by James Jinks
When Coote returned to the UK he presented his report of the operation, along with some conclusions about the intelligence he had been able to obtain, to Arthur Hezlet. ‘In assessing the validity of this intelligence,’ he wrote:
consideration has been given as to how much of this information could have been picked up by a suitably placed and equipped Russian submarine which did not possess Totem’s prior knowledge of events and frequencies. The surprising answer emerges from a necessarily brief analysis that every single item … could easily be in Russian hands now. Sometimes the most insignificant interception may yield a clue of great importance.194
The Admirals on the Admiralty Board were so shocked at how much information Coote had been able to obtain, especially from VHF and UHF voice circuits, that they forwarded a summary of his patrol report to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s various fleets:
It will be observed that it was possible for a submarine to remain undetected in the vicinity of the fleet for many days and to derive valuable intelligence, especially from VHF/UHF voice circuits. Some of the information gleaned, particularly the transmission characteristics of the different radar sets fitted to ships and aircraft, could have been obtained by other means. Nevertheless, Their Lordships view with serious concern the indiscriminate use of plain language communications and of radar and wish to stress that steps must be taken to minimize the opportunities provided for a potential enemy to obtain vital tactical intelligence.195
For Hezlet, the man responsible for masterminding the operation, Coote and Totem had proven that ‘a corresponding probe among Soviet forces was a justifiable risk, unlikely to create an embarrassing international incident’.196
This view was reinforced two months later when HMS Trenchant and HMS Sentinel, two submarines with the 1st Submarine Squadron in Malta, conducted a successful intelligence-gathering operation against a Soviet ‘Sverdlov’ class cruiser and two ‘Ognevoi’ class destroyers.197 Sailing from Malta on 2 June, the two submarines were able to obtain propeller revolution and speed counts, asdic transmission frequencies and periscope photographs of the Soviet vessels as they returned to the Black Sea. ‘In view of the calm sea I had decided to keep about four thousand yards off track, this being adequate to get a good revolution count and positive identification, and yet being out of sonar and periscope sighting range,’ wrote Trenchant’s CO. ‘The force was formed with one destroyer about 1500 yards ahead of the cruiser with the second destroyer in close order astern, all steaming a steady course.’198 The Director of Naval Intelligence concluded that Trenchant and Sentinel had obtained ‘valuable’ intelligence, while the Director of Undersurface Warfare noted that ‘the valuable information derived of rev. counts and asdic frequency fully justified the time spent by the submarines on this duty’.199
At some point towards the end of 1954 Churchill was informed that Totem ‘was successful in escaping detection during the whole of the 10 days of Operation “Cravat” and was able to use her special equipment with full success’.200 That autumn, the Prime Minister changed his mind and approved the Royal Navy’s first submarine intelligence-gathering operation in northern waters, codenamed Operation ‘Defiant’.201 The following year, once again under Coote’s command, Totem rounded the North Cape of Norway, entered the Barents Sea, remained totally submerged for about six weeks and ‘battled against serious opposition with some unexpected results’.202 She experienced considerable difficulty with the specially fitted intelligence-gathering equipment coupled to the snort mast and after periscope to ‘hoover up’ electronic intelligence. When the equipment started to malfunction, Coote suspected that the connection on the periscope was loose, as when Totem was stationary it appeared to work as intended. With faulty intelligence-gathering equipment Coote was faced with the very real possibility of curtailing his operation and returning home. But he decided to try and fix the equipment. He withdrew Totem to the western limits of the patrol area in order to surface and physically check all the connections on the periscope.
