Cold War Command: The Dramatic Story of a Nuclear Submariner

16 Arctic Bears and Torpedoes

The year that Conley and his family spent at Newport, Rhode Island, was soon over. He had enjoyed a year’s participation in the War College’s international command course where his fellow students were commanders or captains from the navies of thirty-two other nations, some of whom would go on to head their respective services. Besides the valuable experience of working and socialising with such a diverse group, several weeks were spent touring America, enjoying unique insights into its institutions, history, industries and people. However, by September 1987 that was all behind him, along with the memories of the sunshine and beaches of Rhode Island. It was back to the grim realities of Faslane.

Here Conley took over responsibility for the Submarine Tactics and Weapons Group (STWG), then staffed by about forty people, mainly from the uniformed service, and was part of the Flag Officer Submarines (FOSM) organisation. Since he had left the STWG nine years earlier there had naturally been some changes to its work, notably the conduct of Sub-Harpoon anti-ship missile firings and the analysis of the ‘approach to attack criteria’ data from operational patrols. With the impending introduction into service of the new Spearfish torpedo and the need to improve the standard of tactical evaluation exercises at sea, plenty of challenges lay ahead.

Despite his and his fellow submarine commanders’ demonstrably successful ability to stalk and close with Russian submarines, Conley knew that to achieve a real ‘kill’ in wartime relied upon a weapon system that was far from perfect. The old problem of recalcitrant torpedoes rose to confront him once again and he found himself immediately involved with a report on the analysed results of firings of Tigerfish torpedoes conducted in the early summer of 1987 in the open ocean by the SSNs Warspite and Swiftsure. These had been carried out in sea areas in the vicinity of St Kilda, the remote island forty miles to the west of the Outer Hebrides. With each submarine alternating as target, these were the most realistic set of firings of Tigerfish to date but the success rate had been very low; unusually, this was predominantly due to crew error as opposed to the weapon’s notorious unreliability. Conley’s superior on FOSM’s staff had been unwilling to release the results as they stood, because he feared that they would reflect badly upon the perceived effectiveness of the Submarine Flotilla. Very reluctantly, Conley set about creative manipulation of the report criteria, somehow producing a set of acceptable results which could be endorsed for promulgation to the wider Navy. Nevertheless, it disappointed and angered him that there still remained a culture at a high level within the Submarine Service by which weapon problems were either suppressed or ignored.

However, there was good news in the offing. After the Falklands War several Tigerfish warshot proving firings took place and the results of these had been awful. Accordingly, the MoD had put long overdue money and resources into finally fixing this weapon system. The result was the Tigerfish Mod 2 variant where the weapon’s reliability had been much improved. Most notably, the guidance wire dispensing arrangement had been made robust by copying the American method of attaching the submarine end wire dispenser to the torpedo tube rear door, a great improvement on the previous system. The latter encompassed a ‘bucket of wire’ dangled by cable from the exterior end of the torpedo tube, a crude method which had constantly failed and compromised an expensive torpedo. There were now urgent imperatives for testing this modified weapon, not only in the so-called ‘open ocean scenario’, but in under-ice firings.

The difficulties experienced with the antisubmarine torpedoes carried by British hunter-killer submarines had, by this time, become acute because the Soviet Navy had introduced their huge Delta IV-and Typhoon-class SSBNs. These were, in effect the super-dreadnoughts of the Cold War, phenomenally expensive — the product of a truly centralised economy. Their advanced design enabled them to patrol under the Arctic ice from where their long-range ballistic missiles were within range of the majority of their American targets and there was increasing evidence that the Soviet Union was deploying these formidable submarines in precisely this environment. Since a SSBN of such potency, concealed close under the ice, stationary, with most of her machinery shut down and lurking in a quiet state would be exceedingly difficult to locate, American and British SSNs were tasked to demonstrate their capability to seek out — and potentially destroy — such a menace.

As the commander heading up STWG it was time to see what the Tigerfish Mod 2 could achieve in the Arctic. To further this, April 1988 found Conley clambering out of a twin turboprop Casa aircraft, gingerly stepping onto the ice of the frozen Beaufort Sea to the north of Alaska. The cutting blast of Arctic air reminded him that this was an odd place for a submariner; it was a lot more comfortable under the ice, cocooned in the warm pressure hull of a SSN.

