June 26, 1951 – Memo from the Office of the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, Arthur J. Power (Admiral):
The following officers are to assemble at a Board of Inquiry at Fort Blockhouse at 1000 on Wednesday the 27th day of June 1951:
Rear Admiral R. M. Dick – President
Captain G. P. Claridge, Royal Navy
Captain F. Lister, Royal Navy
The Board is to hold a full and careful investigation into the circumstances attending the loss of HMS Affray, including in their investigation
1. The condition of the Affray and her crew on sailing
2. The instructions and orders covering her movements
3. The search operations
4. The results of the survey of the wreck
and calling before it such witnesses as it may appear necessary to enable a correct conclusion to be formed. Before the hearing of evidence begins, consideration is to be given to the question whether any person concerned in the result of the Inquiry should be present throughout the proceedings.
The report is to be accompanied by the minutes of evidence taken and is to contain an expression of the Board’s opinion on the merits of the case, as disclosed by the evidence, including a statement of the causes of the occurrence.
Two shorthand writers are to be detailed by the Commodore, RN Barracks, Portsmouth. A shorthand writer from the office of the Flag Officer (Submarines) will also be available to assist the Board.
The Board of Inquiry would meet over the next month. Nearly forty witnesses would be called and asked 759 questions. They ranged from senior naval officers to junior ratings, metallurgists, engineers and scientists. Some would be asked a few simple questions before being dismissed. Others would be interrogated more closely and challenged with long and complex questions. Several would be summoned back before the Board two or three times.
The Board visited the submarine HMS Ambush on 29 June ‘to acquaint ourselves with the layout of an “A” class submarine’ and on 2 July they viewed the broken snort mast at the Emsworth laboratory. To assist Board members, a scale model of Affray was built from metal to allow witnesses referring to various parts of the boat to explain points they considered useful to the investigation.
Once the Inquiry was completed, the Board had to write a lengthy report, including conclusions and recommendations, which would be bound together with transcripts of question-and-answer sessions with witnesses. The final version, running to hundreds of pages, was rubber stamped ‘Top Secret’ and circulated to just a handful of senior officers and Royal Naval specialists. It was locked in an Admiralty vault and not seen again for another thirty years when it resurfaced as a de-classified document at the Public Record Office (now The National Archives) in Kew.
The Board met in private and behind closed doors. Family members of those lost on the Affray were not invited to attend, or even informed that the Inquiry was taking place. In a note in the preface to the completed report, it was stated: ‘We considered whether any relatives should be invited to give evidence . . . but decided that as no evidence of fact could be so produced, no useful purpose would be served.’ The press was also kept away but, if challenged, the Admiralty would say that it intended to make a public statement about the Board’s ultimate findings at a later date – assuming there would be something to say. They never did.
The Board had three aims: first, to state for once and for all what caused Affray to be lost at sea; second, to lift any blame for the loss from the Admiralty’s shoulders; and, third, to lay the blame at someone’s feet.
The Admiralty in Whitehall did not think the Board of Inquiry worked fast enough. On 12 July – roughly half way through the Inquiry – the Board of the Admiralty demanded an ‘interim report’ be produced ‘giving your opinion on the cause of the accident’. Proceedings halted while notes and transcripts were pulled together into something resembling a report.
It has been necessary to edit the contents of the report down to a manageable length for this book, because of the document’s length. What follows is a selection of excerpts, quoted verbatim from the report, and interview transcripts.
The final report opened with remarks about the state and condition of Affray and the ship’s company on sailing, reflecting on the level of experience its commanding officer, first lieutenant, engineer officer, training first lieutenant, training engineer officer and third officer had in ‘A’ class submarines. It noted that of the ship’s company who went to sea in Affray on 16 April, nineteen out of the forty-five ratings ‘had reached a high standard of efficiency’ during the September – December 1950 exercise in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The rest of the remainder had recently been drafted from a Reserve Camp where they had regularly been taken to sea in HMS Alaric, a submarine almost identical to Affray. The key personnel were all thoroughly experienced men. The ship went to sea with the whole of the engine room complement of 24 embarked, no engine room rating having been landed to make room for passengers.
It is noted, however, that of the ship’s complement of 45 ratings, 22 only were at sea on 11 April during trials (the number to take her to sea for that trip having been made up from spare crew from the Reserve Group, the remainder having been on seasonal leave at the time of the trials). Furthermore, of those who finally sailed in the ship, 11 engine room ratings and 9 other ratings had never been to sea in Affray before. It is normal submarine practice frequently to appoint officers or draft ratings to submarines at short notice in case of sickness and so on and a trained spare crew is allowed in each flotilla for this purpose.