After withdrawing Totem surfaced. Coote ordered Peter Lucy, the Electrical Officer, to climb up the conning tower and carry out repairs on the equipment. He told him that if Totem was detected he would immediately close all hatches and crash-dive, leaving Lucy to fend for himself in the freezing waters of the Barents Sea. ‘Lucy, who did the job alone,’ recalled Coote, ‘was under no illusions that if we were jumped by unfriendly forces, I might have to dive the boat under him.’203 One of the Communications specialists on board, Tony Beasley, recalled what happened next:
Waiting over, the boat was brought up to a level which made the Fin protrude completely out of the water. A quick all round view with the periscope ascertained no contacts visible, it was all systems go. Fortunately the weather had abated to a force two or three … [Lucy], armed with a bag of tools and a tin of white Vaseline [the medium used to protect connections from salt water], waited for the First Lieutenant (number one) to open the hatch and sample the freezing salty air of the Barents, before he started to ascend the iron ladder to the Fin. Everyone in the Control Room wished him luck as he crept ever upwards. Someone even offered him a week’s tot. The First Lieutenant [Fieldhouse] went after him, remaining on the ladder to pass on progress made. He was also responsible for closing the hatch in the event …204
Fieldhouse opened the hatch and inhaled what for submariners was a precious commodity, ‘fresh air, lovely fresh air’. As it poured into the submarine, everyone in the Control Room took advantage of the ‘gift from heaven’. On the fin, Lucy carried out ‘a prolonged and tricky operation’ to repair the equipment while Totem was dangerously exposed and wide open to detection.205 ‘The whole crew were on tenter hooks,’ remembered Beasley. ‘It seemed hours before the number one and … [Lucy] descended the ladder. Clips in place, we immediately dived back to periscope depth. Straddled around the periscope, the Captain made a couple of 360 degree turns, lowered the scope and asked … [Lucy] what the problem was. “Loose connection sir, it was crossed [sic] threaded.”206
With Totem’s intelligence-gathering equipment repaired Coote continued with the operation. Eight days later and with only two days remaining, Totem encountered yet more difficulties after detecting an unknown HE contact. ‘This was good news,’ recalled Beasley:
The ole man decided to venture further with the hope of obtaining a visual contact of this HE contact and establish the source. At this stage the boat was heading dangerously close to shore, way closer than our brief allowed. Known ‘S’ band Radar intercepts were being received but were not near enough to cause any undue concern. Completely out of the blue an ‘X’ band intercept, very near, coincided with a ‘near’ HE contact dead ahead. We crash dived. The periscope was lowering as we went down to 120 feet.207
As Totem dived the noise of propellers could be heard as a surface ship passed overhead. Then Totem’s crew heard the unmistakable sound that every submariner dreads: splashes. Totem was under attack. Beasley described how:
The first depth charge exploded way under our depth of 120 feet, followed by others, from different directions. A rather loud ‘clunk’ on our forward casing was followed by an enormous explosion which shook the boat, followed by others at a greater depth. Another depth charge exploded close above us rocking the boat much as before … Depth charging continued for longer than I care to remember.208
In order to avoid the depth charges Coote took Totem deeper and deeper, eventually levelling off at around 280 feet. But Totem had now drifted towards an area that was listed on the charts as a possible Soviet minefield. Beasley’s account continues:
Depth Charges continued to be picked up quite a distance from our position until they eased. The deathly silence was itself as frightening as the bombardment. Our HE operator reported that his Sonar was ‘bent’ (not working). The boat was on silent routine, ‘no movement throughout the boat’. Within the control room, we looked at each other with an air of bewilderment, wondering what was next on the agenda.
The silence was again broken by a rasping noise clearly audible down our starboard side. This was followed by another some moments later ending with a muffled ‘twang’, as if something was ‘caught’ then managed to free itself. These noises were firstly attributed by some as being pieces of ice, however reality soon came to the fore that the noises were hawsers rubbing on our outer casing attached to mines floating above.209
Checks to Totem revealed no internal structural damage, but there were slight traces of water running down the periscope and snort mast. Coote was worried. Until it was safe to return to periscope depth it would be difficult to assess the extent of the damage to the snort and periscope masts. Fortunately he was able to use Totem’s undamaged gyro compass and charts in the Control Room to move Totem away. With the periscope inoperable, the batteries dangerously low on power and foul air gradually making the crew ill, Coote had little choice but to surface blind somewhere off Kirkenes, Norway.
