The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  SSNs were then put through a Static Noise Range in Loch Fyne, where the submarine would be secured fore and aft to large buoys and lowered to a depth where it was surrounded by hydrophones. A scientist sitting in a hut ashore would then listen as the submarine’s crew ran all sorts of machinery in different combinations to see the result. ‘A noisy pump could blank our own sonar, and provide a beacon for the enemy; distinctive combinations of frequencies, unique to [the submarine], could make a powerful and unwelcome identifier,’ says Middleton.132 In some cases the forward escape hatch and the indicator buoys were welded shut in order to reduce the risk of any unwanted noise. The type of equipment fitted to SSNs for intelligence-gathering patrols had also changed considerably. In the days prior to departure there would be a constant stream of scientists and engineers installing some ‘special fit’ equipment. Often the equipment would arrive accompanied by its inventor ‘of the wild-haired kind, who sometimes had little idea of the practicalities of installing or operating his precious baby,’ recalled Middleton.133

  The Navy’s first SSN, HMS Dreadnought, was too noisy to be considered for sensitive intelligence-gathering operations in northern waters. The first SSN to head north was therefore HMS Valiant, under the command of Commander Peter Herbert. Before Valiant departed Faslane at some point in 1968, Herbert was warned by Denis Healey: ‘Don’t you bloody well get detected.’134 Herbert quickly found that the operation ‘was surprisingly easy because we were quiet and we could wander and watch things going on’.

  ‘I watched, from about 1000 yards behind a cruiser, watching its missile launch and those sorts of things and following a submarine and going underneath a submarine and looking at its bottom, those sorts of things. But mostly … at night when nothing was going on, then you went up and listened to communications … hoovering up as much as you could.’135

  Herbert was ‘bloody careful not to get detected’, but he had ‘to get close several times in order to get any information’. At one point during the operation Valiant was sitting underneath and taking photographs of a Soviet submarine when it unexpectedly started to dive. Herbert came away from the Navy’s first SSN intelligence-gathering operation with a healthy respect for the Soviet surface fleet.136 Their submarines ‘were less worrying’, he says. Although Soviet surface ship sonars were very poor – which explained why Valiant and other SSNs were able to do what they did and remain undetected – Soviet surface ships’ weapons capability was ‘very very impressive’. Valiant observed Soviet surface ships ‘shoot down their targets in quite a spectacular way. The number of missiles they fired was fantastic.’ ‘It was an interesting time,’ said Herbert, ‘all of us were bloody tired at the end of it … you didn’t get much sleep really.’137

  In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had embarked on an intensive anti-ship missile programme to counter the threat of US aircraft carriers. As Khrushchev explained in his memoirs, ‘The Americans had a mighty carrier fleet – no one could deny that. I’ll admit I felt a nagging desire to have some in our own Navy, but we couldn’t afford to build them. They were simply beyond our means. Besides, with a strong submarine force, we felt able to sink the American carriers if it came to war. In other words, submarines represented an effective defensive capability as well as reliable means of launching a missile counterattack.’138 The P-6 (SS-N-3a) Shaddock cruise missile, armed with either a conventional or a nuclear warhead and with a range of up to 245 nautical miles, could be fed guidance information while in flight by a video data link, enabling long-range reconnaissance aircraft and later satellites to relay radar information from great distances to the launching submarines. These anti-ship cruise missiles were carried by the first-generation Soviet nuclear cruise-missile-carrying submarine, the Project 675/‘Echo II’ class and the conventionally powered Project 651/‘Juliett’ class, which housed eight launch canisters fitted in the deck casing. Twenty-nine of the class were produced between 1963 and 1968.139

  On one occasion in the late 1960s, HMS Warspite under Commander John Hervey entered into northern waters and started to trail a Soviet ‘Echo II’ cruise-missile-carrying submarine.140 When submerged, Warspite depended on its Type 2001 bow sonar to determine what was taking place. The submarine was also fitted with a very short-range passive sonar in the rear of the fin and a line/flank array on both sides of the hull known as Type 2007. Unlike in the surface world, where radar could be used to determine the range, course and speed of a target, passive sonar only gave the bearings of a contact, not its range, course and speed. This could be obtained by using active sonar, but during a covert intelligence-gathering operation the use of active transmissions was unacceptable as any use would immediately be heard and betray Warspite’s presence.

