Undersea Warriors: The Untold History of the Royal Navy's Secret Service by Iain Ballantyne & Iain Ballantyne

Author:Iain Ballantyne & Iain Ballantyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, Cold War, Great Britain, History, Military, Naval
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2019-09-03T03:00:00+00:00

43 FLYING HELMET ON

Having received his summons to Perisher while serving in HMS Otter, Doug Littlejohns departed for some well-earned leave, then set about girding his loins for the rigorous test of mettle that lay ahead.

He would take his tilt at qualifying for submarine command on the course run from January to June 1975. Littlejohns did not know Forsyth but had seen him in the wardroom at Faslane, though they did not actually converse until Perisher. Forsyth had heard of Littlejohns as a highly competent, ambitious young officer who – no doubt – would be a handful.

He was determined to remain the boss.

To help prepare for Perisher, Littlejohns obtained a set of ship models. While he sat in an armchair watching television his wife would call to him from the sofa, holding one of them aloft.

Was the ship coming at him? Showing him its stern?

Or beam on? What type was it?

Warship or merchant vessel?

Frigate or destroyer?

Angle on the bow? This was the most important – he had to get that within 5–10 degrees. This would give the course of target, from which other things could be calculated – the torpedo track angle in particular.

It was a good way of training to make instant, and hopefully accurate, assessments of targets through the periscope.

His fellow Perishers were an Israeli, two Canadians, a Dutchman, two Australians and six Britons, split down into A and B sections, each of them running in parallel aboard their respective boats.

Aboard Onyx Littlejohns found sailors had some unusual ways of showing their confidence, or otherwise, in the would-be submarine captain at the helm. A cook, whose normal working environment was the galley, at Action Stations took care of an attack plot. This man possessed the rare talent of being able to write backwards with a chinagraph pencil on the vertical, transparent track display. As Littlejohns made his way to the attack scope – full of eagerness and anxiety – he noticed the cook was wearing a leather flying helmet. As he would later discover, the cook pulled it on whenever a particularly aggressive student took control.

Littlejohns was not the kind of man to appreciate command being taken off him at any stage, considering it an insult to have the plug pulled on me . . . and a matter for much grumpiness if I thought that Forsyth had done it just to make a point’.

Plenty of pranks were unleashed on the students to test the envelope of their tolerance. Just as one was trying to keep the periscope crosshairs on a frigate, a voice called out: ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’

Two sailors lugging a hose came lumbering through the Control Room, while people yelled contradictory instructions about where the fire might be. This apparently confused the hose carriers so much they chased round and round the attack periscope, binding the student tightly to it.

Littlejohns, who was on the chart table as the attack navigator, watched it all unfold, less than amused. He had seen these sorts of antics before, having served in four submarines acting as the Perisher boat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.