HMS Vengeance (S31): Vanguard Class Submarine | Inside Britain’s Secret Nuclear Submarine | Spark

[Music] i'm just about to head through the gates of one of britain's most secret military establishments fast lane on the west coast of scotland this is britain's royal navy submarine base and usually it would be impossible for me to get in here especially with a television camera but today is different i've been vetted to the highest level and i've had to sign the official secrets act because behind this fence is britain's most secret and most powerful weapon of war security at faz lane is tight because this is the home of britain's nuclear submarine fleet and our trident nuclear missiles welcome to my secure operational base in the uk we operate from here a nuclear deterrent for nato and uk and her allies and if you've got that level of sophistication technology and power in one place you've really got to protect it and protect the knowledge that goes with it over six and a half thousand people work here at the base but access to the nuclear submarines is highly controlled after months of discussions i've been given permission to film on board one of the uk's trident submarines [Music] so what happens now for me exactly rob you're going to join hms vengeance going through the last of her training sessions before at sea but before we get there we've got to go into the security so i'm going to tell you to cut the camera now because you can't film inside the security all right sorry yeah [Music] some hours later i'm being taken out into the irish sea which is where i'll transfer to hms vengeance i don't know where we're heading i don't know how long i'm heading out for here i feel nervous i don't mind if this it's there right there that is hms vengeance [Music] unbelievable oh my god just look at the size of it [Music] hms vengeance is 150 meters long and weighs 15 000 tons she's one of four vanguard class submarines yeah if you're happy thank you in just a few days hms vengeance will begin her patrol where she takes over as the uk's nuclear deterrent she'll disappear deep into the ocean in case our nuclear missiles are ever called upon it's not heavy like it's just combusted happy to go down yeah thank you all right this is it then there is no turning back now last breaths of fresh air god for four days and nights i'll be living with the crew on the final leg of their undersea preparations before they head off on their tour of duty okay these nice decks i've already been told that i won't see everything so much on this boat is classified as top secrets captain darren mason is in charge of hms vengeance it's his first time in command of a trident submarine you must be rob hello oh come on in the water fantastic welcome to the submarine firstly thank you very much having you on board now it's fantastic and um well welcome to hrs vengeance so what i thought we'd do is just show you around the submarine in a bit but uh first things first to show you where we control the submarine from effects you're known as the control room yeah thank you very much what should i call you what should i refer to uh most of my ship's company just address me as captain i will call you captain that'd be really wrong i will call you rob please do that's all i'm known by so this is the control room it's effectively the nerve center of the submarine yes on the left hand side this is where all the information gets fed into these terminals and then the team in front of you use their knowledge their wisdom and their experience to take that information to draw me effectively a picture of what's going on outside or without physically seeing it it's very stable on board it doesn't i don't know we don't feel like we're rocking around we are gently moving i seem to remember through the water absolutely we're going to about walking pace at the moment so uh we're not going to outrun anyone at the moment she can go quite fast if she needs to but uh the faster we go the more risk of detection exists the whole idea the whole credibility of the nuclear terrorism is stealth and slowly slowly catching monkey not hailed [Music] despite all the kind of screens and lights and flashing lights going on around here it was quite dark inside yes so the only real place you're ever going to see any daylight i'm afraid is up on the fin which is uh the conning position where we navigate when we're on the surface so if we can do it there now and i'll i'll show you some fresh air perhaps the last time for a little while that sounds like an invitation i can't refuse the conning tower is the highest point on a submarine to get there i need to climb the longest ladder on board so i'm up for probably one of the most unique views i'll ever have in my life but it's straight up oh god it's mild as well ah knees michael captain you've brought me up to what is almost the highest point on the boat here is i mean it's an opportunity well for me anyway to get a bit of a glimpse of the scale of this boat it stretches back so far it's hard to appreciate just how big this boat is well absolutely she is undoubtedly akin to an iceberg is a fantastic weapon system she's a fantastic submarine she's also home to us all yeah she looks after us feeds us keeps us watered and breathing safely hms vengeance is home to over 160 submariners who work endless shift patterns of six hours on six hours off but because of the secrecy of their mission few people on board will ever know the details how long do you think you're going to be away from your family on this particular mission i'll be away a while a while we can't be any more specific than that no no no okay that's that and do you know where you're going to be heading off to so somewhere down that direction maybe left or maybe right but uh i know where i'm going very few people know where i'm going and that is