Affray’s day at sea on 11 April 1951 lasted just four hours. Blackburn was assigned a crew of twenty-two ratings from the submarine’s normal crew complement, with a further ten drawn from spare crews or reserve groups. Nearly forty officers and ratings – just over half her normal complement – headed out into the Solent to conduct the first part of Affray’s sea trials, testing her troublesome main engines over a two-hour period. No defects were found, apart from a small leak in a cylinder head joint, which was rectified by some tightening with a spanner.
Later that morning Affray dived to a periscope depth of 30ft, her watertight doors, hatches and fittings subjected to sea pressure. When she surfaced fifteen minutes later it was discovered that the yellow indicator buoy at the submarine’s stern – which free-floated to the surface to attract attention in the event of the vessel being stuck on the bottom – had come adrift. The 3ft-wide wooden circular hatch holding it in place had warped and Leading Seaman John Goddard hauled it in and stowed it back into position. On returning to HMS Dolphin, Leading Seaman Goddard secured the warped hatch with wire.
After leaving Affray on the quayside, Blackburn reported to his immediate boss, Captain Hugh Browne, and informed him that he was satisfied with his submarine in every way and Affray was ready for service. That night Bennington wrote to his father: ‘We have done our trials and everything went off pretty well and consequently everyone is fairly pleased.’
Over the next four days, work preparing Affray for Exercise Training Spring went ahead at a frantic pace and Blackburn spent most of that time carefully studying his orders.
ORDERS FOR A PRACTICE WAR PATROL TO BE CARRIED OUT BY HMS AFFRAY FROM MONDAY 16TH – MONDAY 23RD April 1951
EXERCISE TRAINING SPRING
Reference – Chart No. 1598 – English Channel and Western Approaches
DURATION
1. From 1800 Monday April 16th to 0800 Monday April 23rd.
FORCES TAKING PART
2. HM Submarine Affray
Aircraft of 19 Group
AIM
3. To give the Executive and Engineer Officers submarine training course experience at sea in a submarine under war conditions.
PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS
4. HMS Affray is to sail from Portsmouth at 1600 Monday 16 April 1951. She is to proceed to her patrol area (south of the Lizard and Scilly Isles) keeping clear of standing water areas and may proceed dived or surfaced at the Commanding Officer’s discretion.
PATROL AREA
5. The area bounded by lines joining the following reference positions
AA 50 20’ N 04 degrees 50’ W
BB 50 20’ N 07 00’ W
CC 49 00’ N 07 00’ W
DD 49 00’ N 04 50’ W
CONDUCT OF THE PATROL
6. Whilst in her patrol area HMS Affray is to conduct herself as she would in war. She may be darkened at night but is not to hesitate to switch on navigational lights for safety reasons.
7. Opportunities are to be taken of carrying out dummy attacks on shipping encountered.
(a) Two folboats and crews will be embarked from the Royal Marine Amphibious School, Eastney. Opportunity is to be taken of landing and recovering folboats on any suitable beach in patrol area during the night, at the Commanding Officer’s discretion. If this operation has been completed by 19th April, folboat crews may be returned by rail to Plymouth from Falmouth.
AIR ACTIVITY
8. HMS Affray may expect Anti-Submarine activity by aircraft of 19 Group RAF. The appropriate evasive action is to be taken.
9. The Air Officer Commanding 19 Group is requested to inform The Captain (S/M), Fifth Submarine Flotilla by signal of any sightings or contacts obtained of HMS Affray. (a) HMS Affray is to signal the Air Officer Commanding 19 Air Group Royal Air Force, Fifth Submarine Flotilla, her forecast noon position accurate to within 30 miles. This signal should be cleared by 0800 daily.
COMPRESSIBILITY FACTOR TRIAL
10. A trial in accordance with SGM 276 and STM 439 carried out as convenient during the patrol.
VISIT TO FALMOUTH
11. HMS Affray is to proceed so as to arrive at Falmouth at 1700 hours Thursday 19th April. She is to sail from Falmouth at 0800 Friday, 20th April to resume her patrol.
MOVEMENTS ON COMPLETION
12. HMS Affray is to leave her patrol area so as to arrive Outer Spit Buoy at 1300 hours Monday 23rd April. She may proceed clear of standing exercise areas dived or on the surface at the Commanding Officer’s discretion but is to be surfaced by 0800 Monday 23rd April.
DIVING AND SURFACING SIGNALS ‘ON THE SURFACE’ REPORTS
13. CB 4000(2) paragraphs 203 (a) (iii) is in force.
14. Diving and surfacing signals and ‘on the surface’ reports are to be addressed S/M 5 in Commander-in-Chief Plymouth, Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth.
15. Signals are to be made as follows . . .
A diving signal to cover the passage westward until surfacing to proceed to Falmouth.
