Cold War Command: The Dramatic Story of a Nuclear Submariner

13 Serving under the American Flag

In July 1981 Conley and his wife arrived in Connecticut to move into a rented house in the pretty, historic town of Mystic, situated some twelve miles east of the US naval base at Groton. The prospect of living in a delightful corner of New England for two years seemed a fair swap for the rain and midges of the Gareloch, whither the American officer with whom he had exchanged places was destined.

Mystic had been a leading whaling port in the nineteenth century and its old seaport area had been transformed into a world-renowned maritime museum, which attracted a large number of visitors. The town’s main street straddled the Mystic river and contained shops typical of small-town America, including an ice-cream parlour, barber and newsagent. Most of its houses and major buildings were of white, wooden clapboard construction and in many ways it epitomised the image of an affluent, well-ordered New England town. With the prospect of spending two years with Submarine Development Squadron Twelve, the Conleys soon immersed themselves in the local community and were made thoroughly welcome by several families who over the years had ‘adopted’ their exchange officer.

Submarine Development Squadron Twelve(CSDS12), known colloquially by the abbreviation of the ‘Devron’, was headquartered in America’s largest submarine base, situated beside the sprawling town of Groton, on the River Thames opposite the city of New London.

The Devron had been formed in 1948 as an elite submarine squadron which had the specific role of developing war-fighting tactics as a result of the United States Navy’s experiences fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. One of the conclusions drawn from the submarine campaign in the Pacific, which virtually destroyed all Japanese merchant shipping, was that 90 per cent of the sinkings were achieved by 10 per cent of the captains, a similar figure to the German successes against Allied shipping in the Battle of the Atlantic. Those individuals who employed the optimum attack tactics were both more likely to notch up kills and to survive enemy counter-attacks. This statistic assumed a greater relevance to possible operations conducted against the new enemy of the Cold War, where the tactical margins and their possible consequences held a new and thoroughly awesome threat for more than just those in the immediate vicinity. It was for these reasons that the United States Navy’s high command placed an imperative priority upon tactical development, particularly as an increasing number of SSNs — known in the United States Navy as ‘fast attack submarines’ — came out of American shipyards.

When Conley joined the squadron it consisted of six SSNs and its naval shore staff were augmented by a number of contracted civilian specialists, several of whom were very highly qualified mathematicians. His first task was to lead a small team of civilian contractors in developing tactics for hunter-killer boats when they were required to provide cover for a strike force led by an aircraft carrier. This included the evaluation of an anti-ship version of the Tomahawk cruise missile which had a range of 300 miles. However, in this formidably intelligent mathematical company, he found himself addressing a more pressing problem. He was able to persuade his superiors that with the increasing threat of ever quieter and more capable Russian submarines, there was an urgent need to develop new methods of approaching these menacing craft using data from the towed acoustic array. Aware of the primary importance of this stealthy method of acquiring target information, he was equally concerned that with all its vagaries and inaccuracies, at the time it was far from offering a real practical answer to the challenges faced by Western submarines confronted with the new generation of much quieter Russian boats.

With his recent experiences in mind he requested that he take a lead in this urgent problem and this was agreed. Conley also achieved an agreement to put greater effort into improving short-range submarine encounter procedures through the mechanism of a joint USN/RN-funded project which he would direct.

To a British naval officer, hitherto very much constrained in resources and trapped in entrenched orthodoxy, these opportunities were a godsend. Conley would be provided with the research facilities to develop computer simulations which comprehensively replicated the submarine versus submarine engagement. From expert analysis of the results of these, he and his team would then be able to develop tactics and procedures for testing at sea. During his tour of exchange duty, he and his consultants designed and ran six tactical evaluation exercises at sea, where the submarines acting in the Russian role were fitted with special noise augmentation equipment, in order that their characteristics would be as similar as possible to the opposition. A real benefit of the outcome would be that although there were equipment differences between the two navies, the Americans were very willing to make the results and the tactics developed available to the Royal Navy.

