BBC 1980s Submarine documentary Part3 Polaris

now [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] good morning [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] commander mike hawke has come to meet his submarine [Music] [Music] for the last two months hms repulse has been hidden from the world under the sea on polaris patrol well that's true [Music] for the next six weeks repulse will be checked tested maintained painted and stored then she will leave the clyde submarine base at faslane and hawk will take her back to sea for another patrol repulse is one of britain's four polaris submarines there are seldom more than one of them on patrol at once so for eight weeks at a time repulse and its nuclear missiles can represent the sum total of the nation's independent deterrent [Music] unlike any other ship in the royal navy each polaris submarine has two captains and two complete crews who change over immediately after each patrol this double crew system means the submarine can be kept at sea for as much of the year as possible without overstressing the men who must spend eight weeks at a time shut inside this cramped world we've had the most extraordinarily good control actually which is at no time but i really thought to myself we've got a problem here and certainly in the last two or three days i've had the opportunity to throw her out quite a lot and everything works she flies extremely well repulse is huge longer than wembley football pitch but so much space is taken up with weapons and machinery but it's still a squeeze for the 160 strong crew for the newcomer it's a daunting maze there's enough room though for some of the older naval traditions bring the silver tankers the fresh crew checks everything during the changeover even whether the silver collection in the chin supposed wardroom is still all there anyway would you like a gin and tonic sir no i will go on thank you very much for hospitality but i will get one you're going to be wearing that i am i i'm not because i haven't got one here mine's gone up in board i'll be formal and you can relax with along with my teddy bear yeah oh absolutely teddy bear under the arms okay all right well let's provide at last the changeover is finished now hawk can take command of the most powerful ship in the royal navy for the new crew it's a difficult decision to make once the submarine leaves for patrol they're stuck under water for at least eight weeks so most decide not to be told of any domestic tragedy until the end of the patrol the frustration of knowing that a child had died for instance yet not being able to return home could drive a man insane at naval headquarters in london the machinery for that next patrol slips quietly into motion all submarines are shrouded in secrecy but polaris submarines are especially carefully protected orders are flown by special courier to fazlane mike hawk is the only person on the submarine allowed to read them well the classification of them obviously for the security of the country is chosen to ensure that only those who really do need to know the information that's in them are the people who actually see those orders is a very restricted number obviously they contain the instructions to me from my commander-in-chief and what he wishes me to do where he intends that i should go to and when i shall return at the end of my time and that information is uh for such security classification that it needs to become shield orders to me to my eyes only nestling under the 16 black hatches are the nuclear missiles that create the need for this special secrecy each has a range of 2500 miles and multiple warheads 48 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed hiroshima so repulse has awesome firepower but it must remain invisible when it's on patrol if the soviet union could find out where it was by tracking the submarine for instance when it leaves fastlane it will be worthless as a deterrent so everything about repulse is top secret when it leaves when it returns where it goes what it does when people ask you things you know people you make on trains and all that at home they ask you things you say um sorry i can't say anything about that they think you've been a bit petty and you feel a bit i know he thinks i'm being stupid but it's best not saying nothing you might think you're just talking about something that's been in the paper and you know you end up blotting off a couple of you know extra adding dicks like you know which you know i can drop you in it yeah they can put little bits together and if you've got a thousand little bits it makes one you know one big bit and that's how that's the way they work you hear stories about these these women getting sailors yeah in the beds all this pillow talk i've never had one myself still waiting polaris submarines are the only ones whose crew includes a qualified doctor illness must not be allowed to force the submarine to surface and reveal its position whilst on patrol surgeon lieutenant richard garth can deal with broken bones and would even do minor operations on patrol like for appendicitis but in these less than ideal conditions he would normally use drugs to postpone the operation until the submarines return we don't have a proper operating theatre we have a makeshift operating theater which is usually rigged in the senior rates mess the atmosphere therefore won't be as sterile as is in a normal operating theater the chances of infection are that much greater uh we also have the problems of one doctor having to be both anesthetist and doctor it would really have to be done under local anaesthetic which would make it an