Acrew of eighty-five officers and ratings, including the four Royal Marine Commandos, joined Affray on Monday 16 April 1951 – twenty-three more men than she normally carried on peacetime operations and twenty more than in wartime conditions. Space on board would be very cramped indeed.
Ratings wondered where they would all eat and sleep and pondered on how the submarine could function properly with so many men on board. These were the days before health and safety laws were introduced and risk assessments came into force. God forbid that a submarine might encounter problems at sea.
Officers and ratings assigned to Affray for Exercise Training Spring were of mixed abilities and twenty-five of them were joining the boat for the first time on that day. Second-in-command, First Lieutenant Derek Foster, and Engineer Officer Lieutenant James Alston both had extensive submarine experience and had been attached to Affray for twelve and twenty-one months respectively. Their previous commander, Lieutenant Leafric Temple-Richard, considered both to be ‘very capable men’.
Lieutenant William Kirkwood was identified as ‘an outstanding officer’ by senior ranks and had spent the last year working as Principal Training Officer of ‘A’ Class submarines, while Lieutenant Jeffrey Greenwood had served in submarines for eighteen months and joined Affray from HMS Tote where he gained valuable experience working on a snort-fitted boat. He, too, was described as ‘outstanding’.
Out of the thirteen sub-lieutenants joining Affray for the exercise, six had attended the same term at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1943 – Tony Garwood, Tony Longstaff, Roderick ‘Rocky’ Mackenzie-Edwards, Robin Preston, Tony Rewcastle and Bill Linton. Linton’s father, Commander John ‘Tubby’ Linton, DSO, DSC, had been awarded a posthumous VC in 1943 after being lost with the submarine HMS Turbulent which had sunk twenty-seven enemy ships. His son, a Dartmouth cadet at the time, accepted his father’s VC from the King.
Another sub-lieutenant, Tony Frew, was a survivor from the Truculent accident in the Thames Estuary the previous year. A son of Engineer Rear Admiral Sir Sidney Frew, Tony had joined Truculent a week before she had sunk, managing to save the life of a shipmate while escaping from the conning tower.
According to the Admiralty, of the ship’s company who went to sea in Affray on 16 April 1951, nineteen of the forty-five ratings ‘had reached a high standard of efficiency’ during Exercise Autumn Cruise the previous year. The remaining crew had recently been drafted from a reserve group where they had regularly been to sea in HMS Alaric – a submarine almost identical to Affray.
Although the Admiralty described the submarine’s principal personnel as ‘thoroughly experienced men’, eleven engine room ratings and nine other ratings had never before been to sea in Affray. All but one of the thirteen sub-lieutenants due to embark on 16 April had spent periods working as acting sub-lieutenants on submarines in harbour – but not at sea. They had completed only half of the fourteen weeks devoted to submarine training and just one day at sea in ‘A’ class boats, although time had been spent in other submarines when they first joined the service. During Exercise Training Spring they would be billeted in bunks in the seaman’s mess in the forward stowage compartment – already one of the most cramped areas of the boat.
Five of the engineer officer trainees due to take part in the exercise had completed twelve weeks of their fourteen-week courses, during which time they had been to sea in a submarine for just four days. During Exercise Training Spring the men would be expected to carry out executive duties under supervision, instead of their usual engineering duties, to gain further experience. All officers and ratings participating in the exercise – including the Marines – had qualified in using emergency escape apparatus and sufficient sets had been stowed on board for the operation.
Although the Admiralty insisted that the submarine’s crew were ‘experienced’ and later claimed that trainees on board were among the best to have passed through their recent training programme, they all shared the same the dilemma as they reported for duty that day: they had no experience of working together as a crew on Affray. Submariners believe that to be successful, teamwork is essential with team players relying on each other. If there is a weak link in the team, something is bound to go wrong, they say.