He had arrived at the ice camp of the United States Navy’s Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station, or APLIS, to supervise a series of under-ice Tigerfish torpedo firings. Two British SSNs were involved, HMS Turbulent, Commander Ian Richards, and HMS Superb, Commander John Tuckett. They would be joined by the USS Lapon which was on her way from the Pacific Ocean, conducting a submerged passage below the ice by way of the shallow Bering Straits which separate the isolated American state of Alaska and the Soviet Union.

The Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station had been set up on the first-year ice which had sealed off a former polyna — or ice-free channel. This meant that the ice was relatively thin and the fact that it was ‘new’ meant that it was also relatively flat: a sheet of ice, rather than the jumble of ragged projections formed by prolonged movement and collision to be found in ‘old’ ice. APLIS was situated 120 miles northeast of the oil town of Prudhoe. A landing strip had been established on the flattest area of the ice and a number of temporary prefabricated huts and framed tents provided accommodation and a command post. The base facilities included a three-dimensional range, which enabled the accurate tracking of both the submarines and the torpedoes they were to fire. This was a technical challenge, as the range equipment had to contend with both the complexities of ice drift, caused by the effects of the wind — up to six or seven miles a day — and the Coriolis effect, a phenomenon caused by the earth’s rotation which creates a slow anticlockwise rotation of the ice sheet around the pole. The setting up and running of the APLIS organisation had been contracted to the University of Washington State, which would also remove all equipment and trials debris when the tests and trials were completed by the end of April. The station was under the command of the officer in charge of the Submarine Arctic Laboratory, based in sunny San Diego, Captain Merrill Dorman, USN.

In addition to observations, measurements and other data acquisition, there were the practical problems of recovering torpedoes at the end of their run. This was to be achieved by a combination of American civilian divers and helicopters. After recovery the weapons were then shipped by light aircraft to Prudhoe airfield where a team of civilian specialists from the armament depot at Coulport near Faslane would make them safe to be airlifted by RAF Hercules back to Anchorage airport for onward shipping. As these experimental firings were highly classified, the cover story for the Coulport team was that they were researchers from Nottingham University. For some reason they were dressed in Royal Marine camouflage fatigues, but as Arctic gear had been ordered but was not available, the team were to some extent hoist by their own petard in wearing jungle fatigues instead. It was also notable that, since they spoke with strong west of Scotland accents, few — Conley among them — were under any illusion as to the efficacy of this ruse.

The greatest danger to the people working on the ice was the presence of the Arctic’s largest predator. Polar bears had been spotted near the ice station and all personnel were warned to be careful when leaving the immediate environs of the camp. In the station command hut there was an array of rifles and shotguns and it was normal routine to select a few weapons before any foray was made away from the station in case of having to deal with an aggressive bear.

A prerequisite for spending time at APLIS had been to undertake Arctic survival training in case the ice under the station unexpectedly broke up. This training largely consisted of surviving for several days in a snow hole in Maine, but as the decision that Conley would direct the initial phases of the firings was made late in the day, he had been unable to complete this prerequisite. In event, however, he found life at APLIS with its accommodation in heated framed tents very tolerable. During the time he was at the camp the temperature never dropped much below –25 °C, but everyone had to be careful to protect themselves against the frostbite induced by the wind-chill factor in high winds and when subject to the downdraught from operating helicopters.

The danger of camping on first-year ice was demonstrated one night, when the ice separated and a large polyna formed, taking a chunk out of the landing strip. A further incident occurred the following morning when Conley and a party of three Americans took two snowmobiles to reconnoitre the extent of the polyna. One of his American companions incautiously approached the ice edge, which gave way, pitching him into the sea. Although the casualty was quickly pulled from the water, his snowmobile was lost to the Arctic Ocean. Fortuitously, a helicopter was readily available to fly the man back to the camp, where he quickly recovered in a sauna which had been put in place for such an emergency. As the senior officer present, Conley had to explain to the station commander how one of the party ended up in the sea with the loss of an expensive snowmobile. The whole incident was a reminder of the hostility of the Arctic environment, where Conley and ‘the students from Nottingham University’ now awaited the subjects of their study, the two British SSNs Turbulent and Superb.

