Ever since an underwater television camera had positively identified Affray, the Admiralty had been under pressure from the public and the press wanting more details about how the wreck had been located and how the Navy knew so much about it. The television camera and information about those responsible for developing the equipment had never been publicly acknowledged as it had been deemed ‘an experiment’ by the Admiralty, whose policy was never to publicise its experiments.
Five months after Affray had disappeared and three months after she was discovered, the Admiralty bowed to pressure and released a statement admitting that a television camera had been responsible for the discovery. The Admiralty would have preferred the information to remain secret, but Atlee’s government was on its way out and Churchill’s new government on the way in. Rumours spread throughout the Admiralty’s Whitehall offices that if their Lordships insisted on remaining silent about the television camera, the incoming First Lord of the Admiralty, James Thomas, would do the job for them. They issued a statement:
It can now be stated that His Majesty’s submarine Affray, which was lost in the English Channel, was first identified by means of underwater television.
After the loss of the submarine, a team of four members of the Royal Naval Scientific Service worked night and day for three weeks to produce the unit which eventually proved to be of such great service.
Portable television equipment, similar to that used for outside broadcasting, was obtained from the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, whose prompt cooperation was greatly appreciated. The naval scientists not only had to mount the camera in a specially welded watertight container, but also had to design and incorporate the various remote controls for operating the set.
The container had to be set in a specially designed frame along with underwater lighting apparatus which had previously been designed to facilitate the work of underwater photography.
The equipment was taken as soon as it was completed to the salvage ship Reclaim and lowered over the side for testing. Results proved sufficiently satisfactory to warrant the use of the equipment on the actual search.
The television equipment had been in use for some weeks before success was achieved. After location by ASDIC equipment, a number of wrecks had been investigated by this means and when there was uncertainty, it had proved of great value to the divers, particularly in assisting them to be lowered into the best position for surveying or otherwise working on the wrecks.
Early in June viewers in the captain’s cabin saw various parts of the Affray coming into view and the climax was when they read the name Affray on the screen. Some hours later divers were able to identify the submarine by normal methods.
The Marconi people were delighted that their equipment had been identified in such a public way as it would make the Royal Navy even keener to buy their technology as a permanent fixture on Reclaim.
A Marconi spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The equipment used was a perfectly normal outdoor television camera and associated controls – such as the BBC have used in their big outside broadcasts. It can be packed into about five suitcases.’
The underwater television camera had more than proved itself to the Royal Navy, who asked Marconi if they could hold on to its equipment while further tests were conducted at sea. At the end of the year, the Navy informed Marconi that it planned to carry an underwater camera permanently on board Reclaim and would be asking several companies in Britain and Europe to submit proposals and competitive prices. The news came as a shock to Marconi who had not earned a penny and only a little public prestige from loaning their technology to the Navy for free. They thought they had secured a Navy contract, only to discover that they had opened the door for their competitors to walk through.
The Navy’s specifications for permanent underwater camera and support equipment for Reclaim was a difficult one for the television camera manufacturers to match. To date, their experience had been limited to working with broadcasting companies, such as the BBC, not official bureaucracies like the Admiralty. In the end the Royal Navy awarded its contract to Marconi’s principal rival in Britain, PYE, which produced a camera almost identical to the one developed by Marconi and mounted in a special container with its distinctive branding on the side. Apparently it was all down to price. PYE was the lowest bidder.
The House of Commons was crowded, but sympathetically silent on Wednesday 14 November when James Thomas, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, announced that no further operations would be carried out on Affray. There was not, he stated ‘sufficient evidence to say with certainty why the submarine was lost’. He told the House:
The wreck of HM submarine Affray was located by ASDIC equipment on 14 June after a search lasting two months. She was lying in 288ft of water and was identified by means of underwater television. This equipment was used also to help in directing the divers during their painstaking examination of her hull.
Since the last statement in this House on 1 August, the diving vessel Reclaim has worked on all possible occasions and has made every effort to obtain further evidence about the cause of the disaster. I am sorry to have to tell the House that all her work of the last three months has been in vain and that one of my first duties on taking office was to agree that there was no reasonable hope of obtaining any further light on the problem through this means.
