NAVY NEWS, DECEMBER 2010


11


● The submarine didn’t take the game of hide and seek especially seriously... HMS Triumph makes a rare appearance on the surface during Perisher while a Merlin stands guard


Pingers enjoy Arran nights


SO WHAT’S being pinged like? Well, why not ask the latest students to test their


nd we thank you forwards”.


“I thrive on something to do, a challenge, learning a new boat, new kit. There are some guys on here who will never go to sea again. That’s their loss.” Some Sceptres look at their


boat’s passing pragmatically. “A boat is just a boat – it’s the people that make it,” says Genghis, who’s spent two decades in Swiftsures.


“Mind you, if I was talking to a bomber queen I would tell you this is the best boat ever with the best runs ashore and she always ran smoothly.” LS(CSSM) ‘Spud’ Murphy, on the other hand, will be emotional come December 10.


“I get a lump in my throat


seeing my old boats laid up here in the basin, so I will defi nitely have one when Sceptre goes as well,” he says, “It’s not just a boat. This is my


last S-boat, in fact my last boat full stop.” He leaves the Service next year to go into primary school teaching.


He has nothing but affection for the Swiftsures. “You fi nd there are more friends on here than acquaintances.” Perhaps, he suggests, it’s because they’re based in Faslane and largely crewed by Northerners and Scotsmen...


Most of his shipmates share


Spud’s affinity for the boat – they wear ‘HMS Sceptre: End of an era’ wristbands such is their pride. “If you get a crew like we have, you have a great family,” says PO Thompson; he’s spent 34 years in the Service, splitting his time between O-boats and, since the early 90s, S-boats. “Sceptre’s been a very good boat – I’m proud to have served in her.” There is, says Cdr Waller, “ultimate pride in being the last of the S-boats. “We’re conscious that we’re g the fl ag as the last of


fl yin class.


“December 10 draws a line under the Swiftsures. It’s not just the end of a boat, it’s the


HMS Spartan (in service 1979-2006) ‘Courage with great endurance’ Cost £69m


HMS Splendid (in service 1981-2004) ‘Splendidly audacious’ Cost £97m


fi tted with Tomahawk cruise missiles, which she fi red in anger both in the Kosovan and Iraqi campaigns.


end of an era. It will be a sad day. Sceptre’s done wonders.” So don’t mourn Sceptre or her sisters. Celebrate them, all they’ve achieved, all the men who’ve served in them. “These


says Ucks. “It’s been a great experience.” So what’s his abiding memory of time in S-boats?


boats are great,”


“Sending Cherry B to the bottom,” he says in a fl ash.


Six S-boats were built for the Submarine Service by the Vickers yard at Barrow between 1969 and 1981 at a cost of £330m. Between them the boats have given their nation 165 years’ service since the fi rst of class, HMS Swiftsure joined the Fleet in 1973. HMS Splendid became the fi rst boat in the Fleet to be


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HMS Swiftsure (in service 1973-92) Cost £37m


HMS Sovereign (in service 1974-2006) Cost £31m


HMS Superb (in service 1976-2008) ‘With strength and courage’ Cost £41m


abilities on the Submarine Commander’s Course – aka Perisher – who felt the full force of RN anti- submarine warfare assets (2 x Merlin helicopters, 2 x Type 23 frigates) off Scotland. The helicopters from two front-line Naval Air Squadrons – 814 (which typically deploys with a carrier) and 829 (the dedicated Type 23 Merlin squadron) set down on Her Majesty’s Ships Monmouth and Iron Duke off the Isle of Arran. And thus began a 48-hour game of cat-and-mouse in the Firth of Clyde as the prospective submarine COs tried to keep HMS Triumph out of harm’s way from first light to well into the night. For the 23s there was the chance to fire up the


sonar and work hand-in-hand with the helicopters to deliver that knock-out blow against their quarry.


And for the Culdrose-based squadrons, as well as training the aircrew, there was a chance to re-live all the trials and tribulations of maintaining a £40m aircraft at sea in a cramped and not always stable environment – a test especially for the Flying Tigers; 814 became accustomed to rather more spacious surroundings on Ark Royal over the summer in the USA.


“The opportunity to operate against live submarine assets was not to be missed,” enthused Lt Mark Gilbert, an observer with 829 NAS. “The experience and training gained this weekend has been invaluable, the simulator can train you to a high degree, but nothing can beat a ‘live’ contact. “Scotland is a beautiful part of the country and


having already served for a short while as a Search and Rescue observer at HMS Gannet, it was nice to return again to familiar surroundings and faces.”


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Cherry B? The Cherry B was before my time as a naval hack. I look blankly. (She was, of course, HMS Charybdis...) “Cherry B? What was ’er real name,” Ucks shouts.


“Cherry B?” a voice bellows down the passageway. “We sank her with Spearfi sh.” Confi rmation, if ever it were needed, of the old adage: there are two types of warships, submarines and targets...


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