The Silent Deep
Page 26
The Eisenhower administration eventually abandoned attempts to link the two. With the prospect of an agreement tantalizingly close, the British continued to do all they could to ensure the legislation passed successfully. Mountbatten even claimed that he stopped the demolition of a house in London in which Eisenhower had stayed in the pre-‘Overlord’ days in 1944. ‘Ike was furious when I told him,’ said Mountbatten, ‘but I prevented it and so we got the propulsion plant.’191 Privately some officials were worried that Rickover’s ‘extreme unpopularity throughout the U.S. Navy’ would jeopardize any agreement. ‘I have to be careful that none of it sticks to me,’ wrote Elkins.192 ‘The fact is that Rickover has many enemies and, while they cannot get at him over the U.S. programme, they could quite easily stir into activity the latent resentment which exists in Congress against the British.’193 For his part, Rickover continued to do all that he could to ensure that Congress passed the legislation. When it looked as if the negotiations were going to take longer than expected he put pressure on Congress. He even suggested ‘that in order to obtain a nuclear submarine for anti submarine training at the earliest possible moment [the UK] might be able to borrow one the year after next, when more would be available’.194
On 30 June 1958, Congress finally passed the amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The day after the act became law on 2 July, the US and UK signed a new bilateral agreement for ‘Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes’. The new agreement provided for the unprecedented exchange of a wide range of nuclear secrets and established a framework for an Anglo-American nuclear partnership that continues to this day.195 Under article 2a of the agreement, the UK and US were permitted to exchange information for ‘the development of defense plans, the training of personnel in the employment of, and defense against, atomic weapons and other military applications of atomic energy, the evaluation of the capabilities of potential enemies in the employment of atomic weapons and other military applications of atomic energy, the development of delivery systems compatible with the atomic weapons which they carry, and research, development, and design of military reactors to the extent and by such means as may be agreed’. Article 13 permitted Westinghouse to sell to the British government a complete nuclear-submarine propulsion plant and spare parts, together with ‘information relating to the safety features and information for the design, manufacture and operation of the reactor’.196
THE DREADNOUGHT PROGRAMME
Advanced design work on Dreadnought could now start. During the meeting on 24 January, as we have seen, Rickover suggested ‘that the United Kingdom should decide on the type of submarine to aim for and thought that the best choice would be the U.S.S. “Skate” ’.197 Commissioned in December 1957, the USS Skate was smaller and slower than Nautilus and was powered by an S3W (Submarine, 3rd Generation, Westinghouse) nuclear reactor. The existing Dreadnought design was bigger and would have required significant modifications in order to accommodate the twin-screw Skate machinery. It would also have led to a relatively small submarine compared to the original Dreadnought and if the Admiralty accepted it, ‘nothing done by us up to now would be directly applicable to the resulting submarine, and the resulting submarine would not be directly applicable to our future programme as now envisaged’.198 The alternative was the reactor and machinery used in the US Navy’s then newest submarine, USS Skipjack, the S5W (Submarine, 5th Generation, Westinghouse). The Skipjack was bigger and faster, it had considerably greater endurance at sea under operational conditions, and it was large enough – which the Skate was not – to fit the new advanced sonar then under development. The US Navy also intended to use it to power its new Polaris-missile-carrying submarines (of which we shall see more in the next chapter).