By lunchtime on 16 April all of Affray’s crew had registered their arrival at HMS Dolphin and made their way down to the submarine jetty in small groups. Lieutenant Kirkwood, in charge of the Officer’s Training Course, and his assistant, Chief Petty Officer Gordon Selby, used their time before sailing to settle their trainees down in the submarine, making sure they understood arrangements for their accommodation and the manner in which their time at sea would progress over the next few days.
At 1700 hours – just one hour before sailing – Selby was summoned to the Chief Petty Officers’ Mess at HMS Dolphin. As mess president, he was required to sort out a problem that could not wait for his return eight days later. While at the mess, Selby suddenly fell violently ill with a gastric problem and was rushed down the road to Haslar Hospital for emergency treatment.
Selby’s illness saved his life – for the fourth time. In 1942 he had narrowly missed sailing on HMS Upholder a month before she was sunk in the Mediterranean. He cheated death a second time when submarine P39 was bombed in Malta shortly before he went on board and when the submarine HMS Olympus hit a mine he was one of eight who swam 7 miles to shore and safety.
Gordon did not sail in Affray in April 1951 and from his home in Australia nearly 60 years later – where he died following a fall in March 2007 – recalled: ‘My only contact with Affray was a brief one – about two hours. I knew no one else on board apart from Lieutenant Kirkwood.’
During the middle of the afternoon, Blackburn mustered his ship’s company together to brief them about Exercise Training Spring. He told them they would be heading towards the Western Approaches and simulating wartime conditions. They heard they would be snorting throughout the night at periscope depth in one of Europe’s busiest shipping lanes. Referring to the commando passengers on board, Blackburn said they would be acting independently in order ‘to carry out some cloak and dagger stuff’.
Blackburn told the crew that many officer trainees would be performing various tasks under supervision in the control room including ‘doing silly things with valves’ and that the rest of the crew should let them get on with it so they could learn from their mistakes.
The crew heard that they would be calling at Falmouth later in the week before returning to HMS Dolphin. The submarine would then go to the naval base at Portland to work alongside another ‘A’ class submarine for two weeks before returning to HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, for further maintenance work following the earlier discovery of oil in the battery sump. She would be in the dockyard for another three weeks.
They were told that aircraft from the RAF’s 19 Group Coastal Command would be seen in the skies overhead on several occasions during the operation conducting submarine search exercises of their own. If they were travelling on the surface when aircraft came into view they would dive as quickly as possible. Blackburn said he would be signalling their position ahead to the Air Officer Commanding 19 Group RAF to forecast Affray’s noon position accurate to within 30 miles.
Blackburn then dropped a bombshell. He informed the crew that thirteen ratings needed to recover their kit from below and return to shore because of space shortages on Affray. One of the crew sent ashore was Leading Seaman John Goddard. John had been trained on torpedoes and sonar, but because Affray was not carrying torpedoes on the exercise, either he or fellow torpedo/sonar rating Leading Seaman Ronald ‘Slugger’ Smith – a married man from Lincoln with an 11-month old baby – would have to go ashore. Leading Seaman Smith remained on board to operate the sonar.
Goddard later recalled: ‘It was a him or me situation who went. We were of identical rank, did the identical job, but he was on sonar and I was on torpedoes. We were not going to have anything to do with torpedoes on the exercise, so I wasn’t needed – and he was. He often crosses my mind.’
Goddard also remembered that different electrical staff on board a submarine conducted most of the specialist work.
There was also a specialist electrician – an electrical artificer – whose job was to look after the main gyro compass and set it up before sailing. For some reason the electrical artificer was left behind with us on shore. I have no idea why. When you think what a delicate piece of instrumentation a gyro compass is and the important role it plays, it made no sense to leave the only maintainer of the compass behind. It was a very strange thing to do and often over the last half century or so I have wondered why.
