by Peter Yule
In July 1959 Gorton advised Athol Townley, the Minister for
Defence, that he was preparing to recommend the purchase of
submarines to cabinet. Townley was cautious. When questioned
in parliament he commented that: ‘Australia will have to be pretty
careful before it goes into the submarine arm again and will have to
take every precaution and examine the position very thoroughly,
because three times this country has become involved in sub-
marines and three times it has been pleased to get out of this
arm of the Navy.’3
It took more than three years, and the formal announcement
by the British in 1961 that they would be withdrawing their
submarines by the end of the decade, for Gorton to overcome
Townley and some members of the Naval Board. On 23 January
1963 he announced cabinet approval to order four Oberon class
submarines from Britain for delivery between 1966 and 1968.
Commander Henry Cook, a former Royal Navy submarine
commander who had transferred to the Australian navy, was
involved in the acquisition and recalls that talks with the British
began before 1961 about the possibility of buying Oberons. In
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1962 the Naval Board formally evaluated the Oberon and the
American Barbel. The Barbel was rejected partly on cost grounds
and partly because it was soon to be taken out of service.4 Tra-
dition, together with the fact that the Oberon was a tried and
successful design, meant that the decision to buy from Britain was
not questioned.
However, there was some controversy over the navy’s decision
to order four submarines from Britain without investigating the
possibility of building at least two of them in Australia. Even
before the official announcement, H. P. Weymouth, the chairman
of the Australian Shipbuilding Board, wrote to Hubert Opperman,
the Minister for Shipping and Transport:
Submarines are, of course, very special types of naval vessels,
but it is the design rather than the building which requires a
great deal of previous experience and experiment. The inner
‘pressure hull’ requires a high standard of welding, but apart
from this there is no part of the submarine hull which is more
difficult to construct than a naval surface ship.
. . . it seems that the submarine is to be the most
important naval vessel of the future, and the sooner we
commence constructing our own the better for our long-term
defence considerations and for our national development and
employment.5
For political reasons Opperman and Townley supported the
idea of at least ‘obtaining some indication from Australian yards
as to the possibility of building in Australia’, but Gorton and the
navy were adamantly opposed to this.6 They saw no possibility of
building in Australian shipyards and Gorton argued that it would
inevitably be slower and more costly than building in Britain.
Australia had no experience, while in Britain several yards were
building Oberons ‘on what could be described as something like
a production line’.7 When these predictable arguments failed to
quell the calls for work to be given to Australian shipyards, Gorton
let loose:
Defence funds were intended to provide defence for Australia,
not to meet the needs of some Australian shipyard owners.
What the shipbuilding industry means when it talks of
building submarines and guided missile destroyers in
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Australia is building the hulls in Australia and assembling
inside those hulls the costly specialist equipment, electronic
devices, missiles and other weapons imported from abroad.
The only significant employment provided would, therefore,
be in ship assembly work in shipyards, which would employ
not thousands but at the most a few hundred.
. . . I will never agree that the object of maintaining less
competition for privately owned civil shipyards is more
important than the object of providing naval defence from
the money voted for defence . . .
Nor will I agree that using defence funds to provide
employment for skilled tradesmen at a particular place or
profits for a particular company is as important as using
these funds to provide employment of trained fighting men in
an expanded navy.