The two submarines heading north for the under-ice firings each carried eight Tigerfish Mod 2 practice weapons, and their submerged passage of over 1,500 nautical miles under the ice from the Greenland Sea to APLIS was a new record for hunter-killer submarines of the Royal Navy. Conley had some appreciation of the anxieties of Commanders Richards and Tuckett; their only exit route to reach open water if anything went wrong was back the same way they had come. With their limited under-ice sonar capability, there was no prospect of them making a through passage to the nearer open water of the Pacific through the Bering Straits, with the possible presence of ice canyons stretching down to the seabed. Although the SSNs had high-definition sonars which mapped the ice either side of them, they were not fitted with ahead-looking ice detection equipment which would be needed to navigate around such features. A fully capable ice detection sonar was still some time in the future for the British SSN.

As most of the Arctic ice pack was thicker than the two or three feet the two British SSNs could penetrate, any serious engineering problem or emergency occurring while under the ice pack would be compounded by their inability to surface without the delay in locating thin ice or a polyna. In the event of one of the submarines losing her propulsion, the contingency plan to dig the boat out from under the ice presumed both that it was able to send a distress signal successfully and that it could be located: neither was a certainty.

The Arctic ice sheet is characterised by a high density of pressure ridges which protrude above and below it. Above sea level these ridges rise to heights in excess of 30ft, but underwater they extend to depths — often called the ‘keel depth’ — of more than 100ft. Therefore, before attempting to surface through ice, a hunter-killer must use her sonar to map the ice thickness above her to both avoid pressure ridges, and to identify a surfacing location of flat thin ice or open water. Having got into the desired surfacing position and having stopped all horizontal momentum, the submarine then carefully de-ballasts to achieve an ideal ascent rate to use the fin (the ‘sail’ in American naval terminology) to punch through the ice.

The hazards inherent in this operation become even more complicated if it became necessary to surface quickly, say in the case of a serious flooding, when there was no time for a careful discovery of a suitable location. Such a scenario would call for rapid de-ballasting and any consequent contact with thick ice which frustrated the attempt to break through would result in an extremely precarious and dangerous situation. Highly positive in buoyancy, there would be a risk of a catastrophic roll of over sixty degrees, severely damaging equipment, putting the vessel into an irrecoverable situation and imperilling the crew.

In the preparation for the operation, Conley, in overall charge of its execution, had burned the midnight oil, carefully reviewing the plans and orders and all aspects of submarine safety. It had seriously concerned him that both Superb and Turbulent were fitted with a new type of inertial navigation system which had not been fully tested in very high latitudes. Considerably worried by the thought of a submarine under the ice losing its prime positional and heading reference, he accordingly had spent much time gaining assurance from its designers that this equipment would be totally reliable as the boats headed over the top of the world.

Once the operation was initiated, Conley could only head for APLIS and await the outcome and, as the estimated time of arrival of the two submarines approached, he could be found crouching next to the underwater telephone in the APLIS command hut in the Arctic twilight. It was thus a relief to hear faint and distant transmissions indicating the boats had made their passage successfully and would soon arrive.

On her arrival, Commander Richards of HMS Turbulent reported a serious problem with his oxygen-making electrolysers. Having had to fall back to burning special devices which generated oxygen — called ‘oxygen candles’ — she needed urgent replacements. Indeed, having penetrated the pack ice, Turbulent’s commanding officer had made the brave decision to press on to APLIS, past the point of no return in terms of having enough oxygen candles to return south, clear of the ice.

Conley swiftly made arrangements for a supply of oxygen candles, while Richards prepared to bring Turbulent to the surface in a polyna several miles distant from the ice station in order to ventilate the boat with fresh air. Meanwhile, Conley, having been landed by helicopter beside the polyna with a small group to await the surfacing, suddenly realised that the shotguns usually carried on such forays had been left in the helicopter. Preoccupied by carrying a portable underwater telephone and other equipment from the aircraft, the guns had been left behind. During the next few hours an apprehensive Conley kept a very sharp lookout for any polar bear stalking them behind the surrounding ice ridges. In due course, at a later surfacing, and in what may well have been the most unconventional ‘replenishment at sea’ ever, an adequate number of oxygen candles were supplied to Turbulent.

