POLARIS NUCLEAR SUBMARINE: The Royal Navy's Deepest Secret (1985 Documentary)

do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so 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 repulse 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 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-gray 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 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 say you've seen before there's nothing else to do and if you don't like reading a lot of books from that 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 a life 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 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 get everybody coming through the counter you know and we see it 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 coming about week six and they're starting to it's all starts 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 meet 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 it's dead funny i mean they'll sit there and they'll look at this bulkhead for about 10 20 minutes like you know then go back and realize that the screen's freezing no you think my god i could be home now sitting there having a sunday dinner we're actually sitting on board here 100 foot under the water having a dinner you know god knows where you are miles from anywhere people will turn around saying you know i'd say cheer up you know you you've got to cheer up yourself you know you've got to be cheerful you've just got to you just got to knuckle down to it and make it you've got to make it 250 records 250. anyone's three pound three pounds because it's a cheap horse that's already been one once come on gentlemen three pounds three pound fifty what is that 350. any advance on three four four pound four pound come on still a cheap horse four band 450 advanced score here george five pounds [Applause] you escape from the responsibilities of the bills the fact that the roof may be peeling off on 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 yeah so we're very selfish really you know leaving everything for them today [Applause] you take so much for granted you don't realise how much till they're gone just being here 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 you 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 going 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 it's fantastic juliet hawk is the wife of repulse's captain they met when she was a wren 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 and then we brighten up a bit then after that 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 obviously keeps me quite busy yes gently i think one of the worst weeks i've had was getting the two girls back to boarding school because the big one had been away for two terms but katie the nine-year-old hadn't been before and she found it pretty awful and i did too although neither of us got upset there 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 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 um people are slightly apprehensive of you [Music] 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 um i watch the television and i do a lot of sewing i generally just sit on my own oh very good with me to say it's no problem uh it's part of balance of being a naval officer to me i've grown up with it over the years and it's uh yes it is a 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's 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 family 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 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 um 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 said 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 graham 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 it 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 memn1 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 assaulted brats big headache love dawn hello son hope you're getting on well all the family miss you muffin's okay went to visit fran and bob the other day finally got a swimming award see you soon love mum and dad jacon had a good holiday in sky weather was good dad's nose is peeling ha ha letter came from salista about your flat puss is on straight again john phoned she's fine 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 oh dear we're not forgotten when we're at sea you know and civilization we're not forgotten and it's always someone that they're thinking about your old 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 you 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 that probably 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 all 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 that's fine 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 repulsive second in command and the captain himself are the only two people who know the inner safes combination so no one person can verify the signal and start the firing sequence day 27 page page both men put their signature on the firing signal to show that it's authentic [Music] will bring the submarine to complete readiness for firing conditions [Music] in the missile control room there's another safe access is limited to reeves and one other officer attraction 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 down by the start bringing i'm about to start offering it's correct velocity correct angle stop engine stop engine start hovering start have hovering start valve open [Music] hovering in auto computer one so control hovering in auto computer one no shifts at one reset sir all missiles spinning no defects no difference one shift no shift one reset print answer verified printouts verified rubber captain's printer the missiles are primed and targeted the submarine is motionless in the water all that reeves requires is the final authority roger captain's a weapon system in one sq thank you the weapons officer has migration to fire you have permission to fire captain's permission to fire initiate fire ten channel one denote ten denote five do note 16 the 16 missiles will be fired individually in a predetermined order prepare ten each missile has multiple warheads 48 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed hiroshima [Music] 16. to carry the nation's deterrent is is an exceedingly irresponsible job and 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'd 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 patreon 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 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 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 use theirs and what we we've seen you know you can't imagine the outcome over here there's never been a wall like that before so you've got such a grand skill that you couldn't imagine couldn't uh 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 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 you know just something to to show off well i think it's a pretty frightening thought actually that you could surface four or five weeks later and there's absolutely nothing left [Music] 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 load forward main ballast no ford name ballast fully open the submarine's crew must soon adjust to the outside world spy also 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 just like the difference between beer and why you know you get used to one thing and then you get something totally different well unless you've really experienced it you know it's hard really to put it into words it's a good smell definitely a good smell after that after you've lived with uh old law and men for four weeks on end it's definitely a good smell i see my wife and first turns wife and the daughter yes [Music] you

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Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021