  Warspite’s attack team were ‘closed up’ with the bearings of all contacts, including the Echo II, plotted together with additional annotations such as characteristics and classification on a Contact Evaluation Plot (CEP). The maintenance of a comprehensive tactical picture required experience and judgement and very good liaison between a submarine’s Sound Room (which gathered the sonar information) and Control Room. Although Warspite’s crew was good at interpreting the Contact Evaluation Plot, using it to build up an accurate picture of the location, range and course of the Echo II, it was very difficult to determine the depth at which the Echo II was operating. The best Warspite’s crew could do was estimate based on occasional machinery noise emanating from the Soviet submarine. Maintaining an accurate track of its range by following how its bearing movement changed over time was also challenging. Little change to the bearing could mean either that the Echo II was too far away to register any movement, or that it was on a collision course at very close range.

  As Warspite continued to trail the Echo II, the Soviet submarine shut down one of its two propeller shafts, which reduced its speed by around 3 knots as well as its noise signature. Warspite’s crew detected none of this; nor did they appreciate that the bearings remaining relatively steady meant that the distance between Warspite and the Echo II was closing fast. At around 0025 Warspite slammed into the ballast tank of the Soviet submarine. ‘There was an awful bang, and crushing, and scraping and we were pushed right over in our chairs, about 74 degrees, so we were almost on our backs,’ said Frank Turvey, Warspite’s Engineer, who was walking through the Control Room at the moment of impact. ‘There were alarms on all of the panels, bells ringing, red lights flashing.’141 The initial impact caused Warspite to violently heel to starboard. She then swung back, passed under and thereupon collided with the Echo II again, causing Warspite to roll to starboard for a second time, between 65 and 70 degrees. Warspite’s CO, John Hervey, was standing at the far end of the Control Room at the moment of impact. As he clambered to the ship control area he found his Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Tim Hale, standing on the almost horizontal face of Warspite’s normally vertical Systems Console, where he had initiated the emergency surface procedure.142

  Once on the surface Warspite’s engineering team prevented the nuclear plant from shutting down, which would have severely limited the available power and the ability to withdraw from the area. They set about calmly and methodically restoring the various items of machinery that had developed faults during the collision and checked for casualties. No one was injured. One man on the planes had fainted and had to be relieved. Within five minutes, Warspite’s Navigator, Lieutenant Tom Le Marchand, despite the failure of all the submarine’s compasses, managed to get an accurate fix of Warspite’s location and was able to plot a course out of the area.143 A large chunk of Warspite’s fin, at the top port forward corner, where submariners would normally stand when the submarine was running on the surface, was damaged. Warspite did not require immediate repairs but was now restricted in its speed and too noisy to complete the operation. The Echo II was also damaged, though, like Warspite, not critically. It reportedly returned to its base, where repair crews discovered a hole in the outer hull so large that a Soviet officer said ‘a three
-ton truck could easily’ have driven through it.144

  Hervey dived Warspite and set course for Faslane, later rendezvousing with a Royal Navy frigate, HMS Dundas, near the entrance to a Scottish sea loch. The frigate then escorted Warspite to a sheltered anchorage, where a team of waiting shipwrights carried out a series of cosmetic repairs to the top of Warspite’s fin to conceal the damage from Soviet reconnaissance aircraft and spy trawlers as well as unwanted media attention.145 By the time Warspite reached Faslane the press had somehow caught on to the fact that there had been an incident involving a Royal Navy SSN. The government promptly issued a cover story in order to preserve operational security. Officially, Warspite had hit an iceberg. The 19 October 1968 edition of The Times ran a story on its front page: ‘Ice on the sea has damaged the 3,500-ton Warspite, one of the Navy’s five nuclear-powered submarines. There was no risk of radio-active leakage, the department said. Warspite, which was delivered to the Navy last year, returned to Faslane, on the Clyde, for repairs. The Warspite, on exercise in the North Atlantic, cleared the obstruction with slight damage to her conning tower and other parts of the superstructure.’146

