The captain is the boss, pure and simple. I can’t think of a single job in any other branch of the military that’s as stressful or important as the captain of the nuclear deterrent. The responsibility is awesome. It’s his decision, and his alone, whether we launch our missiles according to the contents of the letters of last resort. Imagine accepting responsibility for such incomprehensible destruction.
During my submarine career I served under three captains, all of whom, though markedly different in their approach and outlook, possessed great authority and were treated with almost God-like reverence by the rest of the crew. The captain of a Polaris submarine was usually an experienced submarine commander with a couple of commands under his belt before he was given the ultimate job, which could be a fairly lonely and exceedingly stressful post. But most of them thrived on the responsibility of being potentially the last man standing in the UK’s chain of command and having to face the ultimate decision – whether or not to launch nuclear weapons. The captain could have no doubts about the job that was required, no question about what was expected, nor could he waver if required to launch the missiles.
The skills that had taken the captain to this point would have been gained over roughly a decade as a seaman officer, followed by the decisive test of all prospective submarine commanders, the Submarine Command Course, aka the Perisher (so-called because you either pass or perish). Established in 1917, the course is still run over a hundred years later, on virtually the same principles: whether a candidate is fit to take a submarine to war and all that this entails, but also fit to be in charge of a ship’s company while keeping the submarine safe in the most pressurised of environments. Back when I was serving, the ten prospective captains on the course were divided into two separate classes, headed up by two serving commanding officers known as Teachers. There were usually two courses a year, one starting in summer and one in November. Lasting about four months, the course was the toughest leadership test in the British military – nothing else came close. There was a 25 to 30 per cent fail rate among the candidates, which meant one in every four people who attempted the Perisher would find themselves forbidden to return to sea on a submarine.*
The first part of the course was simulation-based, taking place either at Faslane or at Plymouth, mixed with some theory. The candidates were eased into the programme with the running of dummy attacks against a single warship as they prepared for the sea phase of the course. This usually lasted about two months, with the most severe test coming during the last month. It was at that point that most of the fails occurred, with the majority coming in the final week – and how brutally instant and final they were. Candidates had been failed on the last day, feeling they’d done enough to get through, only to be told by Teacher they hadn’t quite got what it took to make the grade. In that instance the submarine would surface, then the candidate was told his fate, given a bottle of whisky to drown his sorrows, led off the boat to an awaiting transfer vessel and taken back to shore, never to set foot on a submarine again. Perisher failure meant no longer serving in the Submarine Service. A career on surface ships or leaving the service altogether were really the only options left. It was shit or bust, highlighting the importance of the position everyone was striving for.
The final sea phase was by far the toughest. A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was used in permanent rotation as the Perisher examination boat and could go to sea with its usual crew, captain and XO included, supplemented by Teacher and the candidates. During the final phase, the candidates were expected to undertake intelligence gathering or minelaying, simulated from the torpedo tubes, with minelaying testing in particular the candidate’s navigational skills when operating close to inshore coastlines.
The main part of the final phase, though, was evading and attacking up to three frigates around the Isle of Arran. The main point of this was to see whether the candidate could keep the submarine and its crew safe, as well as being able to launch any simulated attacks on the enemy boats. He had an imaginary safety circle around the boat, usually at around 1,000 yards, called the ‘go deep’ circle. If any of the frigates came within that radius, he had to be able to evade by diving the boat and listening to the sounds of the propellers going past overhead. If he evaded too soon, Teacher may have felt he was being overly cautious and was not quite up to the job; leaving it too late could result in a collision as the passing frigate overhead lopped the top off the conning tower. Not good.
Each candidate had to work out the course, speed and range of each of the frigates, and calculate the duration of his ‘look interval’, the time in which he could safely raise the periscope to keep an eye on each of the frigates before they entered his go deep circle and he needed to lower the periscope and dive to avoid the risk of collision. He might, for example, have had 40 seconds to look at the other two frigates before the first ship entered the go-deep circle. Because the distance between him and the enemy vessels constantly expanded and contracted during the attack, he needed to ensure none of the three vessels had changed speed or, more dangerously, changed their course towards the submarine.
What usually happened was that two frigates jousted with the perimeter of the go-deep circle, while the third frigate came through the middle at top speed, heading straight for the submarine. Any one of them could have changed direction at any time, and it was up to the candidate to judge when and if he needed to take evasive action – or undertake an attack. It was certainly not for the faint-hearted, and just to throw a spanner in the works, a crew member would be told to have a psychotic episode in the control room or a mechanic to rush in with an imaginary finger missing, all to ratchet up the pressure. At the same time, emergencies would be happening on the boat: fires, floods, hydraulic bursts, the works. To pass all of this, the candidates had to show the three basic principles of submarine command: leadership of the boat and crew; operations including attacks, navigation and minelaying; and finally, being safely in charge of the boat and its crew in any scenario dreamt up by Teacher. The course was a constant test of nerve and aptitude, but the rewards were career-defining.
My first skipper was Commander Thompson, an old-fashioned toff and a real public-school type – I can’t remember whether it was Eton, Harrow or Winchester – whose family, it was rumoured, were landed gentry and owned half of Yorkshire. I guess it was just written in the stars that he’d make it to admiral by the end of his career. He kept himself to himself and didn’t encourage conversation, especially with a Part 3 lowlife like myself, just starting out and striving for his dolphins. I remember once I was operating the CEP† in the control room on my first patrol. It could get fairly hectic, and neatness was essential in order to give the command a broad picture of what was going on tactically. He took one look at it, then whispered something to the OOW, and within five minutes I was removed from the plot. It was very embarrassing for me – not at all what I wanted to hear – and being so young it was pretty hard to take in. My confidence shot to pieces, I was very wary of him from that day on.