Others left on the quay as Affray prepared to sail included Electrician’s Mate Jim Johnston. He had been told that he could toss a coin with fellow electrician Eric Horwell to see who stayed on board and who went ashore. Johnston won the toss. Signalman ‘Chick’ Henderson was told by Lieutenant Foster: ‘The boat is rather full this trip, Chick. I’ll do the signalling’ and with that Henderson went below, gathered up his kit and joined the rest of the group preparing to leave the boat.
Electrical Artificer 2nd Class Alexander Duncombe, who had joined Affray on 2 April, was working down in the engine room when he was instructed to leave the submarine that afternoon. It was Duncombe who had discovered the oil in number one battery tank on the night of 6 April.
Able Seamen Stanley Crowe and George Worden, who had both joined Affray’s crew exactly one year before, were among the last of the small band to leave Affray before she pulled away from the quay. As they made their way up the ladder and out of the submarine they were joined by Able Seamen Frank Kendrick and Peter Warriss. Kendrick remembered:
I came off leave at 1200 and reported in to HMS Affray at 1300 hours. The Coxswain sent me down to the boat and I heard the Captain’s speech to the men. It was then decided who should go to sea and who should not. After being a member of the Affray’s crew for just a couple of hours, I found myself standing on the quay with the others while she prepared to sail without me. I disembarked at about 1530 hours, shortly before she left HMS Dolphin.
Able Seaman Edward Hickman had also joined Affray’s crew the previous year and remembered:
The submarine was overcrowded and of the crew that went out, 90 per cent knew nothing about the boat. The old crew came off and it was more or less a new crew that was preparing to take her out. All the seamen and stokers were the same, but it seemed rather funny taking twenty-five trainees out with a new crew. I didn’t know them. They either joined the submarine on 11 April in time for the sea trials or the day before she was due to sail. Every day we saw somebody new coming on board.
Leading Seaman John Graham, 27, from Fareham, Hampshire, was also ordered off the boat because he was suffering from a heavy cold. The enclosed area of a submarine was the worst possible place for someone likely to be sneezing and coughing in a confined space for several days, so he found himself on the quay with the others less than an hour before she slipped her moorings.
In addition to the four Royal Marine commandos, nearly thirty men going out with Affray that day had joined her company the previous month. Twenty of those men had never previously been to sea in the submarine.
At 1700 hours Affray slipped away from her mooring at Haslar Creek, Gosport, and nosed her way into the choppy grey waters of Portsmouth Harbour fairway and then seaward into the English Channel. John Goddard and the twelve others ordered to remain behind watched her go. It was the last time that anyone at HMS Dolphin would see Affray on the surface again.
At the end of the Channel, the submarine was sighted by the lookout at Fort Gilkicker near the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour who noted that she was passing in a south-easterly direction at an estimated speed of 4½ knots. The sighting, timed at 1725, was the final sighting of Affray. The submarine then swung to starboard and pointed its nose westward towards The Needles. At 2056, nearly two hours after slipping her moorings, Blackburn sent a signal to the Commanders-in-Chief of her home waters in Portsmouth and at Plymouth, into whose waters she would be travelling in the next few days. It read: ‘Diving at 2115 in position 5010N, 0145W for Exercise Training Spring.’
It was the last signal ever received from Affray.
With the submarine positioned 30 miles off St Catherine’s Point, Blackburn would have shouted the order for ‘diving stations’ to be passed from compartment to compartment fore and aft along the submarine as look-outs tumbled down ladders followed by officers-of-the-watch. A klaxon hooter would have sounded indicating that the diving process had commenced. Wheels would be turned, levers pulled, valves closed off and orders passed. Blackburn would then have given orders to his first lieutenant: ‘Thirty-two feet, Number One.’
Affray’s main vents would have been opened, allowing air to escape through her outside ballast tanks and seawater to enter. Inside the crew would have controlled the boat by checking the internal trimming tanks and hydroplanes – movable sets of short ‘wings’ on the stern controlling the angle of dive, positioned so that water moves over the stern forcing it upward; therefore, the submarine is angled downward.
She would then have begun to slide away beneath the pounding waters of the grey sea.