unpleasant procedure and it can be a difficult operation anyway and should things go wrong there is no backup so if someone became too ill for the doctor to treat would hawk abort the patrol and leave britain without its deterrent well i'm afraid i'm going to have to dodge that question and say that i can't answer it there are rules laid down for me to react to certain conditions i'm afraid i must say no more than that should someone die we would have to keep their body until we returned to fazlane the place we would store it would probably be the deep freeze so food would have to be moved to make way and once we got alongside the body could be taken off for postmortem examination it's bigger actually it's there are now three weeks to go before patrol today is family's day it's amazing to think what they can get in it [Music] give a good tight grip when you go down the ladder just slope away a bit and then it goes the other way for some it will be their first glimpse inside a submarine for most their first experience of diving i don't know what it's going to feel like if it's going to feel like you're going up in a plane but you're going down whether everything's going to sort of go down to the back or up to the front or whichever way it goes down okay would you like to pass your bag down take your bag out of the way would you like to see the rs so he knows who's on board right quite looking forward to it really i'm not scared but it's just this that puts me off [Music] good morning good morning everybody welcome aboard repulse for this family's day you must welcome control and have a look through the periscope as long as while you're in the control room you keep the noise level down to an absolute middle engine on a special bearing you know say three four zero three three zero and all you're going to do is put on here so when you fire a missile that you want them to chewing this on it yeah so when you fly that water coming back into the blow water out because itself back up to a level those two squares [Music] no i was surprised at the actual size of the submarine the overall size is so large but so much of the space inside it has taken up with their machinery the very tiny space they have for showers and toilets very little privacy of their own very small cabins and what have you that would be the worst thing for me if i had to spend eight weeks on board [Music] on the top all right everybody in the control room please are going to have your attention for a second while we're diving i'll be very grateful of all of you kept absolute silence except for the proper reports coming through from the proper people once we're safely underwater okay the chat can start again now open one two three main bins [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] 68 feet standby bearings [Music] i don't think it's as experienced as really no it's a very slight sensation going down sue's husbands just said to us i'm the last person that saw the light of day just now and in actual fact it must feel awfully like that when they go that's right it's a long time i think you're looking at the periscope seeing daylight yes yes if only it's you know just the horizon to see oh i'd hate to be shut up i think for yes it was that long [Music] one afternoon's okay but uh i think eight weeks a long time it's a long time spend spending eight weeks at a time underwater can become a bit much i don't like the the cramped conditions i don't like living in such close proximity to everybody else and the lack of privacy living in a small space with 160 other people means you can never actually get away from people radio operator andy lucas has managed to get away he will never go to sea on repulse or any other submarine again oh lucas going on draft one girl going to mercury yeah yeah when i joined submarines it was a whole new atmosphere and an adventure it was something different an experience not many people know about or think about and i was proud to be able to say look at me i'm going on submarines and i'm you know i'm different from you like virtually and when i got on a submarine it was well it was certainly different than everything i haven't got a base pass because i'm leaving the base for the last time thank you things worried me noises when i first joined noises that you weren't accustomed to some people just didn't bother about it just turned over went back to sleep if you're in bed but not me i used to sometimes even get up and check things you know the tower leads up to the bridge the conning towers most people call it and people had to go up and clean it well a person because it's only big enough for one and i was the one my cleaning station was the tower and you can hear the water sometimes going across and it's not to my mind there was never a lot between me and that water and uh it did it sometimes void here you know and you'd see places where bits of water were coming in a coughing dream is how most people would imagine what it's like to be buried alive in one instance i remember i was lying in my bunk space and there's not a lot of room the curtains were shut and it is pitch black totally pitch dark one of the lads was having a wash and he let his hand off the tab rather fast and there was a thud and i turned around and saw a flash of light at the top of the curtains and that to me in the state it was in just half and half sleep half away it was a steel sheet coming down and i panicked then i mean it was sheer terror really a lot of people had coughing dreams on board but i used to get well four or five a week at first i tried to see the captain my divisional officer my captain about getting