The continued use of Reclaim on these special duties for so long has already interfered to a serious extent with the training of deep-sea divers. While there was still a chance that useful evidence would be forthcoming, this was accepted. Weather conditions in any case would have made further operations impossible in the winter.
I have studied very carefully the final report of the Board of Inquiry and the results of tests that have now been made on the snort mast of Affray and those of two other ‘A’ class submarines.
I have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to enable me to say with certainty why Affray was lost. Many theories have been put forward, among them the possibility that her snort mast snapped while she was snorting and that she filled rapidly through failure to close the valves provided against such an emergency. This would have resulted in her sinking stern first, but there is evidence that Affray’s stern was undamaged.
It is possible that a major battery explosion started a shock wave in her hull and that this ruptured her pressure trunking which lies amidships under the casing, but external to the hull. Damage of this type could have resulted in the submarine sinking on an even keel. Such an explosion could have started a crack in the snort, which might then have snapped off as she grounded. Whatever the cause of the disaster, it is clear from the survey of her hull that no attempt at escape was made and that the end came swiftly.
The House was informed on 1 August that the metallurgical condition of some parts of Affray’s snort and those of her two sister ships was below standard and that some of the welding was not good. Tests just completed on these three snorts indicate that they were well capable of standing up to all stresses other than those associated with an explosive shock. A modified form of snort has successfully passed its tests and is being fitted to ‘A’ class submarines.
I should like to say that the adoption of an automatic valve has been considered on several occasions. Automatic arrangements for meeting a possible emergency, which might never occur, are apt to induce a false sense of security and it had generally been preferred to rely on a correct drill to meet such situations. We are, nevertheless, considering the technical means of providing a thoroughly reliable automatic device.
The question of salvage has been considered. This would be a very difficult task – perhaps the most difficult ever undertaken. Affray lies not only at a great depth but in a very exposed position where weather would be the greatest enemy of the operation. The tides are strong and useful work could only be done in good weather at very limited periods of slack water. There is in these conditions an ever-present risk to men’s lives. The material cost is difficult to estimate, but it would be inordinately high since seven or more vessels would be needed.
The operation would be limited to the five fine weather months of 1952 and it might well extend into the summer of 1953, if not found to be totally impracticable earlier. The vessels needed for the operation all have their allotted tasks. Their work is of importance and it has already suffered on account of operations on Affray.
I have considered these matters carefully and I have decided that with the high risk of total failure, there is no justification for this substantial diversion of our resources. There will, therefore, be no further operations in connection with Affray.
Leader comment in The Times, Wednesday 14 November 1951:
There will be general approval of the decision of the Admiralty, announced in Parliament yesterday, to leave the wreck of HM Submarine Affray in the depths of the Channel, where she has lain since April. Since her position is exposed to every gale, and moreover the tides where she lies in more than 40 fathoms of water are so strong than even in calm weather divers can work for no more than twenty minutes each tide, their attempts to salve her have been attended with no little danger to life and limb. Nevertheless, so important was it to discover the cause of the unexplained disaster – all the more deplorable in that the ship was carrying twenty young naval officers and four Marines under training in addition to her own company – that the attempts have been continued without respite until the onset of winter brings them to a close. The experience so gained has now shown that the prospects of ultimate success are so slender as not to justify resuming the dangerous work next year, especially since it means serious interruption of the Navy’s normal programme of training deep-sea divers.
It has not been possible to ascertain the exact cause of the disaster. When the wreck was first located by a triumph of seamanship and the skilful development and use of scientific apparatus, many miles from the position where it was at first thought – erroneously, as it turned out – that signals were being sent out from the sunken ship, it was observed that her ‘snort’ tube was buckled and broken. It was clear, however, to those acquainted with the equipment of submarines that this could not have been the cause of the loss, since mere damage to the snort would neither cause rapid foundering on an even keel nor preclude release of the marker buoys and use of the escape apparatus. The damage to the snort must have been a result, not a cause, of some sudden catastrophe which disabled all on board, sank the ship and rendered inconsequential all the elaborate devices that provided, as far as human ingenuity can, for the safety of the inmates of a damaged submarine. There would seem to have been no mark of damage by external agency so that the theories that she had been in collision or had struck a mine must be ruled out.
