The Ancient Submariner – A Day in the Life (1957-1970)

By Derek Powell

MISSION NORTH POLE

 The date is April 1962, we are alongside at H.M.S. Dolphin in Gosport, the main base of the Submarine Service.  The time is 1015, the entire crew are on-board awaiting a briefing from the Captain over the intercom.

“Captain speaking, I have just come from the Office of F.O.S.M. (Flag Officer Submarines) with our orders.  We are to store for war (extra food supplies, live torpedoes) and proceed through the English Channel.  We will then set a course north, through the North Sea into the North Atlantic and on to the Arctic Circle.  We will basically be steering along the 0 line of longitude. We will be passing Iceland on our Port side and Greenland’s Eastern seaboard right up to the Arctic Ocean.  Our mission is to dive under the ice fields, penetrate under the Arctic pack ice and proceed as near as possible to the North Pole.  The fact that we are a diesel boat means that we will need air and to charge our batteries.  An R.A.F. Nimrod has flown over the Pole and plotted us a course, marking where we can surface in what are called Polynyas; a Russian word for the fresh water lakes found dotted about the Arctic ice cap.  We will surface in these lakes, charge our batteries then dive again, proceeding to the next one and so get as close as we can to the Pole.  We calculate that we will get to within 200 miles of the Pole.  The final phase of our mission is to find a thin area of ice and crash through to surface, in order to ascertain the type of damage we could expect to receive.  30% will be deemed acceptable (muttering from the crew).  Two civilian oceanographers will be travelling with us; they will carry out their own scientific programme on board.  We will be going over to the Dockyard this afternoon; a tug will come alongside to take us over, harbour stations 1430.  Modifications are to be made; upward looking echo sounders will be fitted in the fore and after casing and train lines will be forged and welded around the top of the fin and over the sonar dome to protect them when crashing through the ice.  This little lot will take two weeks.  Finally, although our mission is not secret, it is still classified, please do not discuss our mission ashore, that is all”.

During the next two weeks the Dockyard workmen were crawling all over the boat, cutting this, welding that, the electricians even welded a 1kw single bar electric fire to the pressure hull in each compartment.  

The mobile slop wagon (mobile clothing store) turned up on the jetty and we were all issued with Arctic clothing; big fur lined leather boots, kapok filled skiing style trousers, anoraks with fur lined hoods, white silk under gloves, leather fur lined over gloves and lastly a tin hat and policeman’s whistle.

The two weeks soon passed and finally we were on our way.  The duration of the mission was to be six weeks.  We came out of Portsmouth harbour, turned left at the outer spit buoy and proceeded along the South coast in passage routine, settling ourselves down to a long transit on the surface, all the way up to the Arctic Circle. 
We headed into the English Channel, through the Straits of Dover, turned left at Margate into the North Sea steering a course of 000, due North, all the way.

It was starting to get colder as we headed north towards Iceland’s East coast and the Arctic Circle. The sea state was moderate, force 5-6, so not uncomfortable.  

We had passed Iceland and were well into the Arctic Circle.  Between the Eastern seaboard of Greenland and Jan Mayen Island, the bridge lookout shouted, “Fishing trawler on the starboard beam, Captain to the bridge, Sir.”

The Captain arrived on the bridge, “What flag is he flying?”

“Norwegian Sir” says the OOW, Signalman to the bridge.”  The signalman now joined them. 

“Make to the fishing vessel, heave to, we are coming alongside”.

The aldis lantern flashed away dots and dashes; the message received, the fishing vessel hove to and we went alongside.

The temperature at this point was recorded at – 40 degrees.  Our crew on the bridge were fully kitted out for Arctic weather but the entire crew of fisherman on the trawler were topside working in their shirtsleeves, which was unbelievable to us.  They were cod fishing out of Narvic, real hard men, these Vikings.  

Under international maritime law a warship is permitted to interrogate a merchant ship as follows “What is your cargo, where are you going, where have you been?” As a result of this conversation, there was an exchange of goods.  For our part it was cartons of cigarettes and the odd bottle of whisky, for theirs it was fresh cod, loads of it.  During the next three or four days, we ate a lot of cod.

The boat was now off the North Eastern tip of Greenland still heading North into the Arctic Ocean and we began to sight ice fields dead ahead; transiting this mass of ice floes and small icebergs would be the first step on our passage to the pack ice.  We continued day and night until we came to the mountains of pack ice.

The mission was about to begin in earnest.  We opened up for diving, went to diving stations, dived the submarine and set the course the RAF had plotted for us.