off submarines but i was told there's no way that i can go off something to be let off without doing my time on them and um well i had three years left to do on submarines and the captain wasn't prepared to let me go after the submarine service i dug a little deeper and the doctor dug a little deeper and we found that he was finding that the effect and of living in the submarine was bearing down on him so we had him examined by one of the naval psychiatrists who said that yes he had a problem and he was really not fit for service in submarines he was such a good lad that in fact he's gone back to general service as opposed to going outside and leaving the navy all together claustrophobia does in fact occur very rarely on submarines only two cases in the past three years it's sometimes tried as a method of escape by those who discover they dislike the way of life but the twenty percent extra pay all submariners receive tends to discourage a return to surface ships [Music] patrol is now only a few days away although the actual date is still a secret repulse has interrupted its working up shuttle for a night at anchor off the small town of roxy it's the crew's last opportunity to savor some of the pleasures that'll be missing on patrol i have a pious hope that this cooling water you can see bubbling out on the side there which is the cooling water from the condensers will attract the fish and being that much warmer than the background it's a pious hope i might i might get something but um i doubt it no my luck fishing is a hobby i enjoy but not one i'm very successful in [Music] [Music] that's crazy everyone sitting here tonight has got probably 24 hours at home if they're lucky with their wives families girlfriends and those last 24 hours at home hard work because you know that in 24 then it's 20 30 then it's 22 hours you've got to be taking that black peg to see and suddenly that time's upon you when you've got to say goodbye and know that no matter what you aren't going to see anything for two months i haven't sealed on it i've been on the submarine it's claustrophobic so you can see it i couldn't live on it frightens me today and it's an evil looking thing i think i know he's good at his job i know he doesn't like going away he's he's been on the boat a long time and i think that's basically the reason why but it's his job [Music] is [Music] two days to go stores include a ton and a half of beef a mile of sausages 60 feature films and 1 500 gallons of beer all 160 of repulsive crew are back from leave although for one the temptations of rothsy proved irresistible westward so off caps westward sir did have yourself without leave from zero seven zero zero to zero eight five zero namely one hour 50 minutes on the 27th of july 1983. westbrook do you understand the charge so how's the accused police did earlier yes at my table when i investigated the case he pleaded guilty does that please still stand westwood yes sir have you anything you wish to tell me about the something i just missed you missed the boat division also have you anything you wish to say in mitigation uh not so much mitigation so but uh westwood has worked very hard in the nav center it's doing very well and he's missing the liberty but it seemed rather out of character and came as rather surprising when did you join the navy november 87th so this is your first offense since joining the navy while taking that into consideration westwood also taking into consideration that you pleaded guilty and also the fact that the submarine was under sailing orders i find you 35 pounds fine 35 pounds coxswain how many payloads lisa two 35 pounds recovered over two months in paydays on caps about turn carry on that's all the questions thank you [Music] so [Music] i need to get out is one of security get out and get uh underwater and away to reduce the amount of chance of anybody observing our performance who is amongst all these houses around us who is in that yacht that sails past i don't know one's got to assume there's someone main access shirt [Music] to support the government's deterrent policy and take hms repulse away into the oceans of the world and disappear totally disappear [Music] we all listen out for information being passed to us but remain totally silent and totally lost to the rest of the world my aim is to spend the time at sea undetected by anybody else whether it be one of our own countries ships or someone else's it doesn't matter who they are i remain [Music] undetected so the missile compartment of hms repulse one of britain's four polaris submarines these 16 nuclear missiles are britain's independent deterrent patrol for a pulse means two months at walking pace the submarine moves so slowly because it must make as little noise as possible noise which might give away its position to listening ships or submarines to maintain its value as a deterrent repulse must try and remain completely undetected so it won't surface for the entire patrol but will hide deep in the anonymous wastes of the world's oceans [Music] oh it's all very quiet if you fish and whale no shipping contacts at all okay fine the submarine tows a wireless aerial which floats to the surface and picks up orders from naval headquarters in london but repulsive captain commander mike hawk should not transmit a single wireless message during patrol it could give away the submarine's position where repulse goes on patrol is a closely guarded secret even to most of its 160 strong crew the navigation center where the submarine's position is displayed is out of bounds to all but a dozen men just in case any unauthorized person should enter by