Once on the surface, Totem’s crew inspected the damage. According to Beasley:
Our periscopes and snort were bent at an angle, un-usable. Guardrails, aerials, asdic dome, everything on the upper casing had been blown away, including most of the Fin. Later we found the forward hatch was warped and could not be opened. Not knowing what further damage the boat may have sustained, we remained on the surface, like a sausage in the water, (a phrase made by one of our destroyers who found us).210
When Totem returned to HMS Dolphin, Coote was called up to London for a debriefing with the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Rhoderick McGrigor. Coote argued that as well as a wealth of new raw intelligence data there was some hard evidence that the UK’s naval policy should exploit the Soviets’ ‘demonstrable weakness in anti-submarine warfare, with priorities adjusted accordingly’. Although Flag Officer Submarines ‘purred’ with pride, this did not go down well with the rest of the Admirals. ‘There was a silence among the ranks of the Naval Staff,’ recalled Coote. It was only broken by an ‘incredulous top planner, addressing his remarks to the Chief of the Naval Staff: “You will appreciate, Sir, that the logical conclusion of this presentation could have far-reaching adverse effects on our Strike Carrier programme and the development of the Buccaneer aircraft.” ’211 This was not what some Admirals wanted to hear given their commitment to the carrier programme for which McGrigor and the Naval Staff were fighting hard and successfully against both the Prime Minister and Duncan Sandys, Minister of Supply.212
In the years that followed Operations ‘Cravat’ and ‘Defiant’, British ‘T’ class submarines engaged in similar intelligence-gathering operations in northern waters, pioneering the collection of vital intelligence on the capabilities of Soviet warships and submarines as well as their equipment, tactics and weapon systems.213 With each patrol the Submarine Service refined its intelligence-gathering craft. After Operation ‘Defiant’, for example, the Admiralty Signals Division undertook a security survey of Totem’s radio transmissions and warned the Director of Naval Intelligence that the KGB’s electronic listeners might be able to pick up ‘unusual very secret traffic on a home station submarine broadcast’ over a number of weeks and might also notice that Totem was absent from normal exercise areas. They suggested implementing a suitable cover plan with ‘dummy communications’.
These highly secret operations were the post-1945 equivalent of wartime patrols. Yet while many wartime patrols often went without incident, Cold War operations almost always produced incidents, some of which went on for days and weeks. (Some historians have questioned whether British ministers knew about these operations and the incidents they often produced.)214 Each operation required political authorization and, as we have seen, in the case of Operation ‘Defiant’, it came directly from the Prime Minister. In April 1956, Churchill’s successor, Sir Anthony Eden, cancelled all intelligence-gathering operations after the notorious ‘Buster’ Crabb incident when a Royal Navy frogman was killed while attempting to carry out underwater surveillance in Portsmouth Harbour on another ‘Sverdlov’ class cruiser, the Ordzhonikidze, which had carried Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders on a visit to Britain.215 The incident, which caused a major diplomatic row with the Soviet Union, led a furious Anthony Eden to suspend British intelligence-gathering operations while Sir Edward Bridges, the Head of the Civil Service, completed a report into their oversight and approval. This had an impact on the Navy’s use of submarines to gather intelligence. At the time of the Crabb incident the Submarine Service had plans to send another submarine into the Barents Sea but because, to use the words of the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral John Inglis, ‘political approval was not forthcoming’, the operation, which was codenamed Operation ‘Pontiac’, was cancelled.216 This had wider repercussions.
