10 NAVY NEWS, DECEMBER 2010 Picture: LA(Phot) Stu Hill, FRPU North


Sight for Soar eyes


CHRISTMAS comes early to the Silent Service this year. Nine days early to be precise, with the launch of the second boat in the £7bn Astute programme: HMS Ambush. The 7,400-tonne attack submarine is due to be rolled out of its shed


Back then John Major was prime minister and the yard at Barrow came under the banner of GEC Marconi Marine (one of at least ten names in its 140-year history...). Thirteen years, three premiers and one name change (the Barrow


at Barrow-in-Furness on December 16 – more than seven years after she was laid down and 13 years after Whitehall placed the order for the boat.


yard now falls under the banner of the BAE behemoth) and Ambush is ready to take to the water. Performing the honours will be the boat’s sponsor, Lady Soar


(pictured above), the wife of Commander-in-Chief Fleet Admiral Sir Trevor Soar (himself a deep). She dropped in on Ambush in the fi nal stages of build last month, spending two days with the ship’s company, touring the boat thoroughly and presenting medals to LCH Daly (Afghanistan) and CPO O’Neil (a clasp to his Long Service and Good Conduct) before dining with CO Cdr Peter Green and his offi cers at their Trafalgar Night celebrations. Lady Soar returns to the cavernous Devonshire Dock Hall (all 270,000 square feet of it...) on December 16 to formally name Ambush at the ‘launch’ ceremony.


Once proceedings inside the hall are complete, Ambush will be inched outside where a ship lift (capable of carrying vessels three times the A-boat’s displacement) will lower the submarine into the dock for outfi tting and testing. As Ambush emerges, boat No.3, HMS Artful, continues to take


government committed to seven boats in the Astute programme (the last submarine in the class will be HMS Ajax). ■ HMS Astute is undergoing repairs in her Faslane home after running aground off the Isle of Skye in late October. The boat was stuck on a silt bank for the best part of 12 hours after a transfer of personnel went wrong. The submarine was further bruised when she collided with a tug


trying to free her; that damaged her starboard foreplane. Astute returned to the Clyde under her own power and was hauled out of the water using the ship lift to allow a closer look at the damage after divers had inspected her initially off Skye. Investigations into the grounding are continuing.


steel work is progressing well, while early work on boat fi ve (HMS Agamemnon) has started and materials for boat six (HMS Anson), including her reactor core, have been ordered. Under last month’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, the


Farewell, Sceptre, an


“I THINK after 32 years we’ve just about ironed out


all


shape. Indeed, the submarine now resembles just that – after slotting the command deck module into place, the fi nal butt weld was carried out and Artful is now a complete hull. The keel of boat No.4, HMS Audacious, was laid last year and major


the problems,” smiles CPO Joe


‘Genghis’ Gahan. Such self-deprecation is, of course, typical of the Silent Service.


But it masks the fact that at the very end of her life Her Majesty’s Ship Sceptre is as potent as she’s ever been. “Operationally we’re just as capable as any other boat in the Navy – on our fi nal deployment we were available for sea on 275 days and we do the same job as an Astute or T-boat,” Cdr Steve Waller says proudly. He’s the last of 16 men to bear the title Commanding Offi cer, HMS Sceptre. She


certainly a looks 32-year-old the


business. Sceptre doesn’t look like


warship.


There may be lots of wooden cabinets in the compartments, but the weaponry – Spearfi sh torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles – is identical to the Trafalgar class. The control room’s packed with all the gadgetry you’d expect to fi nd in a modern warship. Sceptre’s passing is dictated by her reactor life rather than by the condition of the boat or the equipment inside. “She’s in good nick – as far as I’m concerned, she’s still a young girl,” says PO(WEM(O)) ‘George’ Thompson.


Shipmate LET Andy ‘Ucks


Me’ Hey (he doesn’t use the F word, replacing it, Father Ted-fashion, with ‘ucks’ and ‘ucking’...) agrees. “They


might be over-


engineered, but that amount of redundancy gives us so much confi dence,” he says. “Over the years they’ve really


proved themselves – they’re the Volvos of the submarine world.”