He’d smoothly float his way around the boat and had this habit of appearing just when you’d least expect it, right there, face first – and of course I’d immediately become a jibbering wreck. The crew respected him, as I did, although I’m not sure they warmed to him. I suspect he was supremely unconcerned by that. He personified the ‘them and us’ culture rife in the British military at that time – and still today – reproducing all that was wrong in society as a whole, in as much as you could immediately pinpoint someone’s rank by the way they spoke. It was a great rarity to hear an officer with a neutral accent.
The captain’s behaviour would be mimicked all the way down the rest of the group, and before long you’d have a ‘You should know your place’ attitude being endorsed, which in certain circumstances – not all – could lead to a person being judged on their background not their ability. In my experience there were many senior and junior rates who were at least the equal of most of the officers on board. While there have been submarine captains who’ve come right up through the ranks – and hats off to them, for they must be seriously capable – it’s still a very small percentage.
I remember once going on board an American sub that was visiting Faslane. I found the crew to be a much more harmonious group of sailors, in terms of how the officers and men interacted; more a reflection of, say, the Midwest or Upstate New York rather than the hide-bound, provincial, class-structured ways of post-war Britain, in which one’s social class was all that mattered. To a great extent the public schools are to blame, as the officer classes – the ‘Ruperts’, as we came to know them – have been groomed on their playing fields for centuries. I met a lot of officers during my service who couldn’t understand why I’d joined the rank and file, as I’d gone to public school. I had officer papers ‘raised’ on me when I was on subs, which meant someone was keen to see me packed off to Dartmouth for officer training, but I was never in the slightest bit interested. I enjoyed my time in the ranks, and wouldn’t have swapped it for the world. It was a real in-depth look at the workings of these boats and the men who served on them, whereas being an officer gave you a much narrower view of what actually happened at sea. When it came down to it, the boat was run by the leading hands on board – the head junior rates. They ensured that everything ticked over, the jobs got done and discipline remained sound. The senior rates, who made certain that every department ran like clockwork, only got involved if someone was not pulling their weight and needed a kick up the arse.
My next captain, Commander Brown, was a breath of fresh air in terms of his approach to the ship’s company. A far more engaging, dynamic and friendly face, he seemed genuinely concerned with bringing the crew together, and spent much time visiting the junior and senior rates’ messes. He was also married to a Wren (Women’s Royal Naval Service), so had an appreciation of some of the subtler aspects of Navy life. Having served as captain on a diesel submarine and also skippered a hunter-killer S-class boat, his formative years of command had been spent charging madly around the Atlantic and further afield, chasing Soviet submarines, conducting intelligence gathering operations, under-the-ice excursions and Special Forces drops. He was a skipper at the top of his game, but he also possessed a close affinity to the crew, determined as he was to create a tighter, more cohesive group.
He had a side to him, though. Woe betide you if you overstepped the mark and became overfamiliar with him; he’d cut you to the bone with a simple stare or a raised eyebrow – imagine having Roger Moore as skipper. He told great stories about the people he’d worked with, like the first captain he’d served under, who used to bound into the control room every night dressed in a nightshirt and nightcap like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, before retiring to his cabin swinging off the pipes – a total eccentric.
I remember Brown saying sorry for a miscommunication to one of the wreckers as we were levelling off after diving. The wrecker then made a joke, and the skipper simply looked at him and said, ‘You’ve caught me on a good day but let’s get one thing clear. I don’t do apologies.’ The guy nearly dropped off his chair as the skipper’s eyes bored into him. Not the best course of action, getting on the wrong side of the big man on the first dive on his first patrol in command.
When Brown was in his cabin and most of us thought him asleep, he would regularly monitor the communications throughout the rest of the boat and often chip in with, ‘This is the captain,’ followed by a statement or question that would leave everyone flummoxed. A stickler for correct communications, while also being something of a rebel, he could shift from having a friendly conversation with you one moment to giving you a bollocking the next, but he didn’t hold grudges. He was a captain very much from the direct-answer brigade; you made sure you gave him a direct answer whether he liked it or not, no flannel or waffle – just the truth. As the most popular and interesting captain I served under, we were very chuffed indeed when, just before he left the boat, he told us we were the best and most professional crew he had served with during his career, although I bet he said that to all his crews.
My final captain was Commander Johnson, a ferociously intelligent man from an engineering background who had obviously applied these principles to being a seaman officer. Captaining a submarine requires a highly mathematical and logical brain in order to quickly evaluate the tactical picture, both at depth and – even more so – at periscope depth, where you need to work out how quickly vessels are closing against how fast the submarine is going, plus being able to look through the periscope at safe intervals without compromising the safety of the crew or the boat’s whereabouts. A master of all of this, he was both solid and dependable, and while perhaps lacking the flair and charisma of Brown or the self-confidence of Thompson, he was an extremely able commanding officer.
He was very cool with me in a final meeting I had before leaving the Navy. We talked at great length about the five and a bit years I’d spent in the service, but he also took a passing interest in my full name. ‘Richard Patrick Valentine Humphreys?’ he said. ‘Christ, with a name like that you should be standing here instead of me.’
* This is different nowadays. The course is much smaller. There is only one Teacher and the class sizes vary. It is also less brutal. If it looks as if you might fail, Teacher can remove you from the course and allow you to take it again next time around. The Submarine Service is now so small that it can’t afford to lose highly-trained officers.
† Contact evaluation plot.