obviously not a liberty to be discussed especially to your viewers i can continue this this uh this line of question i don't think i'm going to get any further than the uh the generals oh yeah probably not my team have a vague idea where we might be and over time that becomes more and more vague and that is a whole principle of deterrent that only a very few people know where it is therefore our security and our stealth is absolute [Music] dooley a foreign warship has been spotted approaching our location and it's heading right for us hms vengeance must now get underwater fast there's more [ __ ] heading towards us and i think they're going to dive sooner than was originally planned get out the way cannot be found not be seen i've been given unprecedented access to hms vengeance one of the royal navy's four trident submarines but moments after coming on board a foreign warship has been spotted heading straight towards us the executive officer is vengeance's second in command he wants to dive the boat this is real this is genuine this isn't a drill or anything this is a foreign ship not there that there is a risk we would be spotted absolutely and we don't want to be spotted on the surface we want to be underneath the water where we can track her rather than she attracts us we're not good on the surface where we are good it's underneath the waves where we can be quiet we'll be stealth the captain gives the order navigator diving brief depth of water 130 meters yeah dive in submarine control like driving now what diving down diving now diving now [Music] a submarine the size of hms vengeance can take up to 10 minutes to completely submerge [Music] with the foreign warship that was nearby is that a concern at all my objective in command of atrium's vengeance is to remain undetected at all times anything that's not me is not necessarily friendly it could be a yacht it could be a ferry it could be a warship any asset belonging to any country i would try and avoid it where's target setup on your contact classified merchant vessel you have left-handed all right fellas you can see he's getting closer hms vengeance is now fully underwater away from the prying eyes of the foreign warship and i can get my first chance to properly look around [Music] it's absolutely amazing there's four decks on board as far as i know anyway thank you you can see all the pipes and cables and tubes all around you all the time this is a highly complex machine i've not been on board very long at all and first impressions kind of reminds me of the international space station all these pipes and cables and tubes and panels all doing stuff that's obviously deeply complex but the reality is that all of this very nearly never happened because just over a hundred years ago submarines weren't taken seriously at all in the early 20th century britain had the largest navy the world had ever seen hundreds of ships maintained an empire that stretched from australia to canada [Music] but the one thing the navy had little faith in was submarines [Music] they were notoriously dangerous and could only stay underwater for a few minutes at a time this is holland one the royal navy's first ever submarine she was built in barrow infernus in and measures just 20 meters in length you could fit around 150 holland ones inside hms vengeance the eight crew could barely stand and would be enveloped by exhaust fumes from the petrol engine they couldn't stay underwater for long or they'd suffocate and the risk of an explosion was high the royal navy decided that compared with their massive surface ships submarines weren't worth the effort but other navies were less skeptical germany believed that stealthy subs could play a pivotal part in war they called their submarines under sea boats u-boats they were faster quieter and safer than anything britain had tried two weeks into the first world war the germans put them to use a lone u-boat stalked british ships into the firth of fourth it launched a single torpedo at a british ship sinking her and killing over 250 of her crew suddenly the submarine had become a genuine weapon of war [Music] hms vengeance has the spearfish torpedo system with a range some 20 times greater than the one that caused so much destruction over a hundred years ago and with much more sophisticated technology tell me a bit more about these torpedoes or what would you use them for so we would use these against submarine targets and chip surface targets they're designed so they can be guided from the submarine in layman's terms how big a bag would these torpedoes make a big enough bang to sink a ship and so there's about 300 kilograms of explosives in it okay so that is enough to see why some of the biggest warships uh yeah there's two different methods that we can use for that were they so one is where we would uh it would just basically slam into the side of a target and the other is where it would explode underneath and it would cause an air bubble break the back of the ship and basically snap it in half sink but torpedoes are only one of the reasons modern submarines are now so powerful [Music] their ability to see underwater has revolutionized their effectiveness it's called sonar now what is sonar how does it work okay sonar is basically the eyes and he is of the submarine and it works by hydrophones that are set up in various locations around the submarine and we are listening to a vessel a merchandise fishing vessel warship swimming or whatever it is out there and that noise is transmitting from that vessel onto our hydrophones putting onto our screen how do you identify what that sound is that's merchant vessel okay like a diesel engine rubble on it and you'll sometimes be able to hear the propeller moving when you come to the warships imagine like licking your finger then rub it around the edge of a wine glass