The Sceptre story begins on November 1 1971 when Ted Heath’s government placed a £59m order with the then Vickers yard in Barrow for the


On December 10 Britain’s second generation hunter-killer submarines pass into history when HMS Sceptre – ‘Honour with authority’ – decommissions in Devonport. Richard Hargreaves visited the last of the S-boats.


fourth of what would be a class of six Swiftsure-class Fleet submarines.


It was another two and a half years before her keel was laid, and the same length of time passed again before the boat was ready for launching. That honour was performed by Lady White (sadly, no longer with us) who sent Sceptre down the slipway on November 20 1976 not with a bottle of champagne against the hull but cider (fittingly, there’ll be plenty of the drink to go around at the decommissioning ceremony, as well as other tipples...). Sceptre, like her sisters, was built to keep an eye on the Russkis (and evidently enjoyed a few scrapes with the Soviet Navy...) before adapting to the post-Cold War era.


The other challenge is keeping submariners motivated on a boat which is unlikely to go to sea again. Most routines have been maintained (although the galley’s no longer serving scran). There’s still scrubbing out (for health and safety reasons, not just for cleanliness...) and a fair bit of adventurous training and sport.


But in a matter of days all that ends as the White Ensign is lowered for good (officially, December 31 is Sceptre’s last active day in the Fleet even though she decommissions three weeks earlier), and the dismantlers move in


Her final ‘run-out’, an eight- month deployment to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans was as varied as any in her history. 31,000 miles later she arrived at Devonport trailing her decommissioning pennant. She has not moved under her own power since – although Sceptre has been held in readiness just in case Fleet needed her (it hasn’t...).


stripping Sceptre out. PO Thompson has already decommissioned Sovereign. He’ll be part of the same process now on her sister. In the very fi nal days there’ll be just three men on board; two aft, one forward keeping watch. “It’s a very eerie experience – everything’s stripped out. Everything. You’re just left with an empty shell. And because everything’s been taken out you hear some very strange noises against the hull. It can be a bit unsettling.” The


The final months have not been without their challenges. For a start there’s the strain on the crew’s families. Sceptre’s a Faslane boat.


She’s paying off in Devonport – more than 500 miles (or a nine- hour drive) away. To ensure there’s plenty of family time for the 100-plus ship’s company, they’ve enjoyed two weeks on, two weeks off since decamping to Devon. “It has been a bit of an upheaval, but our families have been very supportive,” says Cdr Waller.


process is lengthy; there’ll be men aboard the boat until some time in 2012 (it’s all determined by the rate at which Sceptre’s reactor cools – and that cannot be speeded along).


centimetres, metres, bars rubbish. It’s all feet, inches and PSI.


imperial. None of this decommissioning to start


was PM (the fi rst time around). Before man landed on the moon. When computers were the size of a house. When TV was black and white. When eight- track cartridges and cassette tapes were the future of popular music.


Sceptre’s crew were born’. But that’s not necessarily true... “I’m the youngest senior rate in my department,” says Genghis. He’s 47. The crew, like the boat, is “ageing”. There’s a good number of men in their 40s, a few in their 50s aboard. In most cases they’re here because they want to be.


other boats, but they wanted to stay with Sceptre,” says Cdr Waller. “The ship’s company take great pride in being the last of the S-boats. That makes my job much easier.” His ship’s company talk of the ‘old girl’ or the ‘old lady’. Many wouldn’t give a XXXX for any other type of boat... You didn’t ever fancy T-boats or bombers, I ask Genghis. There’s a look of horror at


the prospect of the former. As for the latter, it’s the ‘timeshare Navy’ – “two crews sharing the same boat at different times,” he explains. (‘Timeshare Navy’ is one of the more polite terms for the V-boats used by their hunter-killer oppos...)


Anything which can be re- used, will be re-used – although much of the equipment is


But then that gives you an idea of how long these boats have been around. They were designed when Harold Wilson


“Many of them were offered I was about to add ‘before


Of course, as men of Sceptre scatter when their boat pays off they will be drafted to other classes of submarines. A decent number will be joining HMS Ambush, launched just a few days after Sceptre decommissions.


Much as he loves these boats – he’s spent 20 years on Swiftsures – Ucks acknowledges that “technology has to move


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48