The Silent Deep
Page 79
The size of the submarine fleet was dictated primarily by the need to have sufficient boats to contribute to Allied forward maritime operations. Our investment for the future will be concentrated on nuclear submarines with their long range endurance and good manoeuvrability. Conventional submarines are less suited to such operations, but we decided to retain four in service, which will act as force multipliers by releasing SSNs for operations in war in the most distant waters and by undertaking important training tasks in peacetime.18
Such explanations failed to convince the House of Commons Defence Committee, which was so concerned with the Government’s proposals that it initiated an inquiry into the future size and shape of the Submarine Service.19 When the Defence Committee’s report, ‘Royal Navy Submarines’, was published in June 1991, it concluded that the ‘fleet of 12 or 13 SSNs proposed is the barest minimum SSN force, subject to anticipated improvements in availability rates, support and reductions in time spent in refit over a submarine’s life’.20 HMS Conqueror was decommissioned in 1990, despite having had over £200m spent on a refit. HMS Warspite and HMS Churchill were decommissioned in 1991, and although HMS Courageous continued to operate under a series of ‘trouser leg’ restrictions, which reduced its available power to 50 per cent, and its speed to 19.5 knots, it too was decommissioned in April 1991. HMS Valiant, the first of the ‘Valiant’ class SSNs, continued in service until August 1994 until it was also decommissioned after suffering from repeated engineering problems.21
The Defence Committee’s report also urged the Government to ‘urgently reconsider its proposals to retain only four’ SSKs, recommending instead that a minimum of six should be built and enter service.22 However, just three years later the MOD decided to decommission the entire fleet. The Upholders had been designed very specifically for the Iceland–Faroes Gap and to fire at and sink anything that passed. The MOD concluded that the Soviet threat had declined so significantly that they were no longer needed. Their limited endurance also meant they were unsuited to out of area operations. Whereas the ‘Oberon’ class could operate at great distances without refuelling, when an Upholder was deployed to the Mediterranean it had to be refuelled once it arrived in the region. The Submarine Service struggled to accept the decision. ‘Widespread dismay broke out among young command-qualified officers,’ wrote Jonty Powis, Conqueror’s Navigator, ‘because commanding an “Upholder” as a lieutenant commander was a powerful stimulus to retention and officers lucky enough to enjoy the experience became better nuclear captains.’23 ‘It was an outrageous decision,’ recalled Roger Lane-Nott, the Flag Officer Submarines at the time the decision was taken. ‘It was totally unrealistic; it didn’t take into account any of the information that was available. It was a disgraceful decision. Brand new submarines that we’d just got working really well, they were fantastic submarines at sea and we just frittered away the money.’24
All four ‘Upholder’ class submarines were mothballed in April and October 1994 and laid up alongside Buccleuch Dock at Barrow-in-Furness, with VSEL awarded a care and maintenance contract, placing items such as the diesel engines into deep preservation while the MOD set about finding a foreign buyer. After trying to interest Chile, Greece, Pakistan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey, the class was sold to the Canadian Navy in 1998 as replacements for its old ‘Oberon’ SSKs.25 With the disappearance of diesel submarines, the 1st Submarine Squadron was abolished and HMS Dolphin, the traditional home of the Submarine Service at Gosport, closed in December 1999. This left just three submarine squadrons: the 2nd Submarine Squadron in Devonport and the 3rd and 10th Submarine Squadrons in Faslane.