like wine yourself oh what a hot much higher pitch that's a real high-pitched and how far away can you actually listen how far away can you build up a picture of what else is out there but depending on what body of water and if you're in deep water could certainly go up to 100 000 yards up to thousand euros fifteen local miles wow the sonar system on hms vengeance is a direct descendant of the technology that helped britain in her darkest hour the battle of the atlantic in 1939 as world war ii started britain depended on its merchant navy to bring supplies and ammunition from abroad [Music] it was all controlled from this secret location western approaches in liverpool and it's here that many believe world war ii was actually won this room was the command center which coordinated the trade ships bringing goods into the uk hitler realized those ships were vulnerable to submarines he ordered his u-boats to attack with devastating results hundreds of british ships were sung and it seemed like germany might actually win the war winston churchill said that german u-boats were the only things that really frightened him during the war [Music] but it was british ingenuity that helped turn the tide by 1943 a forward step in underwater technology meant the royal navy could track and destroy the u-boats more frequently today we know this technology as sonar i'm intrigued to listen to the sounds of sonar for myself see what i can find then so what you're listening to now is a merchant vessel i'm listening to emerging medical networks it just sounds like fuzz yeah see if they don't train they'll probably sound like fuzz but there's a bit of diesel behind it give me a bit of diesel from the engine hang on i'm really trying to hear diesel in that [Music] that's different this definitely changes as i scroll through here that sounds a lot heavier yeah i think what you listen to there's a take a large merchant vessel okay if you listen really carefully you should be able to get a revolution spin account yeah this is yeah is it a good rhythmic beat this other one i found here then sounds a lot higher pitched almost let me see let me hear that one yeah that was it that's how i pitched and that sounds like it's going like they're a revolution it'll be a small merchandise fishing vessel you keep moving much quicker through the water so okay yeah there's something inside behind the edge something that's identifiable but for me it's just a continuous noise it is for everyone until they start doing the training properly the younger vlad will be able to classify this and no problem this is my first time sat at any kind of sonar system like this how am i doing though house you haven't done bad rob but i wouldn't give a good day job hms vengeance needs one of the most powerful sonar systems in the world because of what this submarine carries inside it i can't quite get my head around where i'm stood right in the heart of hms vengeance these are the missile tubes that house trident nuclear missiles in here on nuclear warheads and it's surreal to stand so close to something so terrifying something so deadly i'm on board the royal navy's hms vengeance submarine which is carrying trident nuclear missiles to understand how we got them in the uk and why they're on board we need to go back 50 years by the early 60s britain was eager to become a nuclear power prime minister harold macmillan flew to the bahamas to convince president john f kennedy to share their nuclear missile secrets the deal they struck became known as the polaris sales agreement [Music] britain would be given polaris nuclear missiles and the americans would gain access to several scottish locks but a new challenge immediately arose we needed a place to house and launch these new nuclear missiles it was decided that the only truly secure place was deep at sea on a submarine 50 years ago in 1969 the british submarine service began carrying nuclear missiles becoming the uk's strategic nuclear deterrent hms vengeance is the latest generation of these submarines the missiles she carries are called trident they're the most powerful weapon britain has ever had these are the china nuclear missiles d5 nuclear missiles right around us the weapons engineering officer is responsible for looking after trident on hms vengeance how many missiles do we have on board here then conventions uh i couldn't tell you that up to 16 up to 16. yeah do we know how many nuclear warheads we have on board so we can have up to 40 warheads on board only one time when it comes to these missiles is there any way of describing the amount of firepower that that is i don't know it's just hard to get that as a nagasaki if you think of those yeah there's more than both of them put together around us now wow do you ever get used to the fact that you're living and working around the most deadly weapons ever created that's quite sobering for me stood here i don't know how that is for you yeah it's yeah it is if it came to them once you actually press fire what actually happens with these missiles how do they work so once the trigger is pressed the hatch will open once that opens the missile launches up into space then the bombs so to speak will fall out to the targets you are part of that process are you that far well i'm the end of the firing chain yes holds another on the end of the trigger starts with the prime minister finishes with me the nuclear deterrent must always be ready to fire on the orders of the prime minister and at a moment's notice [Music] the crew test the nuclear missile firing procedure on a regular basis possession secure from returning to periscope set condition one sku for training without guidance with launcher captain darren mason is authorized to test fire trident [Music] what is actually going on here okay so uh for this we're simulating a weapon system