When Conley arrived in America, its submarine force was expanding at an unprecedented peacetime pace, aiming at a total number of ninety SSNs. Its workhorse of the 1970s, the thirty-seven ‘637’ Sturgeon-class SSNs, were being joined by the bigger and faster ‘688’ Los Angeles-class boats, of which there were twenty in commission and twelve under construction. (The numbers 637 and 688 were the hull numbers of the lead vessels of the respective classes.) There were also about twenty older-generation attack boats in commission, predominantly of the Skipjack and Thresher classes. At the same time the United States Navy’s SSBN force totalled over thirty sub-marines armed with the Poseidon and Trident C4 missiles and the new 18,000-ton Ohio-class boats were about to start commissioning. In due course, these would carry the much more capable Trident D5 missile and would be built up to a total of eighteen submarines which would replace the older hulls.

In terms of numbers of vessels, the American all-nuclear submarine force was bigger than the entire Royal Navy, and the ongoing programme of expansion produced a very positive buzz within the Devron, with numerous ongoing projects addressing most aspects of submarine operations and warfare.

Outside the submarine base, a large and confidently presumptive sign proclaimed it as the ‘Submarine Capital of the World’, a declaration supported by the four operational squadrons of some forty submarines and a further dozen or so under construction at the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard on the east side of the Thames, a few miles downriver from the base.

Anyone who knew about shipbuilding, peering from the bridge linking New London with Groton into the Electric Boat yard, would be awed by the sight of several huge Ohio-class hulls protruding from the building sheds with a scattering of 6,500ton ‘688’class boats in the water at the fitting-out berths. However, the ‘688’ build programme at the yard had encountered severe problems, owing to the detection of faulty internal welds in several hulls. These required significant restorative work which incurred serious delays, causing a backlog in the shipyard. On being given a tour of one of the delayed submarines after it had eventually been commissioned, Conley observed that its final finish was well short of the standards achieved in Spartan. In particular, the accommodation areas were notably austere and there were most certainly no carpets to hacksaw the piling from. However, he reflected that this was a warship, and rough edges and poor paintwork would not be detrimental to her fighting ability.

In 1981 the energetic, ambitious thirty-eight-year-old John Lehman was appointed by the incoming President Ronald Reagan as Secretary of the Navy. In due course, he went on to unveil an aggressive wartime maritime strategy of forward deployment of submarines and aircraft carrier battle groups into the Norwegian and Barents seas, the very backyard of the northern Soviet Union. It was also planned to deploy a large United States Marine force which could be landed rapidly in northern Norway to bolster NATO troops there, thus preventing the Russians from seizing the airfields that would be crucial to supporting the West’s forward deployed maritime forces in case of a hot war.

Should it ever be necessary, the primary goal of this offensive would be rapidly to destroy all nuclear weapon-bearing Russian SSBNs on patrol in Arctic waters, and to prevent other enemy submarines from entering the Atlantic to attack shipping carrying crucial supplies and reinforcements to western Europe. Any surface units of the Soviet Navy at sea would also be destroyed, thus neutralising the enemy’s submarine and surface fleets.

As part of this over-arching strategic plan, on the outbreak of hostilities both British and American SSNs would be deployed well forward into the Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean, whilst ASW aircraft and helicopters would provide protection for surface forces operating in the Norwegian Sea. A barrier of NATO diesel submarines would be set up in constrained areas, such as the seas between the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland, colloquially known as the Greenland — Iceland — UK (GIUK) gaps. In these choke-points there would less need for mobility and speed to intercept and destroy successfully Russian submarines trying to get into the North Atlantic and, therefore, they were left for the diesel boats.

The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO High Command never formally approved the Lehman strategy, which drew its share of critics as many viewed it as suicidal to consider operating carrier groups in the North Norwegian Sea in the face of the massive Soviet air and sea power concentrated in the adjoining Barents Sea and northern Russia. However, the strategy underpinned the United States Navy’s aspiration in the 1980s to expand to a ‘six hundred ship’ force and governed many of the tactical development projects of the Devron.