FROM POLARIS TO TRIDENT
The early 1990s also saw the decommissioning of the Polaris force and its replacement with the Trident carrying ‘Vanguard’ class SSBNs, the first of which, HMS Vanguard, was due to enter service in 1994. By the early 1990s, the Submarine Service was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain and operate the ‘Resolution’ class, which began to suffer from a series of mechanical and technical defects. ‘It was not as if there was one thing,’ recalled Toby Frere, FOSM during the early 1990s, ‘it was just that these boats had been running almost continuously all of their lives. Of course they’d been refitted, but their use had been very high. Their secondary systems just weren’t up to it.’26 Aside from the ‘trouser leg’ defect, much of the ‘Resolution’ design was ‘too complicated, skimping on suitable materials, and too reliant on outmoded technology,’ recalled Patrick Middleton. ‘The nineteenth-century secondary plant, the “steam swallowing” bit, was the worst culprit, it would need an awful lot of work and expense over the years to keep it going.’27 On 9 December 1991 the Government announced that HMS Revenge would be scrapped.28 HMS Renown had been refitted between 1987 and 1992, at the cost of around £200m, but only carried out three operational patrols before returning to Faslane three years later with a ‘minor defect’.29 HMS Repulse also spent considerable periods alongside from July 1990 onwards. During this period HMS Resolution, which was meant to decommission in 1991 after a 25-year service, became the workhorse of the Polaris fleet as the Royal Navy struggled to maintain continuous deterrent patrols while repairs to HMS Renown and HMS Repulse were carried out.
Maintaining the deterrent between 1990 and 1996 required complex planning. Before 1989 Polaris patrols had been of a regular length, lasting around eight weeks, but during 1990 and 1991 patrols varied in length between sixteen days and 109 days and HMS Resolution conducted one sixteen-week patrol, only four days shorter than the longest patrol ever completed by a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine.30 In anticipation of future difficulties a number of contingency plans were drawn up to maintain the continuity and credibility of the deterrent if it proved impossible to keep a submarine at sea at all times. One of these involved resupplying a Polaris submarine with food while it was still at sea.31 Another, for use in a worst-case scenario, involved moving a Polaris submarine into Loch Long, where it would dive and remain in a static location on Quick Reaction Alert.32 None of these contingency plans were implemented. The overworked HMS Resolution was decommissioned in October 1994. The ‘minor defect’ in HMS Renown was far more serious than first realized and the submarine remained tied up alongside Faslane until it was eventually decommissioned on 24 February 1996, leaving HMS Repulse as the last remaining operational Polaris submarine.33 By 1996, HMS Vanguard and HMS Victorious had entered service.
With two ‘Vanguard’ class submarines in operation, the Polaris force was formally retired on 28 August 1996, when the Prime Minister, John Major, addressed a ceremony at Faslane Naval Base. It is worth quoting what he said in full:
We are here today to pay tribute to the work of the Polaris force. The debt we owe is very large. For the last 28 years this Force has mounted continuous patrols that have been vital to ensure this country’s peace and security. Because of these patrols any possible aggressor has known that to attack the UK would provoke a terrible response.
In particular, we are here today to pay tribute to the last of the four Polaris submarines, HMS Repulse, which returned from her sixtieth and final deployment in May.
But not only Repulse, of course. I pay tribute, too, to the other three boats and their crews in her Class: the Resolution herself, Renown and Revenge. Each has made its own unique and invaluable contribution to the remarkable record of maintaining a Polaris submarine at sea, on deterrent patrol, undetected by friend or foe, every day, of every year, from 1969 until May this year.
To those of you who have served aboard any of these submarines, past and present, I offer you the thanks not just of those others of us here but of people throughout the country.
The years of the Polaris Force have seen some dramatic changes. In 1968, when Resolution began her first patrol, east/west tension was running high. The Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia, and the Vietnam War raged. And yet, in 1994, I signed an accord with President Yeltsin agreeing no longer to target our nuclear forces a
t each other’s territory. Today, the West enjoys a co-operative relationship with Russia unthinkable even 10 years ago.
But throughout the turbulent years, the Polaris force has always been there, always ready, always prepared, always the ultimate guarantee of this country’s security.
As I said, the debt is very great.
No tribute to those of you in the SSBN force, however, would be complete without a special mention of the contribution of your families at home. They, as well as you, have borne the continual strain of enforced separation. They have had to maintain the family while you were gone, relying for communication only on the forty words of the weekly ‘familygram’. None of the achievements of the Polaris fleet would have been possible without their forbearance and their understanding. To them, too, I offer a very special thank you. And I am glad that so many are here today.