readiness test which is proving to the outside authorities that the weapon system is a bit incredible for its task which is required to do the weapon system we're talking about our ballistic missile system the deterrent and by doing so we've gone to battle stations missile which is the uh general alarm clock the angry doorbell as we call it why is it important to do this exercise well if we didn't do the exercise we wouldn't know it works [Music] the encrypted order to test fire is transmitted to hms vengeance and given to two of her most senior officers the order is printed and carried to the control room in plain sight so there's no possibility it can be interfered with then behind a screen its contents are decoded 255 so the doctor's just giving me the latest update of the target packages owned in the computer i have just been given the assurance that my understanding of what's going on in the submarine's computer systems which are in my little black book which unfortunately you can't look at is exactly the same as being held in the weapon system so by comparing and trusting this and my playbook i know categorically the weapon system is going to do exactly what i expected to do before by three meters come on honestly come on in one escape so the submarine's now been brought up to a certain launch depth we've been slowed down we're now ultimately stopped this 13 000 ton submarine is physically stopped in the water hovering which meant that 1840 on this clock on the top we will be able to uh be ready in all respects to simulate a strike and for the purposes of his exercise you will give that command i will give that command with the final checks made the weapons engineering officer can pull the test trigger weapons con my permission to fight your one skew report con weapons weapon system ready for strategic launch website have you thought through how you might feel if you had to pull that trigger that final tripping that's my job i've worked a long time to get here uh and if i wasn't gonna do what was ordered then i wouldn't be here weapons has my permission to fire ten seconds to launch five four three two one four away the test is now complete thinking something back down to a safe depth and ultimately carrying on with our patrol when would you know in the case that this was a real scenario god forbid when would you know the time to fire to give your order to fire that's a very good question so these things don't just happen there would be a significant escalation or deterioration of political instability yeah we would notice that extra units of the royal navy were at sea there'd be a whole narrative of the story developing i would expect i would be anticipating that the order to launch might be occurring with it comes this enormous responsibility how well does that sit with you as as a person um it's not a conversation i routinely have with people it is a job i am expected to do i'm trusted to hold those keys i'm trying to deliver that capability but i have absolute confidence that when i'm tasked to deliver that effect that decision is made in good faith by the right people with the right intelligence with the right outcome in mind i am simply the tool that delivers that capability [Music] before today i've never fully contemplated the end of the world but actually if it were to happen it would play out almost exactly as i've just seen surrounded as i am by these weapons of mass destruction it would fall to the people i've met on here to carry out this most horrific of orders that's what resonates with me and what i find difficult to reconcile that the crew on this sub help keep us all safe every single day but they also hold this terrifying destructive power an unimaginable responsibility for 50 years they've patrolled into silence but it would only take one day and one act to end life on earth [Music] there's no rest for the crew today on the back of the trident firing drill the fire alarm sounds a fire can [ __ ] a submarine [Music] and burn up precious oxygen [Music] [Music] fortunately this was a drill but the crew's response is reviewed as if it were real when the fire pipe came out the noise level starts to increase but considering the amount of people in here right now the noise levels very quickly drop back down again to a manageable level and the team effort in here you know opening back each other up just good to see the crew did well but it wasn't perfect safety must always be the captain's primary concern i worry about the material safe to submarine i worry about this the well-being of my ship's company 167 people who look to me to give them their assurance and safety and that's my job just gone nine o'clock in the evening and i have to keep looking at my watch because there's no other means to tell you there's no daylight it's just such an alien environment well that's been an insight into what happens on board i'm absolutely knackered just from taking everything in but quite looking forward to waking up in the morning because there's so much more about this sub that i still want to understand moments after we finish filming the general alarm sounds again but this time it's for real there's a leak in the engine room an area of the boat that's off limits to our cameras obviously we're in training at the moment so we didn't know if it's a training evolution or not uh it isn't it's a regular position uh it's been hydrated as the league is frantically being plugged i stumble across the man who discovered it he's been moved to a safe compartment you could smell it in the air before you got there quite intense as soon as you got down by the shaft so he knew he was coming from there so he just grabbed the rag and dived in and stopped the hydraulic uh turned into a mist because that's when that's the most dangerous so it was all over me all my hair and you could just