In April 1955, after leaving HMS Totem, Coote was appointed as Staff Officer to the Admiralty’s British Joint Services Mission in Washington (ABJSM). Headed by Rear Admiral Robert Elkins, the BJSM was responsible for maintaining relations with the United States Navy (USN). Coote was assigned as an Assistant Attaché with liaison duties with the USN submarine force. As part of this assignment he was invited to take part in a US Navy submarine intelligence-gathering operation. In return, the Royal Navy agreed to allow a USN officer to take part in one of its own submarine operations. Coote was assigned to the USS Stickleback, a ‘Guppy’ conversion submarine, similar in capability to the Royal Navy’s converted ‘T’ class.217 The Stickleback spent thirty-four days off Petropavlovsk intercepting the annual reinforcements to the Soviet East Asiatic Fleet as it emerged from the Bering Sea. ‘It was a very long trip, including five weeks consecutively dived, all for not more than three days’ action,’ wrote Coote. ‘Time passed with endless cups of coffee and two movies a day.’218 But it was a productive patrol. The Stickleback intercepted two ‘Sverdlov’ class cruisers, four ‘Riga’ class frigates and twelve ‘Kronstadt’ class patrol craft and regularly observed Soviet ‘L’ and ‘W’ class submarines exercising west of Cape Shipunski.219 The Stickleback recorded considerable VHF voice, IFF and radar traffic and it was clear that the Soviet Navy possessed a low anti-submarine capability. ‘Local training and defences emphasise Soviet readiness to deal with unfriendly air intrusion but no difficulties placed in way of submarine visitors,’ noted Coote.220
The Americans were impressed with the results of Stickleback’s patrol. Coote was later hustled into a debriefing with the US Commander Submarine Force Pacific:
I made some cautious comments suggesting how we might have got more out of the trip if our objective had called for more sophisticated electronic intercept and recording gear, so as to gather raw tactical data which only a submarine could do by playing it pretty close to the horns. This seemed to strike a sympathetic chord, for I was paraded the next day to repeat my views in front of the Commander-in-Chief Pacific himself … I said my piece without interruption from the tight-lipped senior aviators on his staff who clearly resented this upstart Limey making a direct pitch on behalf of the USN submariners.221
Coote noted that ‘CINCPACFLT’s intention is to press for early relaxation of 12 mile limit restriction and to increase scope and scale of submarine intelligence activity within his command.’222
With the Prime Minister refusing to authorize any submarine intelligence-gathering operations, not only was the Royal Navy unable to reciprocate, but the US Navy was having to fill the intelligence gap in the Barents Sea by sending its own submarines into northern waters to observe the Soviets. This created problems for other operations the Royal Navy was conducting against the Soviet Union, especially in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis.
OPERATION ‘NIGHTJAR’
Five Royal Navy submarines participated in Operation ‘Musketeer’, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, in November 1956: HMS Totem, HMS Tudor, HMS Trenchant, HMS Sentinel and HMS Sea Devil. HMS Tudor was assigned to air–sea rescue duties alongside a French submarine, La Créole. The operation was uneventful apart from one episode when La Créole, whic
h was dived, detected an unidentified submarine operating close by. Concerned that the unidentified boat was Russian in origin the French CO manoeuvred La Créole into a firing position and in accordance with his rules of engagement signalled the Task Force Commander, who instructed that La Créole could only fire in self-defence. The unidentified submarine turned out to be HMS Tudor, which had altered course due to a navigational error.223
As the Suez Crisis neared its culmination in early November 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in response to a national uprising. The US, already deeply concerned about Soviet influence and possible intervention in Egypt, moved its forces to high alert. A number of US Navy submarines, including the USS Quilback, took up stations between Greenland and Iceland, where they waited to intercept any Soviet warships and submarines that attempted to transit through the Denmark strait.224 The Royal Navy was informed of these operations and complied with a US Navy request to withdraw two submarines, HMS Acheron and HMS Trespasser, which were conducting equipment trials in the same area.225
At some point in early November 1956, the First Sea Lord, Lord Mountbatten, and the Secretary of the Navy, Sir John Lang, met with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Hailsham, to discuss whether the Royal Navy should conduct a similar operation and send submarines into the Barents Sea and to positions off the Norwegian coast to undertake reconnaissance with the aim of detecting any abnormal and significant submarine or surface activity which might indicate that the Soviets intended to start a war. Hailsham approved the operation, but only on the understanding that the ‘submarines did not approach the Russian coast nearer than between 50 and 100 miles’ and he ‘decided that as the operations were in no way connected with other intelligence gathering operations about which we were bound to consult the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, there was no need to do so in this instance’.226