A diving signal to cover the remainder of the patrol and passing eastward and a surfacing signal at the end of the exercise.
A report ‘On the Surface’ is to be signalled between 0800 and 0900 daily. Those reports are to be prefixed
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE RECORDS
16. HMS Affray is to forward a patrol report covering points of interest and suggestions for future exercises on similar lines. A track chart, in original only, to the scale of chart No. 1598 is also to be forwarded.
Signed H.C. Browne
Captain
An appendix to the order instructed Blackburn on the nature and timings of his watches and radio frequencies through which signals from the submarine should be relayed. Blackburn’s orders were framed to give him considerable latitude to, more or less, proceed as he wished and make Exercise Training Spring as realistic as possible. He hoped to use the exercise as an opportunity to bond his crew into a cohesive team and provide them with experience of how a submarine operated in wartime conditions.
Dummy attacks on shipping mentioned in the orders were exactly that – a chance to simulate raids on merchant ships travelling up and down the Channel from a suitable distance. Submarine commanders had plenty of experience stalking commercial shipping to give crews experience in the event of having to make a real attack. They knew how close to get to merchant vessels while submerged and unseen and most ships spied on through the periscopes of Royal Naval submarines had no idea they were being watched by a potentially deadly vessel 35ft underwater
The difference between dummy runs and the genuine article was exactly that no torpedoes were fired and that everything was performed in ‘slow time’ – meaning that if mistakes were made, everything stopped while they were rectified, explanations given and the exercise resumed. There was never any sense of urgency during dummy attacks and plenty of time was allocated to ensure that everything was being performed correctly, unlike during a real submarine attack when every second counted and a ‘kill or be killed’ situation prevailed.
One of the more unusual aspects of Blackburn’s orders was a requirement to carry four young commandoes from the Royal Marine Amphibious School, Eastney, as passengers – Sergeant Jack Andrews in overall charge of Corporal Edward Shergold and Marines Dennis Jarvis and Alfred Hooper. Together, Blackburn and Sergeant Andrews were to identify a suitable beach to ‘hit and raid’ somewhere along the Cornish coast – probably in the vicinity of Falmouth.
Wearing combat fatigues, woollen balaclavas and with faces blackened, the Marines were to slip over the side of Affray under cover of darkness using ‘folboats’ (collapsible kayaks made of lightweight material) to paddle to the beach. The precise task the commandos were to perform on the beach once they arrived was never made clear – possibly not even to Blackburn – but when completed they were to clamber back into the folboats and paddle back to Affray. They would later leave the submarine when it pulled into Falmouth, from where they would catch a train to Plymouth and naval transport to return to Eastney.
During wartime, Royal Marine Commandos would travel as passengers in submarines and use folboats to land as close as possible to beaches behind enemy lines on intelligence gathering missions. Sometimes they would return to the submarine or remain in enemy territory, making a rendezvous with a local agent or member of an allied resistance group who would help with their task.
On the evening of Sunday 15 April, Sergeant Andrews spent the evening at the home of his brother Robin and his wife in Portsmouth. Robin was on leave from HMS Swiftsure where he, too, was serving with the Royal Marines as a corporal. Robin remembers:
Jack told me that he had spent that morning on the Affray discussing with the Skipper the various arrangements for the accommodation of the Marines and their equipment. He was very concerned as he said that the boat – and I quote – ‘was leaking like a sieve’ and that he was far from happy about taking passage on her. I remember saying that if he was that concerned I would have to go and take out insurance on him next morning. I have always bitterly regretted that remark.
Jack and I were both Marines and very close to each other. What I find strange was the fact that he refused to discuss what the commando detachment was doing on the boat. If it were a normal exercise I’m sure he would have told me what the objectives were. I certainly got the impression that it was something more than a run of the mill exercise.
Two days before Exercise Training Spring began, David Bennington wrote to his father saying he had heard from an engineer on board Affray that the operation ‘is going to be one of the most hectic ones we have yet done, som it doesn’t look very hopeful. Apparently we are going to do everything it is possible for a submarine to do . . .’
The following day a note of hopeless desperation crept into his daily letter: ‘I shall be very pleased when this exercise is over. I am not looking forward to it very much. I hope everything goes off OK.’
Before Affray sailed on the afternoon tide on Monday 16 April, Bennington sent his final letter home to his father. The letter was posted shortly before the submarine cast off from HMS Dolphin at 1800 hours: ‘We are just about to leave so I want to get a letter off to you. I wish this was over, I am not looking forward to it a bit.’ And then for the first time in years of writing home, Bennington added this simple postscript: ‘GOODBYE.’
When Oscar Bennington received his son’s letter in Devon the following morning, Affray had already been missing for twelve hours.