Soon after taking up his post Conley was off to sea in local exercise areas on a familiarisation trip on the six-year-old USS Richard B Russell, the last submarine to be completed of the ‘637’ class. She was armed with the Mark 48 anti-submarine torpedo, the Harpoon sixty-mile range antiship cruise missile and the thirty-mile range anti-submarine SUBROC missile with its nuclear depth-bomb warhead. Like British submarines, the torpedo compartment was also used to berth some of the crew or visitors in removable bunks close to the weapons and in the case of the USN, be they nuclear or conventionally warheaded. However, the British officer was spared the experience of sleeping alongside a nuclear warhead and was accommodated in one of the crew bunk spaces, where he enjoyed the comfort of sleeping between freshly laundered linen sheets. This was a new submarine experience, as Royal Navy submariners normally slept in nylon sleeping bags, which after a few weeks at sea developed a unique odour of their own.

The ‘637’ class was capable of about 25 knots and had a maximum safe diving depth of 1,300ft, but had only four torpedo tubes compared to the six in the earlier Skipjack class and the British Valiant class. Nevertheless, they were very quiet boats, handling well at all speeds and were accordingly popular with their commanding officers.

Conley quickly settled into American submarine routines and procedures which were, in the main, similar to those in the Royal Navy. However, there were differences, in particular that of the majority of the officers being qualified nuclear engineers. Early in a junior American submarine officer’s career, he would have to undertake the daunting double task of qualifying to watch-keep both in the control room, supervising ship control and conducting the navigation, and in the manoeuvring room, in charge of the reactor and propulsion plant. Although one of the more senior officers would have the responsibility of being the boat’s engineer, the commanding officer ultimately made engineering decisions. Furthermore, the operation of the reactor was accorded the highest level of importance within a submarine’s annual external inspection regime.

This was very different from the Royal Navy system of the executive branch filling the warfare roles of command, navigation and sonar, supported by officers of the marine and weapon engineering specialisations. Accordingly, the Royal Navy commanding officer relies heavily upon the advice of his engineers, and a key skill will be his ability to ask the right questions and to probe incisively but diplomatically the engineering advice proffered.

Conley concluded that both officer structure systems had their specific advantages and had evolved to suit the culture and background of their respective officer corps. However, he firmly believed that as Royal Navy submarine weapon engineer officers kept watches in the control room and many had developed excellent warfare and navigation skills, there should be no reason why exceptional individuals should not undertake the Perisher and, if successful, go on to command appointments. At the very least, such individuals would have a sea command experience base when they took up key jobs in the Ministry of Defence’s procurement executive, which included managing the introduction and support of new weapon systems.

The voyage in the Richard B Russell might have turned out to be a long one as a Soviet Victor-class SSN intruder was reported to have been detected offshore. With the new SSBN Ohio on contractor’s sea trials, the Victor’s task would have been an intelligence-gathering mission, and to have measured the Ohio’s acoustic signature at that early stage would have been a real coup for the Russian. However, the Richard B Russell only intended to spend a few days carrying out independent exercises, did not have an acoustic towed array fitted, and consequently was out of luck in making detection in the difficult environment of high levels of shipping noise and fishing vessel activity.

Fourteen months later in October 1982, in the same sea areas, the small SSN, Tullibee, just out of refit, was also out of luck when after diving she became aware of a Victor SSN on her tail which commenced harassing her with close-range passes. She had probably been sighted by the Russian while on the surface preparing to go under the water and because she had a similar superstructure profile to an SSBN, although much smaller than an Ohio-class submarine, she could have been misidentified. The unfortunate Tullibee, owing to her small reactor size and limited power, was only capable of 16 knots and found it very difficult to shake off her pursuer. On hearing about this incident, Conley could only but envisage the highly alarming and unexpected situation the very green Tullibee crew found themselves in, especially operating in waters close to the American mainland, which would have been considered generally free of aggressive Russian submarine intrusion. Clearly, the Russian Bear was flexing its underwater muscles.

