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

By Derek Powell

You Only Live Twice – ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond’

Sean Connery, 007, is sent to Japan to investigate the hijacking of an American space craft by another, unidentified space craft.  He makes contact with ‘Tiger’ Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service.  Bond establishes that the mastermind behind the hijacking is Ernst Stavros Blofeld of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and he follows the trail to Blofeld’s HQ situated on a remote Japanese volcanic island.  Bond and Tanaka’s Ninjas attack the island; Blofeld escapes and initiates a self-destruct sequence.  Bond and Kissy Suzuki (Japanese Bond Girl), Tanaka and surviving Ninjas escape by swimming through a cave tunnel to the open sea before the island explodes.  A low flying RAF Hercules drops several ten man inflatable dinghies for the survivors.  Bond and Kissy climb into a dinghy and are just settling down for Bond to do what Bond does best, when suddenly, a submarine surfaces underneath them leaving them high and dry on the forcasing, rescue complete.

The film went on general release in late 1967.

Seven Months Earlier

We were alongside the jetty at Gibraltar, the Captain had recently received a signal from F.O.S.M. (Flag Officer Submarines) and was about to address the crew; the time was 10.15hrs on a Saturday morning.

‘Captain speaking, this morning I have received a signal from FOSM stating that we are to be downgraded from operational to non-operational status.  This means that for a period of one week commencing Monday next, we are no longer a warship.  We are to be seconded to a film company, who are currently shooting a James Bond film called ‘You Only Live Twice’.  Our brief for this film is that we will surface under an inflatable dinghy containing James Bond and his Japanese Bond girl to rescue him from a fate worse than death.  Sounds easy enough, but in order to achieve this feat we have to do a stern dive, which I will explain more fully when we reach the diving area on Monday.  One other thing, we will be taking the location Director and the Continuity girl to sea with us so watch your language and behave; Harbour Stations 0800 Monday, that is all.’

The following Monday at 0800 we sailed from Gibraltar and headed out to sea, with our visitors, travelling on the surface in passage routine. 

‘How long to the diving area Pilot?’ said the Captain, (Navigating Officers are referred to as Pilot).

‘Two hours, Sir.’

‘ Make sure we are in deep water, check the chart.’

‘Aye aye, Sir.’

The Captain next came into the control room to brief the crew.

‘Captain speaking, what we are about to do when we reach the diving area can be very dangerous.  For those of you who have never experienced a stern dive, just keep alert and do your job. There will be no rum issue until we return to harbour this evening; I want you all on the ball (mutterings from the crew).  As to the dive itself, we will be putting the boat into a situation for which it was never designed.  We will in fact reverse everything; for the purposes of the exercise, the foreplanes become the afterplanes.  The afterplanes which normally keep the trim of the boat in the horizontal plane, will for this exercise, keep the depth and vice versa for the foreplanes.  Normally the port and starboard electric main motors, at half speed ahead, push the boat forward under the water.  Thus, both motors running at full speed astern will suck the stern under the water.  We will open No.5 main vents first, so that the stern sinks first and open the rest of the vents in reverse numbered sequence and hopefully we should accomplish a nice controlled stern dive.  Diving stations in 30 minutes, that is all.’

30 minutes later, the First Lt issued his orders. 

‘All compartments, secure any loose gear.  Stand by for steep angles.  Diving stations! Diving stations!  Shut all watertight doors and bulkheads.  Shut off for going deep.’ 

Everyone moved silently to their stations, this was not a normal situation, we were extremely apprehensive.

There was a helicopter hovering above us to film the dive sequence.

The two visitors standing at the back of the control room were totally unaware of the level of tension all around them and could never have imagined what they were about to experience.  

KLAXON! KLAXON!

‘Open 5 main vents, full astern together, after planes hard to rise (every thing is reversed, rise to dive, dive to rise etc) 15 degrees stern down angle.’  
Both main motors were going full astern causing the boat to shake and shudder.

‘Open 4 main vents’
The sound of air rushing out of the ballast tanks and water rushing in was deafening.   

‘Open 3 main vents, call out depth and angle’
‘Seventy feet Sir, 18 degrees stern down angle, 20 degrees, 24 degrees, eighty feet Sir.’

The angle was getting steeper and steeper.  We had to hold on to anything we could; it was getting very difficult to stay upright.  Adrenalin was surging through us.  Above the noise and the shuddering someone was screaming, we couldn’t tell if it was the First Lt or the Continuity girl.  I have never experienced fear like that; everyone was hanging on to something to stay upright, it was a bad situation.

The Captain, seeing the danger in what was happening, ordered an immediate return to the surface.

‘Emergency surface; shut main vents; blow No5 main ballast.’

That action would make the stern positively buoyant, bringing it up rapidly to reduce the angle of the dive and return the boat to the horizontal again.

‘Half ahead together, foreplanes hard to rise.’  

And with that order we surfaced as normal and heaved an enormous communal sigh of relief.  

We continued all through the rest of that week four times a day; dive and surface, dive and surface until, finally, we had it down pat.  On the Thursday, we were able to dive with the inflatable on the casing and with the helicopter filming the effect.  That was a success; we got the thumbs up so the Friday dive would be the real thing with people in the dinghy.

All through the week the boys had been chatting up the Continuity girl, pumping her for information on Sean Connery.  Would he be coming to sea with us for the final shot?  Disappointingly he would not, as it turned out he was in Japan shooting the Japanese segment of the film.