  A number of former submariners, shipyard workers and former senior ministers have unofficially revealed what actually happened.147 ‘It’s become known now that during my tenure one of our submarines was quite badly damaged,’ says the then Minister of the Navy, Lord Owen. ‘Its conning tower was not quite destroyed, but very seriously bent. Of course we lied about how it had happened. But now it is known it had hit a Soviet submarine because it was shadowing it. Now, boys will be boys. There was an element of just going off and doing this for bravado and that we need to curb some of it. And I think some of it was curbed.’148

  The repairs at Barrow took twenty-eight days. Warspite’s badly damaged fin was removed and replaced with HMS Churchill’s, then building at Vickers. A strike by the Barrow workforce helped maintain the cover story as management, who were used to dealing with sensitive information, completed most of the work. One shipyard worker, on seeing Warspite as it entered Barrow, is reported to have said: ‘First iceberg I’ve heard of with antifouling.’149 Although Hervey suffered the severe displeasure of the Admiralty Board, he remained in command of Warspite and conducted a number of other successful Cold War patrols. As he wrote:

  The moment one committed a submarine to cold war type ops, one had to do so in the certain knowledge that to perform the task effectively – especially in an SSN – the CO was being encouraged to operate – quite deliberately – close to Soviet submarines – sometimes very close – but without any depth or space separation guaranteed – nor any knowledge of the other submarines’ future intended movements. So arguably, those ordering the operations were accepting that collisions, if not inevitable in the short term, were certainly very likely to occur, sooner or later, in the long term. But the value of the intelligence to be gained and the – in your face type – pressure which such ops put on the Soviet high command were probably thought to justify the risks. We certainly never doubted this. Moreover, it was excellent training for war.150

  HMS Warspite’s second intelligence-gathering operation under Hervey’s command was very successful. Only one member of the submarine’s crew asked to be relieved. ‘I had already agreed that anyone who wanted to go should be allowed to do so,’ recalls Hervey. ‘All the rest bravely swallowed their fears and just got on with the job, for which I think they deserve praise.’151

  In 1969, Hervey handed over command of Warspite to Commander Sandy Woodward. Warspite’s programme involved working with surface ships, activities that required high speeds and vigorous manoeuvring. Not long after taking command Woodward discovered that some of Warspite’s crew were still suffering from the incident with the Echo II:

  ‘It was my first week at sea, before Christmas in ’69 I suppose, I was given a week to work myself into the submarine and we were at periscope depth taking the wireless routine and I said to the third hand who was on watch when the wireless routine is finished, ten degrees bow down, onto twenty knots, two hundred feet down to the deeper areas to do our business. I went down to the Senior Rates mess on the deck below to meet all the Chiefs and Petty Officers. We were all having a beer, cheerful, chatting away, getting to know them. Then the angle came on and there was a deathly hush, absolute quiet. Then we pulled out and as we levelled off, slowly conversation started again. I thought “Fuck me”, my entire Senior Rates Mess is twitchy about a ten degree angle, which should be as normal as blueberry pie in an American boat. I went back up to the Control Room and told the First Lieutenant what had happened and he said: “Oh didn’t you know?” I said: “Oh God, what haven’t I been told” and he told me the whole story.’152

  In order to demonstrate to Warspite’s crew that he was capable of handling any situation that might occur and to reassure those still unnerved by the more severe angles associated with surface ship exercises, Woodward spent a week taking Warspite through an extreme version of ‘Angles and Dangles’, putting the submarine through its paces, diving, rising, twisting and turning.