And if this is unsatisfactory to some Australian shipyard
owners and does not meet their needs, all I can say is that it is
not meant to. It is meant to meet the needs of providing
defence for Australia.8
This outburst drew a response from J. B. Pomeroy, the Victorian
secretary of the Association of Architects, Engineers, Surveyors
and Draftsmen, who argued that Gorton had ignored the impact of
sub-contracting in creating employment in Australia and ‘building
up the necessary skills and know-how so necessary to any coun-
try which intends to be self-sufficient’.9 R. W. C. Anderson, the
director of the Associated Chambers of Manufactures, argued that
Australian shipyards were capable of building and installing intri-
cate weapons systems and ‘[b]y this method a reservoir of skilled
and knowledgeable technicians is created which have the ability
to repair and maintain the weapons they instal’.10 From the left
of the Labor Party, Dr Jim Cairns commented: ‘From a defence
point of view, the economic development of Australia was likely
to be more valuable than [naval vessels] bought overseas because
they involved a few millions less immediate outlay.’11
The political pressure led Townley to insist that Gorton and
the navy investigate the possibility of at least allowing Aus-
tralian yards to tender for the Oberons, and a report was hur-
riedly prepared in February 1963. Its central arguments were
that Australian-built submarines could not be ready before the
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British flotilla departed, and they would cost too much. The report
analysed in some detail what would be involved in Australian
construction:
In the studies and analyses of submarine construction in
Australia, the phrase submarine construction has meant
assembly, inside a hull constructed in Australia, of propulsion
machinery, armaments and specialised equipment of all kinds,
supplied through the Admiralty from the United Kingdom.12
The navy expected that all components would have to be imported
except for a few things such as hull fittings, pipes and valves that
could be made at Cockatoo Island, and standard naval supply
items such as galley equipment.
The report then examined the possibility of building subma-
rine hulls in Australia, concluding that ‘leaving aside the question
of time and cost there is . . . no technical reason why the hull could
not be fabricated in Australia’, although it expressed uncertainty
&nbs
p; whether BHP would be prepared to make the special semi–high
tensile steel at an acceptable price. Furthermore, while fabrica-
tion by Cockatoo Island Dockyard could be done with sufficient
technical training of the workforce, the navy’s technical depart-
ment thought the dished ends (that is, the pressure bulkheads)
would have to be imported from the United Kingdom. Assembly
of submarine components would be possible, although with delay,
if the Admiralty were prepared to assist. However, the dockyard
would not be capable of completely installing the armament and
electronic work and that would have to be done by the navy.
On finance the report noted:
The cost of fabricating in Australia can only be a guess, and
in [this] . . . case, that guess is liable greatly to understate the
actual cost . . . Any estimate of £5 million plus for submarine
construction [compared to £3.3 million for British-built
submarines] should therefore be regarded with reserve. In any
case the RAN, as the RN, should no longer build ships on the
basis of estimates and cost plus agreements but on the basis
of firm contract prices for fixed designs. [emphasis added]
Significantly, this report appears to have been written without even
a pretence of discussions with Australian industry.
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The report was probably correct in arguing that building the
Oberons would have stretched the capabilities of Australian indus-
try and it would certainly have been more expensive to build in
Australia than to buy from Britain. Nonetheless, it is clear that
in the early 1960s the navy had no interest in being involved in
‘nation-building’, expanding or even preserving the skill base of
Australian industry, or in the ability of Australian industry to
maintain ships and weapon systems. The only concern appears to
have been to buy the most new ships with the money available.
The political debate over whether the Oberons could be built in
Australia sputtered on throughout the first half of 1963. Although
the navy had already called for tenders for four submarines from
British yards and had no intention of building any of the sub-
marines in Australia, it could not admit this until the debate was
resolved. Thus, during the year it presented many further argu-
ments. One of the strongest of these was that Australia lacked
sufficient competent welders:
These vessels are of all-welded construction and the quality
of steel used is of such a nature that welding can only be
undertaken by extremely competent welders. The standard of
work required is high, . . . and the inspection requirements
are severe and rigid. Welders employed on this class of work
must be specially trained and . . . their workmanship
examined and passed . . . They must also periodically
requalify to ensure maintenance of the high standard
required . . .