accident or by design the charts are deliberately kept upside down but the truth is that most of the crew don't care which ocean they're in their only reality is the artificial limbo of this crowded steel grey world for a submarine it's a reasonably comfortable world there are duty-free cigarettes and beer up-to-date feature films every day and every night and plenty to eat the nuclear power plant which drives the submarine also distills enough fresh water for endless hot showers and the atmosphere is constantly scrubbed clean although aerosols like shaving foam are forbidden their gases might build up over the weeks but when a patrol's definition of success is that nothing happens for eight weeks the enemy is not the soviet union but boredom you gotta have something to take your mind off it so you're there and there's nothing really happening basically it's just helped the patrol go by so they get really boring after a while just plodding about doing the same thing day in day out time drags because if you've got a movie which you say so you've seen before there's nothing else to do and if you don't like reading a lot of books from that and you just sit around doing nothing and that's when you start drifting away thinking about life at home and what you're missing at home it's just the way i like that you come to accept you miss your home all the while you know you'll be a fool if you didn't say you didn't no you you miss your home your family your girlfriend fiance wife or whatever you're missing you know you're always thinking of them that's working in the galley we see a lot because we've got everybody coming through the counter you know and we see every day the grumpy ones you know until they settle down like and then come about week five they start getting a little bit edgy like because they're all hacked offline and they've all done enough at sea like and uh going about week six and they're starting to sort of start to happen and they'll start thinking about home and everybody goes in here what we call a glaze we stand in the galley and watch them we'll sit there and eat half the meal then they'll we'll just stare at the bulkhead they're like you know we know what they're thinking like they're just thinking about getting back in on dead funny i mean they'll sit there and they'll look at this bulkhead for about 10 20 minutes like you know now go back and realize that the scrunch freezing i think oh my god you know i could be home now sitting there having a sunday dinner we're actually sitting on board here 100 foot under the water you didn't you know god knows where you are miles from anywhere [Applause] people will turn around you know for god's sake cheer up you know you you got to cheer up yourself you know you've got to be cheerful you've just got to look you just got to knuckle down to it and make it you've got to make it 250 records 250. anyone we find three pounds because it's a cheap horse after already you've been won once come on gentlemen three pounds three pound fifty what was that 350. any advance on three four four pound full pound come on still a cheap horse four band 450 advanced [Applause] [Music] come on [Applause] you escape from the responsibilities of the bills the fact that the roof may be peeling off from the last scale another 300 pound bill but we won't worry about that because i ain't got to worry about it let the wife worry about it you accept it you really don't want to hear about it so we're very selfish really you know leaving everything for them today [Applause] you take so much for granted you don't realize how much till they're gone just being here and talking to him discussing the problems and when they're not here you worry about it whereas if he was here i could talk about it and he could say oh that's nothing to worry about the first few days are not too good they're pretty bad because you're missing them but then after that you sort of set onto a routine and just get on with it like many wives of polaris submariners dawn saunders has had to move from her native england to start a new life on the bleak west coast of scotland where repulse is based i started work in the food shop because of john growing away and with the children birth being at school my housework's done by half past nine and i just couldn't sit and do nothing we've got an awful lot of customers and they're so friendly you get to know them know their ways what they like and what they don't like and a lot of the customers will only deal with me and i think that's fantastic that's lovely juliet hawk is the wife of repulse's captain they met when she was around come on girl there's certainly a pattern to the way our time passes when he's away at first it takes a bit of time to settle and i think we're all a bit sad um and then we brighten up a bit then after that uh certainly halfway through the patrol i think we all feel fairly low it is a lonely time but i do have quite a lot that keeps me busy i have three children um which inevitably keeps you busy i also do quite a lot of outside things i'm on a thing called the children's panel which is um rather special to scotland rather like being a jp on the children's bench in england that i find very interesting and it gives me something else and somebody else to think about other people with problems i'm on the local lifeboat lady skilled which honestly keeps me quite busy gently i think one of the worst weeks i've had was getting the two girls back to boarding school because um the big one had been away for two terms but katie the nine-year-old hadn't been before and uh she found it pretty awful and i did too although neither