Due to the quantity of information which had been received from the Americans before the decision to purchase a plant from the US Navy, the ‘Dreadnought’ design was very similar to the Skipjack design and it was possible to instal the machinery in the ‘Dreadnought’ hull with the minimum of reworking, resulting in a submarine with high speed, better manoeuvrability, and three times the operational endurance of the Skate.199 On 13 February 1958, the Admiralty Board settled on the ‘Skipjack’ class machinery.200 There was some discussion about whether it was appropriate to name the submarine Dreadnought now that it embodied an American propulsion unit but the Board decided that the name should not be transferred to a later vessel, ‘if only because of the criticism which would arise on account of the inordinate time which would then apparently elapse between the inception and completion of the submarine bearing the name “Dreadnought.” ’201
Rolls-Royce was named as the British agent and Westinghouse as the US agent. Vickers-Armstrongs (Shipbuilders) was named as the shipbuilders and Vickers-Armstrongs (Engineers) as the machinery installation subcontractors. The shipbuilder responsible for building many of the US Navy’s nuclear submarines, Electric Boat Company, was named as the subcontractors to Westinghouse and in January 1959 the Naval Section at Harwell was disbanded and Rolls-Royce Ltd, Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd, and Foster Wheeler Ltd joined together to form a new private company, Rolls-Royce and Associates Ltd. The final commercial agreement between Westinghouse and Rolls-Royce was in two parts – first, a supply contract covering the sale of machinery, the training of British personnel and certain maintenance services; and, second, a licensing agreement which permitted Rolls-Royce to manufacture the reactor equipment and fuel elements for nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom.
The British hoped to continue exchanging design and manufacturing information with the Americans for at least ten years but the US Navy refused and insisted that future cooperation and information about reactors could only take place if a new agreement was negotiated.202 ‘It is very disappointing,’ Macmillan wrote to Selkirk.203 Selkirk agreed, but argued that ‘enough remains to make the agreement worth while’.204 Later attempts to work around these restrictions caused further problems with the endlessly volatile Rickover, who continued to insist ‘that in future there could be no informal discussion on British needs and that the British could not expect him to help them in breaking the “law” ’.205
Sourcing fissile material was also a problem because of the continuing demands of the UK nuclear-weapons programme. In November 1958, the Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, Sir Edwin Plowden, informed the Cabinet’s Defence Committee that ‘information obtained from the United States about the design of nuclear weapons would greatly extend our capacity to manufacture nuclear warheads from our existing supplies of fissile material’. Dreadnought required around 50 kilograms of U-235, which would cost £1,000,000 if purchased from UK sources, compared to around £300,000 if purchased from US sources.206 In November 1958, the Defence Committee authorized the Atomic Energy Authority to reopen discussions with the US AEC about whether there was any possibility that, as an alternative to the construction of an expensive new gaseous diffusion plant in the UK to produce additional fissile material, the US would be prepared to supply the UK with adequate quantities of U-235 on acceptable terms. The Americans agreed. In March 1959, Plowden led a delegation to Washington in order to remove the remaining difficulties and an amendment to the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement was signed in May, and came into force in July, which significantly widened the range of cooperation to include the sale of non-nuclear components and the exchange of British plutonium for US uranium-235, tritium and lithium.207
One of the many questions the Admiralty had to answer following the American purchase was whether the Royal Navy’s post-Dreadnought nuclear submarines should depend on US technology and machinery, or should the UK follow its own development path, taking on board information gleaned from the American plant. When the possibility of purchasing a US reactor was first mooted in 1956, officials in the Admiralty insisted that ‘although any U.S. information which we obtain may well result in a slight reduction of our own work, it cannot replace it’.208 One of the reasons Rickover had suggested selling
the British a complete plant was because it would provide the Royal Navy with, as Mountbatten explained, ‘practical knowledge which would greatly facilitate our own research work in this field so that when we came to build the second and subsequent submarines we could stand on our own feet’.209 Rickover ‘did not want to see us abandon our own project: indeed he hoped that his organisation might in due course benefit from us’.210
Independent work at Harwell and construction of the first British submarine machinery and the Dounreay containment hull at Barrow were effectively halted following the American purchase. The decision to continue was finally taken in early April 1958, following a review that concluded that any attempt to Anglicize the ‘Skipjack’ class plant would involve a significant amount of redesign work. Continuing also avoided breaking up the teams which might be required if the agreement with the Americans subsequently failed to materialize.211 Dounreay was also needed to proof test the first all-British plant, subsequent development and training. Further development proceeded on the basis of the original Dreadnought machinery, except for the reactor core and control mechanisms and any other items that could be substituted for more advanced American designs.212