  We were finally under the ice, we were on our way but above all we knew that our lives depended on our finding the polynyas.  Failure to do so would take us past the point of no return, with no possibility of being able to surface, no power, no air and the only choice to face aft, salute and think of England.  Under the ice, the upward looking echo sounders plot a graph of the depth of the ice.

We forged on, still heading North.  We found the first of the polynyas and surfaced, charged our batteries then dived again and carried on to the next one. We were heading for the last polynya before our final phase of the mission, but it wasn’t where it should be or we were steering the wrong course, it was an anxious moment we had to find it.

These polynyas are not every hundred metres but three or four days apart so we were getting very concerned.  We were well under the pack ice by now and the carbon dioxide was building up to a dangerous level.  We had to burn oxygen candles to make oxygen, breathing was becoming laboured, finding the final polynya, was the only imperative.  The off watch crew were ordered to turn in and sleep, using less oxygen in that state.  Everyone else watched and waited, the batteries were getting low; we were in serious trouble.

We carried out a revised search pattern and, at last, there it was.  We surfaced, opened the upper hatch and sucked in that beautiful cold Arctic air.  By this time we were about 200 hundred miles from the North Pole.  

The batteries were fully charged and once more we dived into the unknown, to carry out the final phase and our ultimate objective, to crash through the ice.  We needed to find a thinner section to break our way through. 

The oceanographers took over the periscope to look for a light patch in the ice ceiling which would indicate, by their calculations, an area above us of roughly one metre thickness. They found a suitable section and handed over to the Captain. 

“Diving stations, shut off for going deep, shut all watertight doors and bulkheads, shut off shallow water depth gauges, report compartments, put on tin helmets and, on impact, blow your whistles should your compartment suffer any damage or leaks. Take us down to 100ft No1” said the Captain.

“100ft Sir, roger” replied the 1st Lt.

At one hundred feet the Captain said “Stand by to surface, keep the boat trimmed level No 1, surface”,

“Aye aye, Sir, blow all main ballast, report depth”.

Foreplanesman “Aye aye Sir, fifty feet, forty feet, thirty feet”.

“All compartments brace for impact”.

C-R-A-S-H.  The boat shook and shuddered but achieved nothing.

“All compartment report damage control”.  

There being negative damage we waited for a couple of minutes, then repeated the operation.

“Open main vents, take her down to 200ft”, said the Captain.

At 200ft we were unsuccessful, then we tried again at 300ft with still no sign of breaking through.  Each time we blew main ballast we were using up valuable high pressure air, we had no option but to continue.  

Finally we went to four hundred feet; we had to do it this time.

“Four hundred feet, No 1”, said the Captain.  “This is it”.

The boat had taken a terrible battering but it never leaked.

“Aye aye, Sir, 400ft”. 

“Surface”.

Up we went again, hurtling towards the ice ceiling.  On impact, all we could hear was the deafening sound of the ice screaming and screeching down the side of the fin and casing but we were still going up.  The boat was on the surface; we were jubilant; we had done it.

We stayed on the surface all the next day, the batteries had to be recharged as did our supply of high-pressure air.  To release our tensions there had to be some leisure, which took the form of a game of football played on the ice.  We also had mini divisions, when the Captain presented a long service medal to one of the ERA’s.  The next day we dived again, plotting our way back through the ice fields the way we had come until we were clear and into open sea.  We still had to surface in the polynyas as before for air and to charge the batteries, then it was South and home. 

When we arrived in Dolphin we presented F.O.S.M. with a chunk of Arctic ice, which we had kept in our freezer. 

Author’s Note
At the time we did not know the reason for the mission but we were pioneering the way for nuclear submarines to transit under the North Pole.  The only measures taken for our protection in the event of disaster were the issue to every man on board of a tin helmet and a policeman’s whistle. 

The USS Nautilus had done a successful transit in 1958.  The first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnaught, launched in 1961 became the first British nuclear submarine to surface at the North Pole in 1971. At this time the cold war was in full flow and the quickest way the Americans could deliver a nuclear strike on the USSR was under the North Pole with a SSBN nuclear submarine, which is the same to this day.

The North Pole has no land mass and the depth of water under the Pole is in excess of 15000ft.  A problem that the nuclear submarines have, is longitudinal roulette.  If they transit directly under the Pole, any direction they steer will be South.  I believe they stay about 200 miles from the actual Pole and navigate along the lines of longitude.  To illustrate the vastness of the North Pole, take a room 20ft by 20ft by 12ft high where the ceiling represents the bottom of the pack ice, then suspend a matchstick 4 inches below the ceiling; this represents a nuclear submarine and the 4 inches represents 400ft deep.