The report noted that Affray was at sea for one day on 11 April between leaving the dockyard and proceeding for the exercise on 16 April.
The ship was at sea for four hours during which time she dived for 30 minutes to periscope depth. We have found no suggestion that anything was other than completely normal on this occasion or that the way the duties were carried out by the officers and the ship’s company was other than satisfactory.
It was acknowledged that Affray’s records for the month of April 1951 had been lost with the submarine, but
as far as could be ascertained, her general condition on sailing on 16 April, was entirely satisfactory; there were no important defects outstanding, no inherent weaknesses and there is no particular reason to suppose that there had been any laxity in carrying out periscope tests and examinations.
A footnote states:
Reference was made by four witnesses to a small quantity of oil mixed with water in the sump of number one battery tank. Oil had dripped from a test cock. The Board are satisfied that the defect is neither important nor relevant to the Inquiry, apart from it having initially led to an assumption that the submarine may have been returning to the dockyard after the patrol, which probably would not, in fact, have been necessary.
The subject then arose about private letters written by Chief Petty Officer Engine Room Artificer 2nd Class David Russell Bennington to his father in Devon.
There has been some suggestion in private correspondence that the submarine was not in a sound condition. We received late in the Inquiry correspondence from Mr O. Bennington consisting of a number of extracts from letters written by his son during the autumn cruise, 1950 and prior to sailing in Affray on 16 April.
We have read these letters with care and in view of their statements that the ship was in an unsatisfactory condition as regards the engine room and that she was constantly breaking down and also that she was leaking badly, we called the Captain of the submarine (Lieutenant Leafric Temple-Richards) to 11 December, and Engine Room Artificer 3rd Class Summers who was also on the ship until January 1951. These two witnesses appeared to us to be the most responsible persons available to speak on the condition of the ship.
If the letters are read as a whole, the impression that will be given to the reader is of a thoroughly conscientious man who had been progressively overcome by his job until he became in an unsettled condition of mind which caused him to magnify troubles which do not appear to have been serious. Other evidence we have indicates that there was, in fact, no major trouble in the condition of the submarine. It is pertinent to observe that both officers and men in a submarine are as likely to be concerned with the safety of their ship – and, incidentally, themselves – as the writer of these letters, and, that being so, that some other indication of dissatisfaction with the condition of the submarine must have emerged if the conditions described by Engine Room Artificer Bennington were even anywhere near those pictured in his letters.
These letters show him to be a hard working, most conscientious and progressively worried man. It is perhaps worthy of note that he was, during the Autumn Cruise, preparing also for an examination, that his wife was expecting a child and that he obtained 15 days compassionate leave from RN Hospital, Haslar (while sick with influenza in February 1951) due to his anxiety about his wife’s condition.
We are, therefore, of the opinion that these letters do not represent the condition of the ship and that the trouble to which this rating refers were not the cause of her loss. Indeed, the specific troubles of the engines constantly stopping and similar matters were not ones which would directly affect the safety of the ship and in any event the engine defects in question were made good during the period Affray was in the dockyard (January – April 1951).
We also feel that Mr Bennington was right to bring his son’s evidence forward which, in the prevailing uncertainty of the cause of the loss of the submarine, certainly needed full investigation.
We suggest that Mr Bennington’s father and wife have handled this matter in the most helpful way as regards the Navy and submarine service. The whole affair must have been excessively painful for Bennington’s widow in particular, and we feel that she is owed a debt of gratitude for this action and the manner in which it was taken.
While it is not directly a matter for the Board of Inquiry, we suggest that a letter might be sent to Bennington’s father and wife somewhat on the lines above. This should not be difficult to draft, observing that the Board is satisfied that the cause of the accident was nothing to do with the matters described by Bennington in his private letters.
This was by no means the last word on David Bennington’s private letters home and they would reappear in a more visible way later in 1951, as a later chapter explains.
The report examined the orders given to Lieutenant Blackburn on 3 April for Exercise Training Spring, noting that ‘the orders were deliberately framed to give the Commanding Officer considerable latitude so as to carry out the patrol to the best advantage for the benefit of the ship’s company and trainees’. It continues:
Consequent on the latitude referred to above, it is evidently difficult from the orders to piece together what actually might have been expected to be done during the first period on the way to the patrol area. Certain conclusions can, however, be drawn. The first is that it seems unlikely that the folboat exercise would have been carried out on the first night since this period might have been expected to be used for settling down and to have carried out the folboat exercise would have meant a considerable diversion of course.
