Cold War Command: The Dramatic Story of a Nuclear Submariner by Conley Dan & Woodman Richard

Author:Conley, Dan & Woodman, Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027150; HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781473837683
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2014-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

11

Torpedo Problems

HAVING RELINQUISHED COMMAND of Otter in April 1977, Conley was appointed to the Submarine Tactics and Weapons Group (STWG) at Faslane, heading up the Tigerfish torpedo crew certification team. He was under no illusion that in comparison with his Perisher peers, this was not the most prestigious of post-command appointments. It was cold comfort to learn that the only one of his colleagues who seemed to have come off worse had done so after inadvertently hitting the seabed in his boat, HMS Cachalot. Nevertheless, there were aspects of the job which he considered vital, insofar as future Royal Navy submarine war-fighting capability was concerned. This ameliorated any disappointment he felt as he took charge of a small team of officers, chief petty officers and ratings, whose role was to train submarine crews in the competent handling and control of the new Tigerfish torpedo, a process known as ‘weapon certification’.

Tigerfish was the long awaited anti-submarine weapon which Conley and other young officers of his mettle had been hankering after. Unfortunately, not only was the new torpedo many years overdue, it was rapidly acquiring a reputation for unreliability and poor performance, in consequence of which some of the disdain being heaped upon it by commanding officers was rubbing off onto the certification team.

Possessing a total strength of nine SSNs and four SSBNs, together with more than twenty diesel submarines, the Royal Navy’s Submarine Flotilla was becoming a very potent force. Meanwhile, with an increasing amount of intelligence about Russian submarine movements and locations becoming available from sound surveillance system (SOSUS) chains in the North Atlantic, it had become vital to have central co-ordination for patrolling submarines and aircraft. This also ensured that British and American SSBNs were kept informed of any potentially threatening Russian vessels in their patrol areas. Accordingly, British submarines in the northeast Atlantic were now controlled from the Royal Navy and RAF Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) operational headquarters in Northwood, London.

Thus in 1978 the Flag Officer Submarines and his staff decamped from their old-fashioned offices and facilities in Fort Blockhouse, Portsmouth, to Northwood, a sure sign of the abandonment of its past image of a buccaneering sideline in favour of being the Royal Navy’s crack strike force. With the strategic increase in the activity of Soviet submarines of the Northern Fleet, this elevation of status was, of course, predicated upon having an adequate anti-submarine weapon and no longer relying upon a vintage, short-range antiship torpedo.

STWG was a recent response to this step-change and combined the existing Flotilla tactical analysis group with the new Tigerfish weapons team. This organisational concept was novel in the Royal Navy and was based upon the American model of a single organisation which developed tactics alongside the assessment of both the effectiveness of weapon systems and the competence of crews trained to use them. The logic of this is inescapable; a crew could not be called upon to execute a tactical task without the right weapon or training but, remarkably, comprehensive analysis of weapon system effectiveness was new to the Royal Navy.

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