It is unlikely that the number of welders with the required
degree of skill could be provided; present experience in the
repair of submarines at CODOCK [Cockatoo Island] shows
that while the current standards of welding operatives are
acceptable for repair work they would not be capable of nor
would there be sufficient numbers for submarine
construction. Therefore, unless a large scale and expensive
training programme is embarked on, submarine construction
would be impracticable.13
It was also suggested that the British Admiralty would not pro-
vide specifications to Australian tenderers or help assess tenders
submitted by Australian dockyards.14
The Joint Committee on War Production, which was also
attempting to assess the issue of Australia’s ability to build
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submarines, found itself hindered at every turn by the navy. It
could not, for example, investigate the possibility of making com-
ponents in Australia because the navy would not supply the spec-
ifications. The committee raised the possibility of ‘an Australian
shipbuilding firm collaborating with a United Kingdom shipbuild-
ing firm to build a submarine’. It noted that of the four major
Australian shipbuilders only Cockatoo Island was likely to be
interested because of its work in refitting submarines and because
it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vickers Armstrong, which
had built Oberon class submarines. The committee’s report con-
cluded that ‘without investigation it cannot be excluded that the
parent firm might be willing to help its subsidiary, including in the
preparation and submission of a tender’.15
Cockatoo Island in fact was interested in building some of the
submarines, although it did not push its case with great energy
or enthusiasm. Nonetheless, in his monthly report to London on
31 January 1963, the managing director of Cockatoo, Captain
R. G. Parker, wrote:
You have probably read of our Government’s decision to
purchase another destroyer from the USA, also four Oberon
class submarines from the United Kingdom. This latter
decision, of course disappoints us, as we feel we could build
them (or some of them) at Cockatoo. We are still hopeful
that we may be asked to build two of them. The Navy
Minister, Senator Gorton, made the statement that Australian
costs were high – which of course is true, but it would help at
least keep Naval shipbuilding alive in Australia and most of
the money would be spent in this country. We would have to
import a considerable amount of specialised equipment, and
probably main engines, from Barrow, but it would save our
shipyard.16
The response from London does not appear to have been over-
enthusiastic and Cockatoo Island made little headway with its
lobbying in Australia.
However, the suggestion that Cockatoo might be interested in
building the submarines led the navy to introduce a new note of
warning into the debate, arguing that the Canadians were show-
ing interest in ordering Oberons from Britain, so Australia would
need to confirm its order immediately to ensure early delivery.
The issue was finally resolved when Gorton told the Minister for
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Defence that he had telephoned the general manager of Cockatoo
Island Dockyard and been told that ‘that firm is not interested in
submitting tenders for the assembling of these submarines in their
yards’.17
The first four Oberons had all arrived in Australia by July 1970.
In 1971 two more Oberons were ordered from Britain (with only
a gentle cough from Cockatoo Island to suggest that they might be
built in Australia18) and these were delivered in 1977 and 1978.
In service the Oberons proved to be an excellent submarine and
their success broke down many (but far from all) of the entrenched
prejudices against submarines in the
navy. Although acquired pri-
marily to provide anti-submarine training for surface warships, in
the hands of enthusiastic and capable officers and crews they soon
became the navy’s primary deterrent as well as having unmatched
ability to carry out surveillance and operate without support far
from their bases.
The refits carried out at Cockatoo Island Dockyard were vital
for the maintenance of the Oberons. Refits were intended to
restore the submarines to ‘as new’ condition, and this was an
extremely complex task. John Jeremy, the chief executive of the
dockyard from 1981 until it was closed in 1991, gave a detailed
account of the refit process in his history of Cockatoo Island. He
noted that:
An Oberon class submarine refit was a complex task
requiring some 1 300 000 man-hours over a period of
between two and two and a half years. The design of the
submarine, with many hard systems (piping systems exposed
to full diving depth pressure) and very limited access, made it
a very labour intensive task, and very sensitive to delays
caused through lapses in the supply of information, materials
and equipment [much of which had to come from Britain].19
As the Oberons aged, refits became more difficult as parts wore out
and corroded sections of the pressure hull required replacement.
About 30 000 individual items were needed for each refit and the
early refits depended heavily on spares from the UK, although
‘local industry gradually became qualified for the supply of some
parts, reducing this dependency’.20
The performance of the Oberons convinced Australian navy
planners of the need for submarines, but their maintenance
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provided subtle encouragement for building the next generation of
submarines in Australia. Reliance on Britain for spare parts, design
advice and approval often slowed maintenance,21 but the ability of
Cockatoo Island to refit submarines encouraged the thought that
Australian dockyards could take the next step and build them.
Most importantly, the success of a major program to replace the
sonar and weapons systems, carried out between 1972 and 1981,
gave the navy’s submariners enormous confidence in the ability of
the navy, the dockyards and Australian industry to carry out com-
plex and technically demanding projects. The ‘submarine weapons