Furthermore, it would appear more convenient to do this exercise when the submarine would have been approaching land on her way into Falmouth. We now know that the Captain had expressed his intention to snort through the night and this would, because of the time factor, rule out the folboat exercise.
As regards the question of whether the submarine was snorting or not, our impression is that she would have been snorting through the night, steer a course to the southward of the line from his diving position to the position given to 19 Group for the exercise and to defer carrying out the folboat exercise until later in the patrol.
In conclusion to this part of the report, the Board stated:
We are of the opinion that the orders were clear and adequate for the work to be carried out, that there was good reason to suppose they were properly understood and are unlikely to have led to any action which might be a direct cause to the loss of the ship. We recollect that press reports have given the impression that the submarine when found was miles off course. In view of the latitude specifically allowed by the orders, this statement is not, of course, correct.
A section of the report referred to how close the search operation had come to passing over the spot where the submarine was eventually discovered during the first few days of the operation:
A ‘probability area’ was laid down and the centre line of this area was a line drawn from the expected diving position to the point within 30 miles of which Affray was intended to be at noon on 17 April – an area 77 miles long and 20 miles wide, 10 miles each side of the centre line. This area did cover the actual position of Affray, some three miles inside the southern limits of the area. But the tendency was naturally to start the ASDIC search along the centre line of the area given. In consequence, an ASDIC search never reached the actual position of the wreck until the forenoon of 19 April. Had the entire line of the search been 245 degrees instead of 250 degrees, the ASDIC search would have passed over Affray. It should, however, be remembered that it is exceedingly unlikely that the wreck would have been located observing the great difficulty which was experienced in the actual location weeks later when a thorough ‘slow time’ search was being carried out on this spot.
The ‘false scents’ that had led members of the search operation – as well as the newspaper-reading public – to believe that Affray had been discovered on 17/18 April had been provided by ‘a multiplicity of reports of smoke candles, oil slicks, floating boxes and so on. All these had to be investigated which broke up continuity of the search.’
Later hull tapping and signals ‘changed the whole picture’. The report stated that the signals had been heard by ‘responsible people and had been affirmed and re-affirmed’.
The report said that as a consequence
the whole weight of the search was shifted to the eastward under the impression that the wreck had been found, the air search to the westward was stopped and all efforts concentrated on what was believed to be the position of the wreck. We now know that this assumption was incorrect, but the result was that the search operation really ceased for the moment. We are of the opinion that it was correct to concentrate ships in the vicinity of the area where SST signals were reported. The time factor was ever present. There were probably only eight hours at most before escape be made and this was the only clue.
The first part of the reported concluded:
We are of the opinion that the search was carried out with the utmost rapidity, persistence and devotion to duty by all concerned. Had there been any survivors, they would have been seen by visual search and the wreck would probably have been found.
The next section addressed possible causes of the accident and the Board stressed that
this portion of the Inquiry is the most difficult as our views must be based to a considerable degree on conjecture building up from such relatively few established facts that are available to us. We are thus presenting what seems to us the best theories among the numerous possibilities that might be put forward.
Possible causes of the accident were divided into five different headings: battery explosion, material failure, drill failure, mines, collision.
On the question of a possible battery explosion, the report reminded Admiralty officials that after an accident in the submarine HMS Trenchant in June 1950,
when she suffered a severe battery explosion followed by a bad fire, the Board examined evidence as to the electrical condition of Affray. In the case of Trenchant there was definite evidence of a faulty battery evolving an excessive amount of hydrogen and the evidence regarding the battery ventilation system was inconclusive. Batteries in Affray were likely to have been in very good condition and that if the ventilation system was in good order and correctly operated, a battery explosion is very unlikely to have occurred, even with batteries in poor condition. As the evidence suggests that both the batteries and ventilating system were in good order, the likelihood of a battery explosion is discounted.
The material condition of Affray was discussed. The Board had made close inspection of the submarine’s ‘defects list’ produced when it went into HM Dockyard, Portsmouth with the submarine in January and work undertaken during the period January – April 1951.
We found here no indication of anything unusual or unsatisfactory and all the evidence that we could obtain from officers and ratings, including those who took part in the subsequent docking trials and diving trials at sea, testify to a submarine in normal condition in which all had confidence. There remained the possibility of faulty workmanship or even sabotage but these, of course, could not be pursued and in view of our subsequent knowledge that the snort mast had broken away, the points become of less importance.