Back ashore, Conley’s induction period included two weeks of instruction in the American Submarine School, joining the executive officers’ course, learning about the state-of-the-art ‘688’-class sonar and torpedo fire-control systems. He was pleasantly surprised that the school hierarchy was very willing to disclose details of their latest submarine equipment to a foreigner, although paradoxically information about their reactor systems remained firmly out of bounds.

In October 1981 Conley was invited to attend the commissioning of the ‘688’-Class La Folla at the submarine base. Afterwards, at a reception held in the base officers’ club, he was introduced to the legendary Admiral Hyman G Rickover, cited as the ‘father of nuclear power’ in the United States Navy, who as Director Naval Nuclear Propulsion governed the commissioning and operation of naval reactor systems with a rod of iron. The octogenarian admiral, blunt, abrasive and confrontational in character, had become an increasingly controversial individual. His reputation had received a further dent whilst he was onboard La Folla during sea trials: there had been reports that he overrode protocol and gave orders which resulted in a temporary loss of control of the brand new boat.

Never a friend of the Royal Navy, it was clear to Conley that Rickover was not interested in talking to him. This coolness was noted by a large bear of a man standing nearby who interjected, introducing himself as Takis Veliotis, managing director of the Electric Boat Company. Taking Conley aside, Veliotis, a Greek by nationality, told him in no uncertain terms of his derogatory views of the admiral; very evidently there were extremely strong tensions between the two of them, particularly regarding the debacle of the ‘688’-class faulty welds, the substantial costs of which eventually ended up being paid by the American taxpayer. At the time, Conley thought it decidedly odd that a Greek national should be managing America’s prime submarine building yard which was delivering the highly classified Ohio-class submarines. The following year he was astonished to learn that Veliotis had fled America, wanted by the FBI on charges of taking kickbacks from sub-contractors to the Electric Boat Company.

Two months after his encounter with Rickover and Veliotis, on Remembrance Day 1981 Conley and his wife attended the commissioning of the USS Ohio. A temporary stand to seat the four thousand guests had been set up on the berth, alongside of which was the truly awesome mass of the black painted SSBN, 560ft in length with her twenty-four missile tubes and the capability to launch up to almost 300 thermonuclear warheads. The cold, overcast weather added to the sombreness of the occasion. Shortly before the arrival of the guest of honour, Vice President George Bush, the diminutive and somewhat lonely figure of Rickover, wearing a civilian suit and raincoat, walked up the gangplank and took up his position on the superstructure. He looked passive and nonchalant about the proceedings, as if unimpressed that his achievement of delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine — the USS Nautilus — in 1955 had eventually resulted in the building of this single, terrifying vessel, capable of destroying all of the Soviet Union’s large cities.

Whilst the ensemble awaited the arrival of the vice president, Conley noted numerous secret service agents and police stationed in the surrounding buildings and vantage points. When Bush arrived in a limousine with escorting cars ahead and behind, the British officer was most impressed that when the entourage came to a halt, all the car doors opened in perfect unison and the bodyguards instantly took up precise station round their ward as he left his car. The Americans were taking no chances, even in a high security area such as the Electric Boat shipyard. It was also noticeable that if there had been any peace protests outside the shipyard, the protesters had been kept well away from public view.

In a short speech Vice President Bush declared that Ohio heralded a new dimension in national strategic security. In his own speech, Rickover summed up that Ohio had only one purpose which was ‘to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies’.

In January the following year Conley was back at sea on the AUTEC range onboard the Richard B Russell, running an evaluation to try out new underwater dogfight tactics his team had developed. Another Devron ‘637-’class boat, the USS Archerfish, was acting as the target. It was planned to embark Navy Secretary John Lehman, who had a naval aviation background in the Reserves, and Conley was looking forward to the secretary’s visit, not least as he would get first-hand insight into joint US/UK co-operation at the cutting edge of SSN tactics. He was, therefore, personally disappointed when he heard that at a few hours’ notice Lehman’s embarkation had been cancelled.

