’ recalled Woodward. ‘At the end, we were supposed to be able to find any item of equipment quickly and to be able to work quite a few in complete darkness.’ When Woodward was examined, his instructor Lieutenant (later Vice Admiral) ‘Tubby’ Squires ordered him to restore the electrical supply to a submarine. ‘Hesitantly I went below,’ recalled Woodward:
A small voice in the back of my mind saying that the answer had to be found in the Motor Room, well aft. In addition I vaguely remembered that a thing called the ‘Reducer’ was quite likely to solve the problem. Nothing very difficult: find it, make the switches (Navy jargon for turn them on), electrics restored. I was not, however, that confident as I descended into the darkness, and in tentatively ‘making’ the vital switch I caused it to start arcing and jumped back from it – a dangerous and stupid thing to do. Tubby leant over and blew out the arc quickly before things started to melt. So I tried again, and shoved the switch over, if anything more tentatively, which caused more arcing and another patient but quick puff from Tubby. There was another expectant pause. Finally, he banged the switch home for me and was good enough to say as all the lights came on, ‘Well, I’ll pass you for knowing which switch to go to, even if you didn’t know how to work it when you got there.’82
In some respects training was rather primitive. Sam Fry, who joined in June 1951, found himself in the corrugated iron huts that comprised Haslar Gun Boat Yard in Gosport as part of Officers’ Training Class 119. He wasn’t too impressed:
We had lots of pictures, some hardware, and not a lot else. There were no handouts, you made your own notes and drawings of pipe systems etc … Some practical things were rather raced over so that we often only had a bit of the overall picture. During my oral exam at the end of the Course I produced a massive spark from the switchboard as I broke a switch without doing the correct thing with the ‘field switch’, much to my amazement and the horror of the examining officer! Our understanding of the workings of submarine radar was also just about as primitive as the radar itself.83
Before any officer or rating could call himself a submariner and draw the extra Submarine Pay to which he was entitled, he had to qualify in submarine escape. This took place in a specially constructed 100-foot submarine escape training tank. The escape method, known as ‘Free Ascent’, involved exhaling continuously while swimming to the surface, otherwise the expanding air in an individual’s lungs would rupture them. ‘It was very exciting coming up from 100ft secured to a central wire as leaning back acted as a hydroplane and the tether prevented you hitting the side of the tank so one just circled the central wire on the way up,’ recalled Fry. ‘If the instructors waiting in the tank at various depths did not see sufficient bubbles you got a hefty belt in the chest.’84
Those new recruits who joined the service in the immediate post-war period were fortunate to receive their training from many of the second-generation wartime COs, who had learned their trade from the submariners who had started the war. ‘We were very lucky that the people who taught us learned their business in the war and they knew what was required very well,’ recalled John Hervey.85 But the war had left its mark on many. As a young midshipman, Woodward noticed ‘there were quite a few men around who were suffering from that very old affliction with the modern name of “stress”, otherwise known as “Shell-shock”; “twitch”, “lack of moral fibre” were its other, less sympathetic titles’.86 These problems tended to manifest themselves in a number of ways. Some had serious drinking problems. Others suffered from drastic personality changes. Quiet, studious men became aggressively argumentative, while hell-raisers became introverted. ‘Some men never got over it,’ remembered Woodward, ‘and most never let on that they were anything other than perfectly normal.’87 Others did. ‘There were some who were absolutely shot,’ said Peter Herbert, another trainee who entered the service just after the war: ‘Several of them were drinking a bottle of whisky and going to sea, taking a bottle of whisky up to their cabin and letting the First Lieutenant do everything. Then coming back drunk beca
use they couldn’t take it … They were shot. You didn’t blame them, they’d had a hell of a war.’88
When Hervey was assigned to his first submarine, the ‘A’ class HMS Acheron after completing his initial training, he quickly discovered that the Captain was a ‘peculiarly ill-suited officer who had lost his nerve’. Although the ‘A’ class could dive to around 500 feet, Acheron’s CO never went below 90 or 120 feet, because he was scared of his submarine. ‘Those sorts of people tend to take it out on their subordinates,’ recalled Hervey, ‘the fright comes out in terms of anger. The only lesson I learned from him was how not to command.’89
After the war, the Service did not have to look far for potential First Lieutenants to turn into Submarine Commanders. They also did not have to look far for ‘Teachers’ who had the necessary skills and experiences to pass on to future commanders. One of the first post-war Teachers was Commander Hugh ‘Rufus’ Mackenzie, a wartime submariner whose infectious sense of fun concealed a shrewd and observant mind. When Mackenzie became Teacher in January 1946, in keeping with a return to peacetime conditions, the Perisher course followed an ‘easier tempo’ than in wartime, but it remained a career breaker with between 20 and 25 per cent of students failing and returning to General Service. Officially, candidates who ‘perished’ were assured by Flag Officer Submarines that there would be no stain on their record, but this was never really the case. ‘By the time I arrived,’ continued Woodward, ‘not one of them had ever been promoted beyond lieutenant-commander.’90 One of Mackenzie’s pupils, John Coote, a charismatic raconteur notorious for burning the candle at both ends, wrote that if a student failed ‘they might as well start reading the Appointments column in the Daily Telegraph right away’.91