The Admiralty accepted that some substantial organizational changes were required to coordinate its efforts with the Atomic Energy Authority and the many contractors involved in the Dreadnought programme. The organization inside the Ships Department at Bath which had been responsible for the programme was altered to enable the ‘Dreadnought Project’ – to which the Admiralty Board had now accorded high priority – to be driven through using a compact and dedicated in-house team. Authority was concentrated (perhaps following Rickover’s exhortation) in the hands of a single authority known as the Technical Chief Executive, Dreadnought Project. A brilliant naval constructor, Rowland Baker, was appointed as Technical Chief Executive and given responsibility for the design and construction as well as controlling the cost of Dreadnought, a task that left Baker with mixed feelings that ‘alternated between elation at the prospect and terror’:
Terror because just when they were about to sign a government to government agreement, I realised that not one of those who would have to be on my staff … approved of me in any way, or of the scheme. They had pottered about for several years, and now had not only a solution, but a chieftain imposed on them. Of course they all hated it … My terror derived in part from the conviction that even if we had a Rickover reactor, all and sundry would want to ‘improve’ it and feed in their national ideas throughout the ship.213
Baker quickly established his authority and brought together the many departments and contractors involved in the programme. He concentrated all nuclear-submarine activity at the Admiralty’s design departments located in Foxhill, Bath, a change that greatly enhanced the efficiency of the Dreadnought Project Team.
The Dreadnought design was the responsibility of the Admiralty’s in-house naval architects, the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors (RCNC). Before the decision to purchase the S5W plant the arrangement and structural design of Dreadnought was largely complete. After the purchase, the design was altered to match the hull particulars for American plant. The Admiralty Board was initially critical of the RCNC’s first revised design concept as it was noticeably heavier than the USS Skipjack. The naval architects had attempted to match the new design to the original Dreadnought staff requirements. However, the Board was ‘not satisfied that all the superior requirements which had been incorporated justified the extra weight involved’ and directed that Dreadnought’s staff requirements should be reviewed. Revised requirements, which compromised a number of Dreadnought’s original features, were issued in September 1959. Maximum speed was reduced from 25 knots to 23 knots. The use of resilient mountings for the main turbines and gearing was scaled back because it was impossible to guarantee any silent submerged speed above 4½ knots with the US machinery. The target diving depth of 750 feet was also reduced to 700 feet, the depth at which the ‘Skipjack’ machinery was designed to operate. Endurance was also reduced as the ‘Skipjack’ air conditioning, refrigeration and stores arrangements only allowed for a maximum endurance of 75 days, not the original Royal Navy requirement of 90 days. The weapons fit was also reduced from 36 torpedo reloads (i.e. in addition to those in the tubes) to just 31.214
In all previous submarine designs there had always been a conflict between the different characteristics required for operating on the surface and when submerged. The Dreadnought design was optimized for submerged operations. The hull was based on the streamlined teardrop design of USS Albacore. Dreadnought’s stern was almost identical to that of a US ‘Skipjack’ class, while the bow was designed by the naval architect Louis Rydill and incorporated the best of the traditional RCNC design procedures, tried and tested in previous ships and submarines.215 The bow included many new hull systems and equipment for ballasting, diving control, ventilation and atmosphere content, as well as a new water ram torpedo discharge system. The bridge fin was further aft than in US submarines, partly to take account of the layout of the front end, but also to reduce the roll induced when the submarine was manoeuvring at speed. Dreadnought’s designers also positioned the forward hydroplanes near the bow rather than on the fin as per US Navy practice, as this improved handling at low speeds, particularly when the submarine was operating at periscope depth, but at the expense of interference with sonar performance.216
The US Navy advised the Royal Navy to aim for a three-year building programme, the time it had taken to construct USS Skipjack. The Admiralty felt this was unrealistic due to the more complicated circumstances of Dreadnought’s design, a view that was quickly reinforced by delays in drawing up and signing the contracts between the several US and UK companies involved in the programme. The Admiralty recognized early on that having solved the major technical difficulty on the nuclear side, construction was now likely to cause significant problems. As one Admiralty paper explained:
Submarine construction itself, overall, now presents a very likely chance of failure. For this submarine is, as a submarine, a very much more formidable project than any earlier vessel and because we are now getting all the machinery from the U.S., not only are all the design parameters no longer all in our hands but when we come to the actual installation in the ship we shall not have the advantage, that we had promised ourselves formerly, of merely copying what we had at Dounreay. So therefore up to the time of the Rickover deal it was wise to stress mostly the nuclear end, now that this is solved it is essential to stress the shipbuilding end.217
The shipbuilder, Vickers-Armstrongs, had an illustrious record of submarine construction, as well as a long tradition, dating from the turn of the century, of working with the American shipyard responsible for building the US Navy’s nuclear submarines, the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation, located in New London, Connecticut.