It was only after the exercise completed that Conley learned that the reason for the cancellation was that, on the day of the planned visit, Lehman had been instrumental in forcing the resignation of Admiral Rickover. On 31 January, at a very tense meeting in the Oval Office between President Ronald Reagan, the Navy Secretary and the admiral, it was made clear to Rickover that his services were no longer required. In his book Command of the Seas Lehman later recounted:

One of my first orders of business as Secretary of the Navy would be to solve the Rickover problem. Rickover’s legendary achievements were in the past. His present vice-like grip on much of the Navy was doing it much harm. I had sought the job because I believed the Navy had deteriorated to the point where its weakness seriously threatened our future security. The Navy’s grave afflictions included loss of a strategic vision; loss of self-confidence, and morale; a prolonged starvation of resources, leaving vast shortfalls in capability to do the job; and too few ships to cover a sea so great, all resulting in cynicism, exhaustion, and an undercurrent of defeatism. The cult created by Admiral Rickover was itself a major obstacle to recovery, entwining nearly all the issues of culture and policy within the Navy.

Lehman’s criticism of Rickover coincided with the recovery of the United States, and in particular its armed forces, from the humiliations of the Vietnam War. The Rickover era of dominance in all United States Navy nuclear propulsion matters had thus ended, and Admiral Kinnaird McKee replaced him as the Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion. However, Rickover’s legacy of the highest possible standards of nuclear plant operation, and the primacy accorded within the United States Submarine Service to nuclear systems, was to be perpetuated. Lehman’s intention was to build upon this, and to revitalise the United States Navy.

Oddly, however, it was not the United States Navy, with its commissioning of the mighty Ohio and her associated imagery of Armageddon, that was grabbing the headlines, but an apparently old-fashioned bushfire war in which the Royal Navy would play its part.

On 2 April 1982 Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands and within weeks Great Britain had responded by dispatching a naval task force on a 6,000-mile passage to recapture the islands. As it became more evident that a diplomatic solution would not be forthcoming to solve the crisis, and war became more likely, Conley very felt uncomfortable about being in a foreign country when his peers and friends were going to war. Although the American national media were in general pro-British, there was an element which regarded the imminent conflict as yet another British colonial war, ignoring the uncomfortable fact that Argentina was ruled by a military junta which had an appalling human rights record. However, it was very evident to Conley that his colleagues in the United States Navy, together with his local civilian friends, were unquestionably on the British side and were very sympathetic to his isolated situation.

Conley felt that, at the very least, his expertise in the use of the Tigerfish torpedo and, in particular, the tactics needed to take on successfully a modern Argentinian diesel submarine, would be called upon. Furthermore, had his advice been sought, he would have strongly advocated that each deployed submarine launch one of its Tigerfish as a drill exercise. This would both prove the weapon system and familiarise the crew in controlling a war-stock weapon which had a much longer endurance than the practice version; it would have been too late to discover latent problems when actually engaging the enemy. But to his disappointment there was no phone call or message seeking his advice and, indeed, later events proved that there was a serious, undiscovered defect in Tigerfish which could have been worked round if it had been identified as he had envisaged.

Meanwhile, harking back to his midshipman’s time in the destroyer Cambrian with its low anti-aircraft effectiveness, he delved into the classified ‘UK eyes only’ documentation he held, which described the effectiveness and characteristics of the current Royal Navy shipborne anti-aircraft systems. These confirmed his fears that only the short-range Sea Wolf system, fitted to just a handful of frigates, would be effective in taking on aircraft near land, because the medium-range Sea Dart and Sea Slug systems were designed to engage the high-flying cruise missile in deep ocean scenarios. The Sea Slug in particular would be useless against low-flying enemy aircraft. He also knew that the short-range Sea Cat missile had a habit of diving into the sea post-launch and was generally regarded as very unreliable, while the gunnery systems available had not improved much from his time as a midshipman. Notably, no ships were fitted with anti-aircraft Gatling gun mountings. These were capable of spitting out a much more effective 4,000 rounds per minute than the twenty-five rounds per minute of which the latest Royal Navy 4.5in gun was capable. Therefore, there would be great reliance placed upon the Sea Harriers embarked in the small aircraft carriers, Invincible and Hermes, to engage enemy aircraft with any prospect of success.