I would like to thank, too, all those who maintain the submarine and its deterrent away from the boat itself, whether at the base here, in Coulport, supporting the weapons system, on the tugs moving these massive submarines in and out of port, at the headquarters at Northwood, or in the design and support organizations further afield. Each of you has played your part.
Throughout the Polaris programme we have enjoyed very close co-operation with the United States. This will continue with Trident. Our two Navies have a very special trust and understanding. I am delighted that so many representatives of the United States Strategic Systems Programme are with us today, together with the officers and crew of the USS West Virginia.
There is naturally a tinge of sadness today. But it is the ending of a chapter only. As Trident takes over from Polaris and Chevaline, so the ‘Vanguard’ Class takes on the torch from Resolution and her sisters.
Let me say a word about our deterrent.
I have no doubt that we are right to maintain a minimum credible strategic nuclear deterrent for the United Kingdom. We will continue to do so for as long as our security needs require. It would be folly for us not to do so. Vanguard and Victorious are already fully operational and meeting all our expectations. I look forward to seeing them joined, in 1998, by Vigilant and, around the turn of the century, by Vengeance. Together, these four submarines will carry the UK’s strategic and sub-strategic deterrent well into the 21st century.
In a few moments I shall unveil this plaque marking the proud achievements of the Polaris Force. And, as I unveil it here, so, at the entrance to this facility a little way away, a small stone monument is also being unveiled. This monument is to serve as a quiet and dignified reminder of the unique contribution made to peace and security by these submarines and the men who served in them.34
In the early days of his Premiership, John Major had written a set of instructions, the last-resort letters, to the CO of each of the four Polaris submarines as well as the Trident replacements:
It is a shock. The first I realized that I was going to have to write post Armageddon instructions to our four Trident submarines was when the Cabinet Secretary told me. And it is quite an extraordinary introduction to the Premiership. I remember I went away over the weekend and I thought about it, a lot, and it was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do, to write those instructions, the essence of them being that if the UK is wiped out but its Trident submarines are at sea with their weaponry what should they then do with their weaponry. Eventually I reached a conclusion and I set it out.35
The Polaris monument now sits proudly at HMNB Clyde, Faslane, as a constant reminder to those who continue to operate Trident.
The retirement of the Polaris force served as a symbolic end to the Cold War. By the mid-1990s, with the Soviet Union confined to history, those Royal Navy submariners who had spent their working lives confronting Soviet submarines at sea in a deadly game of underwater cat and mouse began to reflect on their achievements. ‘I think it mattered immensely,’ said Doug Littlejohns. ‘Apart from giving NATO, the Americans primarily, but NATO, assurance that the Russian’s weren’t deploying on a war footing … We gained a hell of a lot of intelligence about what they were up to and learned a lot about their people because you could identify individuals. I think it allowed us to stay ahead of the game. We didn’t have to spend as much money on R&D as necessarily we might have had to because we had a lot of evidence we could feed into our thought processes. I think it was a very valuable thing.’36
Roger Lane-Nott agreed:
It was critical that we had the best possible information about them so that due preparation could be made in the event of war. Specifically, with regard to their growing submarine fleet, we needed a wide range of information. We required intelligence as to their operating capability, such as the speed, diving depth, endurance and sonar capability of their SSNs and SSBNs. And we needed to know the range of their missiles. We had to know the habitual operating patterns of Russian submarines at sea. It was essential to accurately determine their ability to detect our submarines and, even more importantly, how we could detect them … I think that the intelligence that we brought back through aggressive, close-in submarine operations was absolutely vital in a whole variety of ways. More often than not, it provided the final piece in the jigsaw about what you might have heard, or known, or got from other forms of intelligence about a missile system. But, this cannot compare to having actually seen or heard a missile launching – that is the sort of information that cannot be beat.37