Fabrication of what was then the largest pressure vessel constructed in the UK started in early 1959 and involved an estimated 635,000 man-hours. Dreadnought’s hull was constructed out of special steel capable of withstanding enormous pressures in the depths of the oceans, known as QT35 (QT standing for ‘quenched and tempered’). Vickers managed to construct Dreadnought with QT35 ‘without too many problems’ although, as we shall see later, there were worrying problems with cracking.218 Advice and assistance from Electric Boat were invaluable, especially when problems arose.219 ‘So many new materials and new methods of construction were introduced for the first time that technique development was a major problem,’ wrote Gregg Mott, at the time the head planner of the Dreadnought build at Vickers. ‘Most of the difficulties arose through failure to meet standards of acceptance which were much higher than those acceptable for merchant or surface naval ships or even for previous submarines.’220
Aside from construction problems the Dreadnought programme also suffered from a serious security breach involving the new sonar designed to detect and track Soviet submarines. In April 1957, Her Majes
ty’s Underwater Detection Establishment (HMUDE) at Portland started to design a new sonar system for Dreadnought. Known as the Type 2001 in recognition of its complexity compared to the Type 187 fitted to the ‘Porpoise’ class, the new sonar was designed against the background of improved understanding about the acoustics of the world’s oceans and used advanced digital multi-beam sonar (DIMUS) techniques.221 It consisted of a 40-foot fixed sonar array arranged like a horseshoe around the upper part of the bow of the submarine, 6 feet high, tilted backwards 20 degrees from the vertical to fit in with the streamlining of the hull, and was designed to give continuous sonar coverage over an arc of 240 degrees, both active and passive. When operating in active mode, and depending on Dreadnought’s speed and aspect, it was capable of detecting targets at a maximum range of 25 miles at 5 knots to 5 miles at 20 knots, the decrease in range with increase in speed caused by self-noise from the submarine. When operating in the passive mode, the Type 2001 could detect a snorting submarine moving at 8 knots at distances of up to 30 nautical miles, reduced to 17 nm and 6 nm at speeds of 10 knots and 20 knots respectively.222
Given the advanced nature of the new sonar, HMUDE, at Portland, was one of the Soviet Union’s prime intelligence targets. In 1952, an ex-Royal Navy Master at Arms, Harry Houghton, offered his services to the Polish intelligence service while serving as an Admiralty civil servant at the British embassy in Warsaw. Houghton passed copies of numerous top-secret naval documents to the Poles, who in turn shared them with the KGB. When Houghton was posted back to Britain he started working at HMUDE as a clerk in the personnel department, before being transferred to the unit responsible for the maintenance of the small number of vessels assigned to the establishment, where he eventually became responsible for all the papers and correspondence that passed through the unit. Houghton was finally handed over to ‘Gordon Lonsdale’, an illegal (i.e. not acting under diplomatic cover) KGB agent named Konon Trofimovich Molody, who pressed Houghton for more detailed technical information. At the time, Houghton’s marriage had disintegrated and he had entered into a relationship with a clerk at HMUDE, Ethel Gee, who worked in the stores section until 1955, when she was posted to the HMUDE Drawing Records Office. ‘Lonsdale’ and Houghton were able to convince Gee to pass them classified information and she eventually became a conduit for channelling information from HMUDE to the KGB.