In mid April Conley joined the ‘637’-class USS Whale for two weeks of evaluation of approach and attack tactics in the comparatively shallow waters of the Gulf of Maine. The USS Whale impressed him as being a very happy, efficient and well-led submarine, her captain, Commander Emmo Morrow, proving extremely co-operative and interested in the conduct of the evaluations. He furthermore did his best to read signal traffic which contained Falklands crisis information and pass the contents to the exchange officer. With the exercise successfully completed, Whale headed towards Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a port visit.

Meanwhile, Conley had learned about the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano by the British SSN HMS Conqueror. He speculated whether the submarine’s captain, Dartmouth contemporary Commander Chris Wreford-Brown, had used Tigerfish torpedoes in the attack (the latest variant had an antiship capability), or whether he decided to fire a salvo of the much more reliable straight-running Mark 8 torpedo. In the event, Wreford-Brown had decided to use the latter on the grounds that its much bigger warhead would be required to severely damage or sink the former American Second World War vintage heavy cruiser. This decision was misconceived to the extent that the effect of a Tigerfish detonating underneath the target would be the equivalent of a direct hit by the Mark 8. Moreover, it would have been most likely that the Tigerfish would have homed onto the target’s propeller noise, detonating under and breaking off the stern and almost certainly incurring fewer fatalities than the 321 crew killed by the two Mark 8s which struck the ship, one of which hit the hull amidships.

However, shortly after the Falklands War, a number of proving firings of Tigerfish revealed a serious reliability problem: the chances were that had Wreford-Brown chosen to use Tigerfish, the torpedoes would have probably proved absolute duds because of a propulsion battery actuation defect. If this had been known about it could have been worked round by manually priming the battery prior to firing, but at the time of the Falklands War the fault had been undiagnosed. Tigerfish problems thus continued, but this monumental deficiency at long last galvanised the application of adequate resources and effort to the solution of this weapon’s chronic shortcomings.

The day after the Whale’s arrival Conley was met by his wife Linda, as it was planned that they would take several days’ leave to drive back to Mystic, stopping off to stay in a small hotel in the very scenic environs of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Linda cheerfully disclosed that whilst he was at sea, because of small local pockets of pro-Argentinean support, the British embassy staff had suggested it might be a good idea to remove temporarily the large Union Jack which flew from a flagpole in the garden of their house. This she had done. However, on hearing of the good news of the recapture of South Georgia on 25April, she had swiftly re-hoisted the flag.

While enjoying the solitude, stunning beauty and peace of the Acadia National Park, the Conleys heard the grim news on the car’s radio that the destroyer HMS Sheffield had been hit by an Exocet missile. Both he and his wife knew Sheffield’s commanding officer, Captain Sam Salt, very well indeed, and there was no news about the number of casualties. Feeling utterly in the wrong place amid the green loveliness of the serene park, which was such a contrast to the bleak environment of the South Atlantic, Conley felt gut-wrenching sympathy for the crew of the destroyer.