of us got upset um they're at school down in dorset which is a long way from here it's a long journey we set out very early in the morning it took me two days to take them there drop them and come back again and i would really have loved to have had mike here when i got back um that that was quite difficult but they're both very happy where they are but it's a long way from home being the captain's wife i think sometimes can be slightly lonely because people are slightly apprehensive of you i don't go out very much in the evenings because i don't like going out without mike and i tend to listen to music a lot sit by the farm which is great company in fact i like it quite often when i don't really need to because i enjoy it i watch the television and i do a lot of sewing i generally just sit on my own oh very glib with me to say it's no problem it's part of balance of being enabled oscar to me i've grown up with it over the years and it's uh yes it is uh it is a very sad moment i think it's more sad for me when i see the sadness in my children's faces than it is for myself personally they're always disappointed to see you go away they're always thrilled about when you get back so that makes up for it so on the whole it really is no major problem it's one that i've grown up with and when i accept you when i joined the navy and then got married once a week every member of repulsive crew is entitled to receive one personal message from someone in his family these family grams are just 40 words long and must be a skillful combination of news and reassurance hawk commander tonsils adenoids out rachel fine just off to see her trunk gone heavy storm weekend house fine katie's first riding lesson great success sam delighted to be back at school no problems here all miss you love jules grams are difficult to write i don't think that 40 words is enough to tell mike perhaps all that i want to tell him i actually find 40 words very difficult to write you have to be very careful what you put i wouldn't want to put anything in that would worry him although mike and i do to i do tell him everything that happens and because we have that agreement so that he doesn't think he's going to come back to anything serious when he comes home if anything had gone wrong with rachel having her tonsils out i wanted to wait and tell him that i knew they were successfully out before i wrote a family gram that he knows that it's all over and done with family grams are a strictly one-way communication they can be a mixed blessing wives must remember not to include worrying news about their families it might prey on their husbands imagination if they do let any slip through the navy will probably censor it out before the family gram is sent i can't tell them that the children are real because they'd worry and they wouldn't send it anyway um or any bad news i can't i can't tell him about that um i try and keep it light and um you can't be lovey-dovey at all why not but i don't like being lovely in public especially when it's read to you know um it's read out and other people read it before it's sent and to try and tell him everything that's happened and what you're doing and the children are well it's pretty awkward because you want to tell him so much and you've got to be careful what you write you've got to cut out the ends and the butts and narrow it down saunders m-e-m-n-one no domestic disasters this week except mower blew up spacers found in pocket too late dad got to mower first long looks nice roses died in amazement having birthday party with 16 assorted brats big headache love dawn hello son hope you're getting on well all the family miss you muffy's okay went to visit front and bob the other day brandon got a swimming award see you soon love mum and dad jeff collin had a good holiday in sky weather was good dad's nose is peeling haha letter came from solista about your flat [ __ ] on straight again john thorned she's feign lots of love mom and dad darling the weather's fine went over to maggie's last weekend the kids are all right and so am i we're all missing you car going in for a service next week see you soon love joe family grounds are important to me because it gives me this feeling that out there we're not forgotten when we're at sea you know and civilization we're not forgotten and there's always someone out there thinking about it all the time you just need them they're just otherwise you crack up in this sort of this sort of atmosphere now yeah you're stuck in this metal tin you still need you need contact we do look forward to getting each week and you know if they're late you tend to start you know wondering all sorts of things no problem you know it doesn't matter what she hasn't done anything you know but you start wondering anything and everything i know he worries that we're all okay but i know he doesn't worry what i'm gonna do or that i'm not gonna be here when he comes home um i know he trusts me completely and he knows that i'll always be here waiting for him wireless office the signal has arrived from london to fire repulsive 16 polaris missiles everyone knows it's only an exercise but the elaborate procedure is still recorded for analysis later mike reeves is repulsive senior weapons officer the two safes contain the submarine's codebooks they will show whether the firing signal is authentic reeves is one of only two men who know the combination to this outer safe repulse is second in command and the captain himself are the only two people who know the inner saves combination so no one person can verify the signal and start the firing sequence day 27 page page 5. authentication