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The Collins Class Submarine Story

Page 4

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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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  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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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  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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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  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

 

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