taste it and atmosphere are you all right yeah yeah good my question um i think i cracked the other one in for the for the leak site wow listen um make sure you get yourself sorted out the engineer's quick thinking stopped the leak from turning into a fire but the boat's hydraulics are now compromised for your worst case [Music] if the crew can't find a solution underwater they'll have to return to port making them late for their nuclear deterrent patrol fixing this problem is now top priority so we can't fix this in a minute you think [Music] hms vengeance is at emergency stations in the middle of the night it suffered a hydraulic leak that's just been plugged but it's left the submarine vulnerable [Music] i don't think in this lineup or should attempt to repeat it senior officers must decide what to do either they trust the quick fix they've just done to hold for the next few months at sea or delay their mission and head home so we can't fix this but if you think i'm doubtful we can fix it so if it is another normal lineup so the worst case would be another an issue with the start with me that's um due to you even further um so what happens now we briefed the captain that is our plan going in place which means that we revert some of our systems albeit to an abnormal lineup it's still a safe lineup and the submarine will still work as it normally would which means that you can continue on as as was planned with the sub just absolutely a backup system for the main system and there's a backup system for the backup system it's all built on reversionary mode so it's just about picking the right one it's never a dull moment is that there is not no i didn't have my head down at that stage as well i was fast asleep and it gives you a bit of a fight i can share the decision has been made to continue the mission but the following day there's some bad news for the engineer who found the leak what do you think you've done what what have you been told the doc said i might have practiced my collarbone um i don't know but i just know how much so what does this mean for you and the patrol this um quickly coming up they're going to try and get me off as soon as they can when uh operations did they like hang it off how does that feel for you being with this fighting stood down this is my first um qualified uh bit i'd see time i said cat a2 so i've only done about 10 days up to now and now this the engineer's quick response prevented a fire in hms vengeance's engine room but his injury means his time on board is now over and my four days and nights on the submarine are also coming to an end the submarine's just surfaced which means i can take a peak with the periscope there's a horizon there which is something i've not seen for a fair while it's actually quite a pertinent moment though because i'm very aware that as my visit here on the start draws to a close the crew's mission is just beginning and this is as close to home as they're going to get for a good few months once i leave hms vengeance will head out on patrol along with her nuclear deterrent for the crew their mission has only just started to have to spend weeks months maybe out at sea away from normal life away from family and friends and loved ones i think i'd find really really difficult really really difficult it is the people that make the submarine and it's a family make the submariner uh driving away from the house i would like to if i didn't stop the car and i don't have a think about it and a few leaky eyeball moments and then unfortunately you have to accept your divinity and move on the weekly highlight for everyone on board will now be a short message from loved ones at home even that's censored and there's no means to reply it's certainly not a life i could lead [Music] for over 50 years royal navy submariners have secretly kept our nuclear deterrent at permanent readiness but these boats are now ageing so whatever we might feel about the nuclear deterrent its future is already decided will there be a next 50 years of at sea deterrent for the uk do you think well i'm going to say perversely sadly we are planning that you know and i say that because nobody wants nuclear weapons really and as soon as we want a blue panic free of plastics you know but we are planning on having a nuclear deterrent capability for the next 50 years to have a new submarine being built in the hms dreadnought that would be far more sophisticated than venues looking back on my few days on board i've been astonished by [Applause] to fight [Music] away it's been a bewildering and moving experience but it's focused my mind on what hms vengeance really is for me hms vengeance is a real paradox as an engineering masterpiece it is one of the most complex technical creations mankind has ever accomplished and it's certainly thrilling but at the same time it is the deadliest of weapons and if it were ever called into use it would likely represent the end of life as we know it either way it does exist and i can't imagine it being in better hands the people i met down on hms vengeance are amongst the most capable i've ever met and if we are to have this kind of weapon for the next 50 years these are exactly the kind of people to run it

Channel: Spark

Views: 77,153

Rating: 4.8669624 out of 5

Keywords: seawolf submarine, nuclear submarine (invention), seawolf class submarine, seawolf class, navy submarine, Spark, world best submarine, factual, submarine, submarino, documentary (tv genre), navy, us navy, united states navy, submarines, things you didnt know about, u.s. navy, largest submarine, navy submarines, Science, top submarine, largest submarine in the world, u.s. navy fears russias submarines, Technology, documentary, education, Learning, Engineering

Id: ihhoQd0N_oc

Length: 43min 36sec (2616 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021