  Warspite’s first intelligence-gathering operation under Woodward’s command was directed against one of the Soviet Navy’s newest vessels, an 18,000 ton helicopter carrier. These were ‘a new development and are of particular interest’ and their role was ‘uncertain’.153 Intelligence indicated that one of the new helicopter carriers, the Leningrad, was on its way from the Soviet Black Sea Fleet to join the Northern Fleet and that ‘something’ large was projecting 50 feet below her hull. Woodward was ordered to take Warspite into the Atlantic, find the Leningrad and gather intelligence on its general behaviour. Not long after departing Faslane, Warspite intercepted the Leningrad and its escorts off the west of Ireland, heading north at a speed of around 10 knots. This was ideal for an important manoeuvre in the submariner’s intelligence-gathering craft, the so-called ‘underwater look’, which would see Warspite move directly underneath the Leningrad.

  Great care and attention were taken when preparing for this complex manoeuvre. The submarine would close up at action stations with extra men placed underneath all the hatches to listen for the target and report when it was overhead. In the Control Room, the Operations Team would be working hard to try and identify the course, speed and range of the target, gleaning as much information as possible from the sonar. Meanwhile the First Lieutenant and the Captain would agree on the depth the submarine should maintain while directly underneath the target. This was a complex judgement that took into account the estimated height of the swell which led to the pitching up and down of the target, the height of the periscope when raised, the target’s draught, the depth separation from the bottom of the hull to the top of the periscope and an added safety margin. Once these had been calculated the submarine would move down to the required depth, check the visibility was good enough and then begin the approach.154

  The approach phase of the manoeuvre took time as the submarine sneaked up astern of the target, attempting to establish its exact speed. In the Control Room there was silence as everyone listened out for the words of the Sonar Controller who, using a large-scale plan of the submarine, with the position of all the sonar sets and the fans of the bearings emanating from the positions, plotted, triangulated and established a rough set of ranges. Ship Control then increased or reduced the revolutions in stages while planesmen concentrated on maintaining the course and depth required. One lapse of concentration could lead to disaster for both the submarine and the ship above. As the submarine moved in closer to the objective, the periscope was raised and the CO looked for any evidence, such as the wake of the ship, that would indicate that the submarine was close to its target. A report from men waiting in the fore-ends of the submarine that they could hear the target was eventually received, followed by the appearance through the periscope of the murky outline of the hull. The Captain provided a running commentary of what he saw while a camera, fixed to the periscope, was used to take photographs of whatever w
as required of the underwater fittings, and in the Sound Room recording tapes were switched on to suck in as much sonar data as possible.

  Woodward recalled that Warspite ‘went straight in, lined up astern and slowly overtook her while looking ahead and above underwater through my periscope. First I saw her wake, then her huge rudders appeared and then her screws. Now for the fifty-foot projection, I thought, which for all I knew could well write off my periscope if I didn’t see it soon enough. Sure enough, a large dark shape appeared ahead and with a quick check to see that my periscope was going to go safely underneath, we continued towards it. At about fifteen feet, it became clear that it was only a large sonar dome, probably less than fifteen feet deep, and similar to what would be required to house a long-range, high-powered, active sonar array such as I had in my bow. I went a bit deeper, made some sketches and decided to stay underneath the Leningrad to await developments – it seemed as safe a place to be as anywhere else – who would, or even could, look for me there?’155

  Underwater looks required a great deal of concentration from all involved, especially the planesmen, who were responsible for ensuring the submarine did not wander off the required depth. Often, when they were relieved, they would be soaked in sweat. Intelligence-gathering operations were exhilarating for Warspite’s crew. Patrick Middleton described how:

  The boat thrummed with excitement and with the water whooshing past. We were dead level, only the smallest angle on the planes was needed to keep depth, and the machinery all seemed well matched at what was, after all, its design condition. The only downside was that if something did go wrong it would go wrong a lot more quickly, and more profoundly, so we were all kept on our toes. The Command team were all metaphorically peering ahead, trying to keep their eyes, well their ears actually, on the quarry.156