Who then was going to be in the dinghy for Bond and Kissy? Bond had to be in shorts with no shirt, just a hairy chest!  Kissy has long black hair and would be wearing a white bikini.
 
The location Director started to scan the crew looking for a potential 007.  All the lads were preening themselves, desperate to be chosen for the part. Not that anyone in their right mind would pick any of them, unshaven, unwashed, all of them wearing “Pirate rig.”   No one wore uniform; we were allowed to wear whatever we liked.  I used to wear an American sailor’s jeans and shirt and later an old Lieutenant’s jacket, complete with gold rings.  The Captain was a picture of sartorial elegance in his Harris Tweed shooting jacket and green cords. 
So there we were, handsome boys auditioning for stardom, all wearing “Eau de Toilette Pour Homme by Diesel” only it was the real thing, the true smell of all submariners. 
The Director’s final choice (just like Britain’s Got Talent) was our Engineer Officer, who’s height and build closely suited the role of Bond.  But who was going to be Kissy?  Suddenly the boys didn’t want to know.  Luckily we were off Gibraltar so we sent a signal to HMS Rooke, the shore base, with the vital statistics, asking for a WREN to volunteer for the role and along came Petty Officer WREN Jones.

On the day of the final shoot, PO WREN Jones came aboard, wardrobe gave her a long black wig and a white bikini (Things were looking up for us).  Off we went again to the diving area, the dinghy was placed on the forecasing, the helicopter was on station we were ready to go.  The Engineer Officer stripped off to his shorts, PO Jones changed in the Captain’s cabin and they both mustered in the control room accompanied by wolf whistles. They climbed up the conning tower to the bridge followed by lewd and ribald comments from the crew.

All was finally in place and we were ready to film.
  	
‘Camera rolling; action’ yelled the Director through a loud hailer.  

The Captain ordered the bridge cleared and we dived astern, leaving the dinghy, Bond and Kissy alone at sea.  In the film, it cut to a close up of Sean Connery and Kissy alone in the dinghy, which was filmed in Japan.

When we surfaced, the helicopter radioed that it had all been successful. ‘That’s a wrap.’ 

We shut off from diving and proceeded back to Gibraltar where we disembarked the film people and PO Jones. 

The captain sent a signal to FOSM.

‘Tell M Bond is safe, mission completed’.

We received a signal in return from FOSM.

 ‘Welcome back, re-join the fleet.”

We were operational again.

What did we get out of this?  Apart from premature aging, we were sent our very own 16mm copy of the film “You Only Live Twice.”  The actual time the submarine is shown in the film is between 5-10 seconds but for us it had been seven days of extreme stress. The submarine sequence was screened backwards to show the submarine surfacing under the dinghy.
  
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Supplement by Philip Ouvry living near Perpignan Novenber, 2016

The tale of the submarine based in Gibraltar being used for scenes from the James Bond Movie "You only live twice" was also relevant.   Earlier on the day of filming the final excerpts we had an exercise at sea about twenty miles east of Gibraltar.    At that time, February 1967, I was serving as the Air Weapons Officer on HMS HERMES.  The exercise involved several Wessex Mark 3 anti-submarine helicopters, two or three frigates, and one submarine which the helicopters and frigates had to locate and attack.   I was skippering the Torpedo Recovery Vessel, a fairly ancient harbour launch which we had borrowed from the dockyard.   I had brought with me a surface-to-air radio, a surface-to-surface radio and an underwater telephone.   We were in position, stationary, waiting for the action to start - nothing in sight.   The underwater telephone - how does that work?   I lowered the transponder over the side.   "Charlie Bravo One.   This is Zulu Alpha Three.  How do you hear me?  Over."  I spoke into the microphone.   "This is Charlie Bravo One.   Loud and clear.  How me?" was the immediate reply!   Looking over the side we could see the shape of the submarine sitting directly beneath us!   Being impatient to start I then called up one of the helicopters who were in the distance dunking their sonars:   "I seem to have a very big fish directly beneath me."   Suddenly there were ships and helicopters everywhere.   An anti-submarine torpedo (with a practice homing head) was dropped.   Then suddenly thirty yards on our starboard side the bows of the submarine (curiously marked M1 for the filming later in the day) burst out of the sea.   "Zulu Alpha Three, this is Charlie Bravo One.   Will you remove your torpedo from my conning tower."   The homing head was supposed to steer off at the last minute to avoid collision!     Exercise complete - we were on our way back to Gib when we met an RAF Air-Sea Rescue Vessel with a film crew coming out for the filming.   But when we looked ahead Gib was entirely shrouded in mist.   Fortunately, with the surface-to-surface radio and the participation of one of the frigates we were able to get a Pigeons (course-to-steer and time of arrival) for Europa Point.
The comments on doing a reverse crash dive in a submarine were interesting.   In 1975 I was the Development Project Officer for the Sea Harrier.   We were discussing the possibility of air-to-air combat.   As a Harrier lands, it slows right down and then vectors the jet thrust down ready for a vertical landing.   If a Harrier was being chased at top speed by another aircraft and it then vectored its jets into the landing mode, what would happen?   The chase aircraft would shoot past and you could then fire a missile up his backside.   This viffing (Vectoring In Forward Flight) concept was effectively employed over the Falklands in 1982.