All that can now be said is that the cause of disaster was internal, and that the end was both sudden and complete. The officers and men of the Affray will have no mark upon their common grave but, like many brave seamen before them who have gone down in their ships in the course of duty, they will find their monument in the hearts of their countrymen.
Against all odds, Reclaim’s divers had made every effort to get to the inaccessible snort induction valve on Affray’s pressure hull. They were determined to discover if the valve was in the ‘open’ or ‘closed’ position. At one stage they began using a mechanical grab – guided by a diver in an observation chamber – to remove a small part of casing housing the valve allowing them to take gamma-ray images through the hull – an arduous and highly dangerous process.
A radioactive isotope, no larger than a pea and enclosed in a thick lead container mounted onto a magnetic frame, was pulled into position by a diver armed with a large photographic plate. The diver then removed a lead plug from the radioactive container allowing rays to be released onto the hull. Depending on weather and tidal conditions, divers went down and set the device to take different time exposures lasting between five to twenty-four hours. This was a primitive way of trying to ‘see’ through the hull, but the technology was new and untried at the time – and results were far from perfect.
On one of the dives, the lead container became detached from its frame and the plug fell off as the diver tried to reposition it, releasing radioactive material onto the wreck site. Fortunately, the diver’s sturdy suit protected him from contamination.
The unsuccessful attempt to take gamma-ray images finally brought underwater investigations on the wrecked submarine to an end in November 1951. On 23 January 1952 the buoys marking the spot where Affray lay at the bottom of the sea were lifted and her seventy-five officers and men finally allowed to rest in peace in their grave beneath the waves of the English Channel.
At the time Peter Stephens was waiting to undertake his submarine training at HMS Dolphin and working on HMS Barova, the boom defence vessel assigned to recover the marker buoys positioned over Affray. He remembers:
It was a very eerie feeling, especially at night, knowing what lay below us. On completion, we went into St Peter Port (Guernsey) where we were given the freedom of the town. There were lots of rumours about what had happened, the main one being that the snort mast had snapped because it was so rusty. But this didn’t put me off joining submarines.
At 1245 hours on Thursday 17 April 1952, the Affray’s sister-submarine, HMS Alliance, surfaced over the exact spot where twelve months before an identical vessel had come to rest on the seabed nearly 300ft below. A memorial service took place on the deck and more than 100 wreaths from wives, mothers, sweethearts, children and colleagues, delivered to HMS Dolphin the day before, were cast over the side by officers and men. The youngest wreath had been sent by 7-month-old Georgina Gander, whose father Able Seaman George Leakey was lost with seventy-four shipmates exactly a year before.
Relatives had pleaded with the Admiralty to allow them to go with HMS Alliance to spend a few moments above the site where their loved ones lay and cast their wreaths into the sea. The Admiralty refused, stating that while it was appropriate for a Royal Navy ‘A’ class submarine to go out to the site, there would be no room for any civilians.
Joy Cook, widow of Leading Seaman George Cook, was bitterly disappointed to receive the news. She had hoped to visit the site with her baby son, Kevin, who was just over 1 year old. ‘Why couldn’t they have taken another boat out for the families?’ she remembers. ‘The Navy obviously didn’t want us there.’
Thirty-two years later, Joy Cook made her own way out to the site where her husband lies buried at sea with his shipmates. Armed with a detailed chart and the exact navigational coordinates pinpointing where Affray lies 16 miles from the shore, Mrs Cook travelled to Guernsey determined to find a boat prepared to take her out to sea. She said:
The local branch of the Submariner’s Association advised me to go down to the harbour front and talk to skippers of fishing boats available for charter. As luck would have it, I was put in touch with an ex-Navy man who agreed to take me out in an ex-Navy small boat. He brought his wife along, too, to keep me company.
I took along two-dozen red roses to lay on the water. The flowers were in memory of my husband and his friend David Bennington – who he called Jim – who also lost his life on the Affray. They had been to school together and had died together.
I’m so pleased I was able to go to the place above where the submarine lies. But I had to make all the arrangements myself. The Navy should have done this for everybody years before. It wasn’t much to ask. It was a small thing, and they couldn’t even do that for the families of their own men lost at sea.