A few months after the Falklands War had ended, one of his superiors gave him access to an American Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report of the analysis of the conflict, which was unique in being the only major maritime conflict to have occurred after the Second World War. Its analysis, therefore, had been awaited with interest. As was to be expected, the actual number of Argentine aircraft losses was substantially less than originally claimed by the British. Half of the kills in the air were attributable to the Sea Harrier and very few aircraft had been shot down by Sea Cat or guns (reportedly over eighty Sea Cats were fired for one confirmed kill). Along with the rest of the world, Conley also noted that after the sinking of the General Belgrano the Argentine Navy remained in harbour, with the exception of their modern German Type 209 submarine, San Luis. He later learned that the crew of this submarine had conducted two attacks upon Royal Navy warships, but their German-made SST-4 torpedoes malfunctioned owing to a fire-control system defect. Evidently, defective torpedo systems were not the exclusive preserve of the Royal Navy. Added to the fuse failures of many Argentine bombs, these factors significantly saved both British ships and British lives.

In June 1982 Conley was again at sea, this time in the USS Dallas, a very new ‘688’-class submarine, to undertake a new series of tactical evaluation exercises to the north of Bermuda. This class (the lead vessel Los Angeles commissioned in 1976) had been introduced to contend with the increasing number of high-speed Soviet submarines then coming into service, and the new role of providing anti-submarine support to carrier-led battle groups. It was assessed that both tasks required a dived speed well in excess of 30 knots, and a much more powerful propulsion plant than that fitted in the ‘637’-class. Rickover offered the S6G reactor and machinery system, which were based upon the design of the plant fitted in the nuclear powered cruiser Bainbridge. It would be capable of delivering over 35,000shp and had several features which reduced radiated noise, but its installation required significantly greater space and the ‘688’-class boats, at over 6,000 tons displacement, were much larger and longer than previous SSNs.

Their long hull made them difficult to handle when manoeuvring under the water at high speed and their length of hull aft of the fin (known as the ‘sail’ in the USN) made them susceptible to broaching the surface when at periscope depth in rough weather. These deficiencies were improved upon in later vessels of the class by locating the forward hydroplanes in the bows, as opposed to the sail which had been standard in American nuclear submarines. Most of the class had propellers as opposed to the much quieter pump jet propulsors being fitted to all British nuclear boats. Such a change had been resisted by Rickover, perhaps on the grounds of the propulsor’s lesser stern power, but all new American SSNs are now being incorporated with this form of drive.

The USS Dallas was the first American submarine to be fitted with totally computerised sonar and fire-control systems, and Conley, accompanied by a civilian expert in target motion analysis, was looking forward to evaluating the new equipment and continuing to refine approach and attack tactics using towed acoustic array data and nothing else. However, the Dallas was somewhat jinxed. The previous year she had run aground on the reefs at Andros near the AUTEC range, damaging her rudder and now, shortly after the evaluations had started, a very worried-looking commanding officer declared to Conley that the boat needed to be urgently surfaced and the reactor shut down forthwith. Crew error had caused all the freshwater onboard to be contaminated, including the vital feed water for the boilers in the reactor compartment. Continuing to use contaminated water in the boilers would have caused severe damage so the Dallas was bereft of effective propulsion. Conley recalled his own anxiety when Otter had been immobilised on the AUTEC range, but this situation was worse: Dallas was a nuclear submarine in a very vulnerable state, a long way from assistance in mid ocean to the north of the Bermuda Islands. The one ameliorating factor was the copious advice and guidance from headquarters on how to sort out and get the plant back on line.

To clean up the freshwater systems and to make new, pure water required almost three days of running the boat’s one backup diesel generator providing all power whilst on the surface. Water was only available for drinking but, surprisingly, paper plates and tooth-cleaning plugs were produced from the boat’s stores. With the Dallas stationary and wallowing on the surface of the tropical Atlantic and the Fairbanks-Morse diesel generator roaring away under the wardroom, life onboard was very uncomfortable. Nuclear sub-mariners took for granted a plentiful supply of fresh water for daily showers and felt the lack of it acutely. However, the clean-up progressed successfully, the plant was recommissioned and the embarrassment of a tow to harbour avoided. Towards the end of the reactor restart, the commanding officer presented Conley with a large tinned-fruit can full of hot water from the engine room (which was off-limits to the British officer). Grateful for this forethought, Conley made his best ever use of a few pints of hot water to remove three days of grime and face stubble.