authenticates time zero eight four zero zero eight both men put their signature on the firing signal to show that it's authentic let's go see the captions [Music] standard launch that thunder launcher sir will bring the submarine to complete readiness in the missile control room there's another safe access is limited to reeves and one other officer a truncheon hangs ready to use on any unauthorized member of the crew who tampers with the lock it's a very special safe it contains the trigger that reeves will use to fire each of the missiles as the target information is fed into the computer the power and guidance systems of each missile are checked for the last time standby start right now correct velocity correct angle stop engine stop engine start hovering start hovering start hovering hover hole valve open hovering in auto computer one so control hovering in auto computer one no shifts at one reset sir all missiles spinning no defects no dude there's one ship no shift one reset print answer verified printouts verified roger captain's the missiles are primed and targeted the submarine is motionless in the water all that reefs requires is the final authority roger captaincy weapon system in one sq thank you the weapons also have migrations fire you have permission to fire [Music] captain's permission to fire initiate fire 10 channel 1 missiles will be fired individually in a predetermined order each missile has multiple warheads 48 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed hiroshima [Music] 14. to carry the nation's deterrent is an extremely irresponsible job uh must be taken terribly seriously and i leave that at that stage from my own point of view i would be being very silly if i didn't believe in it doing the job i'm doing now but my own personal views of actual the morality of the deterrent or the wisdom of the deterrent i'm afraid i keep personally to myself um i very seldom discuss it with anybody other than my own immediate family and do you ever or does it ever keep you awake at night when you're on patrol not at all not at all no not one moment so it doesn't weigh on your mind no it does not while we're actually in the process of the exercise um we look at it i don't think we think about it then because we're part of the mechanical side of the machine and we look at it really as a straightforward engineering exercise to uh to make the machine that we look after work because we are all part of the overall machine and that's i'm sure how it would be on the day the time i do think about it from time to time i don't think you should dwell on it too much i don't think anybody should draw on it too much but obviously we're we've got uh something here that's quite dreadful but and it's unthinkable to use it but at the end of the day that's what we're here to do and that's what we would do probably if we got the firing signal and they were all discharged nobody would really hesitate to do that but they would think about it afterwards i don't think anybody would think about the consequences now if we got a firing signal yeah when a firing signal arrives on patrol i mean it's just automatic i mean they sound the alarm and everybody just goes and does their job i mean for all we know it might not be an exercise and i mean usually they say for exercise first missile away i mean they might not save for exercise this time and it's just a job and i mean a few minutes later they're all gone and then i think then you'd sit down and start thinking about it and then you sort of say well what we were here for we obviously failed to do we've seen a few films about what would happen if we did use them or if they used theirs and what we we've seen you know you you can't imagine the outcome of it there's never been a war like that before so you've been on such a grand skill that you couldn't imagine you couldn't appreciate the extent of it i don't think i tend not to think deeply about it too much if you did i think you probably wouldn't be here anyway if you had that sort of attitude they you tend to be um not unstable but not the sort of background that they really want they look for people probably that don't take it too seriously as um as a warlike situation more as as a deterrent just something to to show off well i think it's a pretty frightening thought actually that uh you could surface four or five weeks later and there's absolutely nothing left um it's it's one of them things we try not to think about but the reason we're doing it is to protect our families and friends at home and when you think about it that we're we've done ad part of it but it's still done us no good because there'll be nothing left at home a catch-22 situation [Music] repulse has returned from its silent patrol and one surface surface fully open [Music] the submarine's crew must soon adjust to the outside world sir on the surface open up when they left it was in the bright sun of midsummer they've returned to the damp morning of a scottish autumn their senses will soon be bombarded with unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells [Music] home [Music] come on just like the difference between beer and white you know you get used to one thing and then you get something totally different well unless you've really experienced it it's hard really to put it into words it's a good smell definitely a good smell after that uh after you've lived with uh all the men for weeks on end it's definitely a good smell uh and the chief stoker's wife yes so close you

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Length: 56min 44sec (3404 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020