Another Cold War SSN CO, James Perowne, holds similar views: ‘What it was about was making certain that it remained a Cold War and that both sides knew enough about each other that we could stay one ahead of them before they did anything to us. There were two ways of doing it. One was deterrence. On our side of the house we were looking at their equipment, their state of play, their state of training, their noises, can we detect them, what happens if they deploy en masse, would we be able to trail them, can we give them enough uncertainty that they would never feel safe to come out? That is what we were doing and we were doing it very very well.’38
Much of this was largely unknown, not only to the general public, but also to the UK’s other armed services. ‘It wasn’t the Army sitting in Germany and it wasn’t the Air Force flying out of Germany or flying out of the UK. It wasn’t even the Navy patrolling the South Atlantic,’ said Stanhope. ‘I don’t want to underplay their contribution but it wasn’t like being up close and personal with another submarine who you heard the bow caps open on and you weren’t quite sure what the response was going to be. It was terribly terribly exciting to a twenty-year-old who was involved in all of this. And the brown adrenaline did flow. There’s no two ways about it.’39
But there was a cost. ‘The whole relentless twenty-four hours a day, 365 day a year Cold War submarining, I enjoyed it, but it was hard,’ says James Taylor. ‘It was hard emotionally, it was hard professionally, it was hard psychologically. That said, I look back on it with great enthusiasm. I’m very fortunate. I’ve been to two wars, the Cold War and the Falklands War, and we won both of them. Not many people can say that.’40
That for the bulk of the Cold War the Submarine Service could monitor the Soviet Navy passively by audio, visual and electronic means and generally remain undetected was perhaps the most important piece of intelligence obtained about the Soviet Union and its submarines. In spite of the overwhelming size of the Soviet Navy, individual submarines did not spend enough time at sea to be an effective fighting force. A few ships and submarines were better than the average and, if war had started, some of their weapons and ship construction strengths would have proved to be at least as good as the Royal Navy’s. Sheer numbers would probably eventually have been decisive. But ‘weapon systems effectiveness’ depended on the quality of people and training at sea, and in this area the Royal Navy had and continues to have a huge advantage.41 ‘I don’t think we overrated them,’ said Stanhope, ‘but there was a danger at times of underrating them and that would have been foolish. We wouldn’t have had a successful Cold War in the Submarine Ser
vice if we’d underestimated our enemy. But equally we wouldn’t have had the success we had if we’d overrated them because we wouldn’t have gone close enough.’42
The end of the Cold War afforded some limited opportunities to open a conversation with the Russians. In December 1991, the Soviet Chief of Staff, General Vladimir Lobov, was shown around HMS Revenge in Faslane, something that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War.43 On 3 August 1993, HMS Opossum became the first Western submarine to sail into the home of the Russian Northern Fleet, Severomorsk, since the end of the Second World War. ‘You must not ignore the significance of all this,’ said Lane-Nott at the time. ‘It is a very, very historic day.’44 The two submarine nations met face to face, drank and exchanged stories and the Russians thanked the British for supplying Russia through the Arctic Convoys in the Second World War. ‘We weren’t sufficiently naive to think that all of this was just put on as a front for us,’ recalls Paul Branscombe, the then CO of 1st Submarine Squadron, who accompanied HMS Opossum on the visit.45 For Branscombe, meeting face to face with the submariners from the Royal Navy’s former Cold War adversary ‘was probably the most fascinating and the most salutary experience’:
‘All of those years, of course, we met them at sea, we never spoke, never knew their faces. But we’d been forbidden, of course, to travel to the Soviet Union or indeed any of the Eastern European countries for security reasons so I don’t think I’d actually met any real Russians, let alone Russian submariners. It was really interesting to meet with them. It was emotional in a way, almost a life changer. If you had spent all your working life, as I had, practising and thinking about what we were going to do and so on, suddenly it was a year or so after the Cold War had ended, it was the first time I suppose that I really realized that it was over … What surprised me was that they were just like us. They weren’t ten foot tall, or even six feet tall. They were just like us as individuals. They had the same kind of sense of humour. We supposed – and intelligence assessments told us – that everything was drilled and regimented with Marxist stuff everywhere. But actually these people were just like us, ordinary bog standard people who just happened to drive submarines around.’46