The Board considered
the likelihood of HMS Affray having been lost due to some failure in the handling of the submarine on the part of those embarked. Naturally such a cause was bound to be conjectural and our inquiries were directed merely to establish the efficiency or otherwise of those embarked.
The officers of the ship were men of the first calibre as regards their professional attainments. While a high proportion of the ship’s company were experienced submarine ratings, nearly half of them had not been to sea in the ship before. This state of affairs, together with the number of passengers on board, though unlikely to be the cause of the accident, might well have been a contributing factor once a dangerous situation developed.
As to the possibility of the submarine hitting a mine ‘and the intact state of the hull of the submarine, we considered that the possibility of this being a cause was one that could be eliminated’.
The question of the submarine coming into collision with another ship was also considered ‘but for the same reason as above, and in view of the fact that there is no sign of the submarine having been in collision nor of the snort mast having received a blow of the severity that could come into that category, we consider that this cause can also be eliminated’.
However, the Board did ‘consider the possibility of a “soft” collision – such as from contact with waterlogged fishing nets floating on the surface or even some distance below the surface’. They also examined letters referring to the loss of nine men on board a trawler called Twilight Waters which disintegrated at sea near Dodman Point and the Cornish fishing village of Mevagissey. The trawler was lost before Affray had sailed. ‘It is, of course, possible that her trawl was floating about, although we have no evidence that she was in the vicinity of the Affray,’ said the Board. ‘An examination of the snort mast does not show any markings which could be definitely attributed to that cause.’
The report acknowledged that ‘there were some small black marks but these might just as well have come from the 5in tarred hemp shot-rope from Reclaim which is known to have been in contact with the snort mast. It is also worthy of remark that no netting of any kind was found entangled with the wreck.’
The Board’s conclusion stated: ‘It is thus our opinion that HMS Affray was lost due to the snapping of her snort mast and that this was due to a failure of the material of which that mast was made.’
It continued:
Our reasons are based on the report of the examiners of the snort mast carried out in the Admiralty Central Material Laboratory, Emsworth. The break in the mast occurred just above the point where it is housed in its crutch and where the bending moment is greatest and where the number of welds are present. The failure probably started in a brittle manner at the point at or near the longitudinal weld between the circular tube and the port fairing plate and once started, the brittle condition of the metal of the circular tube caused a crack to run round the whole cross-section instantaneously by way of the transverse welds.
The mast then fell over to port, the remaining portion of the whole section being twisted off so that the upper portion was only held by a small piece of metal as it lay down over the port side of the submarine. The circular tube was found to have been scarf forge welded and its material, though of satisfactory composition, was found to have been of an exceptionally coarse grain structure indicative of gross overheating and had clearly not been heat treated after being welded at a very high temperature. This would account for its extreme brittleness at normal air and sea temperatures.
In a report full of cold facts and data, the following passage is probably the most chilling:
As a result, a 14in hole was suddenly open direct to the sea, flooding the Engine Room. A delay of three seconds in closing the valve could allow enough water to enter to produce a stern-down angle of 16 degrees if not quickly rectified.
If she had been snorting through the night, she would have reached her actual position somewhere between 0500–0700. It would have been quite reasonable and in accordance with submarine practice for the majority of officers and ship’s company to be turned in and the submarine to be at watch snorting stations. The Commanding Officer would very likely have turned out at dawn (about 0530) and having satisfied himself that all was well, have turned in again.
The submarine was, therefore, not at the maximum state of alerted efficiency.
In consequence, those inside the submarine started at a disadvantage. That something serious had happened would be evident, but precious seconds would be likely to have been lost in diagnosis . . . Our evidence shows that unless remedial action was taken within 15 – and possibly 10 – seconds, the situation would start to get out of hand . . . There would have been little chance of escape or even of releasing the indicator buoys or firing smoke candles due to poisonous fumes, pain in the ears, exhausting effects of pressure and lack of concentration and coherent thinking. There would also have been a short-circuiting of electrical equipment causing loss of power and lighting throughout the submarine at an early stage. There would have been electrical fires and fumes.
The chances of escape at a depth of over 250ft have to be regarded as virtually negligible. Perhaps the odd exceptional man might reach the surface and survive, only to die from the effects of air embolism (known to divers as ‘the bends). From 200 – 250ft the escape route is down to 10 per cent and at over 150ft the survival rate using the ‘twill trunk’ method is negligible.
All on board would have died within a very short time. If any personnel had managed to shut themselves into the foremost watertight compartment, they in turn would very rapidly have lost their lives.