Despite the restitution of normality, it took Conley some effort to persuade a rather shaken commanding officer to continue the evaluations. However, these were successfully completed with very encouraging results from the new tactics being tested.

As the months past and his American superiors built up their trust in Conley, more responsibility was thrust upon him and rules of security access were relaxed. He undertook some of the short-range encounter work in the base attack training simulators, using the students of the prospective commanding officer (PCO) course — the United States Navy’s equivalent of Perisher — as testers of the new trial tactics. It was noticeable to Conley that, when compared to the Perisher, the PCO course placed much more emphasis upon anti-submarine warfare training.

This short-range work also required him to set up an evaluation trial involving an American SSBN and SSN operating in the Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) to the northeast of Greenland. This evaluation was undertaken as it was known that Russian SSBNs were making use of the high levels of ice noise in the MIZ to mask their presence, and the aim was to assess how difficult it was to trail another submarine in such conditions. This task broke new ground for Conley as it involved an American SSBN, and as an exchange officer by the rules he should not have been taking the lead in such sensitive areas: a Brit voice talking to Commander Submarine Atlantic operations staff about planning detail caused a bit of a ripple, and questions were asked about his access to No Foreign Dissemination (NOFORN) information, but to the best of Conley’s knowledge there were no consequences upon his seniors.

Conley’s superiors at the Devron, Commodore Dean Sackett, the squadron commander, and Captain Jim Patton his deputy, did much to support his work, contributing a great deal to the marshalling of innovative initiatives, together with providing submarine time at sea. They were also crucial to supporting the analytical effort that elucidated the invaluable lessons learned in these trials. Enduring and strong friendships were formed with both men, and Commodore Sackett very enthusiastically accepted the role of godfather to the Conleys’ baby girl, named Faith, born in the base hospital in November 1982.

Unofficial honours were heaped upon Conley in the first six months of 1983, prior to his return home in the summer of that year. Conley ran two further evaluations in ‘688’-class boats, in the first of which, aboard the USS Atlanta, he was made an ‘Honorary American Submariner’ and presented with a submarine badge and a set of blue cotton coveralls (known as a ‘poopy suit’) which American submariners liked to wear at sea. In the USS Philadelphia, the commanding officer ignored the rules and invited him to witness drills in the engine room. The British officer was struck by how much simpler the layout and instrumentation were in comparison with Royal Navy submarine nuclear plants. In particular, the machinery configuration was much more conducive to access for maintenance and repairs. He was also impressed by the damage control and firefighting equipment available and, whilst he kept his illicit engine-room observations to himself, he did pass some of the damage control equipment details back to the Flag Officer Submarine’s engineering staff. Some of these concepts were taken up by the Royal Navy and Conley was to personally benefit from the availability of American steam leak repair kits when he went onto command Britain’s oldest SSN, HMS Valiant.

Meanwhile, it was becoming more evident from operational reports that, owing to improvements in the radiated noise of Soviet submarines, in part a result of intelligence being passed by the Walker-Whitworth spy ring, the West’s marked submarine acoustic advantage was shrinking. It was becoming more difficult to detect and trail the latest Russian submarines and the number of counter-detections, whilst remaining small, was increasing. Accordingly, a highly classified cell was set up within the Devron to analyse so-called ‘events’. The introduction of the new tactics and procedures, the development of which Conley had spearheaded, was very timely in respect of counterbalancing this decrease in technical advantage.

In July 1983 Conley and his family bade sad farewell to the many civilian and naval friends they had made in Connecticut. For the British officer it had been a most enjoyable two years, where solid advances had been achieved in sub-surface anti-submarine tactics. Conley was convinced that the war-fighting effectiveness of both navies had been raised thereby. On his return to the Royal Navy, Conley received a personal commendation from John Lehman, the citation recording that ‘he [had] developed tactics that will result in prompt and immediate improvement in the tactical readiness of US and UK SSNs, significantly contributing to the national security of each nation’.