Down to the Sea in Submarines by Dan Conley

Author:Dan Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2024-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Better Times

On departing from Rosyth, with myself still digesting the news about Mary Millington, Otter’s first tasking was to play the part of a distressed boat in a missing submarine exercise. This involved, in an area to the north of Dunbar in the Firth of Forth estuary, manoeuvring the submarine onto the seabed. Having achieved a stationary trim and having gently ballasted the boat in order for it to settle onto the seabed with minimum impact, an emergency indicator buoy was then released. Attached to the submarine by a wire, when it reached the surface it would start transmitting a distress signal which would alert the shore authorities that a submarine was in trouble.

A special exercise buoy had been fitted in Rosyth but, unfortunately, on reaching the surface its retaining wire parted and the buoy drifted away with the tidal stream. The result was that the group of warships despatched to locate Otter, on arriving on the scene and achieving recovery of the buoy, were searching several miles away. It was only with difficulty that Otter was eventually located when a series of the smoke flares which we had ejected were sighted. The exercise did demonstrate the imperatives of ensuring that submarine escape and rescue equipment was maintained in first-rate condition.

A few days later, on arriving back in Faslane very late at night, I found myself, not for the first time, in trouble with the MoD Police manning the main gate at the base. They demanded that they search my car. Both physically and mentally exhausted, I refused and drove out through the gate, knowing this would get me in to a spot of bother with the authorities. However, to me it was just another example of the MoD Police harassing submarine crew members rather than concentrating upon their prime responsibility of protecting the Base. As mentioned earlier, there were later to be several spectacular break-ins to the base where the MoD Police were very much found wanting.

As the publicity around the Millington affair gradually faded, Otter continued with a varied programme of tasks at sea. As the Royal Navy’s only operational target submarine we participated in a number of torpedo trials at the British equivalent to AUTEC, the much smaller and more limited British Underwater Test and Evaluation Centre (BUTEC). This was situated in the Sound of Raasay, to the east of the Isle of Skye. Compared to AUTEC, as well as being much smaller in size and having considerably less capable facilities, at the time BUTEC was an unprofessional and inefficiently run set-up. In due course, I was to become intricately involved with this facility after I had relinquished command of Otter.

Many of these trials involved acting as target for a new variant of the Tigerfish torpedo. This wire-guided ASW weapon which, after a very long gestation, was coming into service as a replacement for the Mark 23. This new version, Tigerfish Mod 1, had also an antiship capability and a range of over 15,000 yards. This

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