On reaching APLIS from the Pacific through the Bering Straits, the San Diego based USS Lapon conducted the first of a number of under-ice surfacing tests. Conley witnessed this evolution in the company of a number of scientists who were collecting data. A few minutes before the event, Captain Dorman arrived at speed on a snowmobile and declared that ‘two bears were on the way’, and would shortly reach the surfacing site. However, observing some people starting to check out their rifles, he quickly made it clear that the bears in question were actually Soviet Bear reconnaissance aircraft. Indeed, a few minutes after the Lapon surfaced, her sail having broken through the ice, she was overflown by the two Russian aircraft at very low altitude, closely pursued by two USAF F15 fighters.

Shortly after surfacing, the Lapon’s commanding officer, Commander J Mackin, climbed out of his submarine and joined the welcoming party on the ice. He was accompanied by his Arctic pilot, an experienced under-ice navigator who had provided guidance and advice to Mackin and his command team during the passage. After an exchange of pleasantries, Mackin revealed that he had concerns about a steam leak on his propulsion machinery. This potentially involved shutting his plant down to effect repairs; San Diego must have seemed a long way away.

Coincidentally, later that day, the ice station was overflown by one of the RAF Hercules freighters. Whilst at Prudhoe, one of the aircraft captains had indicated that he was keen to land his Hercules on the ice, as this had never before been achieved by the RAF. However, after a few passes, and no doubt having concerns about the landing strip’s length, shortened by the fissure in the ice, the ambitious air crew wisely decided not to attempt a landing.

In the following few days both Turbulent and Superb fired their sixteen Tigerfish Mod 2 torpedoes in a near flawless series of evaluation firings, and all the weapons were successfully recovered. Most of the firings were conducted against each other, the submarines alternating as targets; however, some weapon runs were against static acoustic targets. These were configured to represent a stationary Typhoon or Delta IV SSBN hiding under the ice. The weapons performed extremely well in the quiet Arctic conditions, achieving long-range passive homing detections. Even in the active mode, where the torpedoes’ homing systems had the problem of resolving the real target from contacts generated by returns from the ice features, the weapons homed remarkably reliably. Accordingly, the Americans observing the firings were impressed by both the weapon’s very solid performance and their precision guidance, which enabled them to be parked under suitable flat, thin ice at the end of their run, ready for recovery.

At about 1,000ft or more the underwater visibility was remarkable, thus helping the job of weapon recovery. The routine for this consisted of creating two holes in the ice about 3ft in diameter, one for a diver, the other for the torpedo. Once the diver had attached a harness to the weapon, it was connected to, and drawn upwards by, a helicopter. Perhaps surprisingly, no weapon was significantly damaged, although at least one had to be recovered from underneath ice rubble about 20ft thick.

With the trials progressing successfully to Conley’s satisfaction, his spell at the ice station was over. He soon found himself the sole passenger in the back of a Casa on the way back to Prudhoe, sharing a very noisy aircraft hold with two Tigerfish. About half an hour into the flight, he awoke from a doze to the noise of a distinct change of pitch on the aircraft’s engines, simultaneously noting with great alarm that the pilot was wildly gesticulating downwards, pointing to the ice and circling the aircraft to lose altitude. The prospect of a crash landing on the ice, seated between two torpedoes, filled Conley with real foreboding, but then he spotted why the pilot was becoming so excited. There, on an ice floe a few hundred feet below, were polar bears — a magnificent mother and her two cubs.

The 1988 under-ice Tigerfish firings had firmly demonstrated the Royal Navy SSNs’ capability to successfully engage submarines under the Arctic ice pack, putting its hunter-killer submarines’ capability on a par with the US Navy in terms of under-ice warfare. Conley was extremely pleased with the efficient performance of both Turbulent and Superb, given the difficulties of navigating and operating under the deep ice pack. Both commanders and their respective ship’s companies had demonstrated competence of a high order in conducting a series of torpedo firings unique to the Royal Navy. When FOSM Rear Admiral Frank Grenier subsequently briefed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the operation, she was reported to have been ‘absolutely spellbound’, declaring great pride in what had been achieved. Despite having impressed the prime minister, there were no honours awarded to individual members of the submarines’ crews which, given the constraints of security precluding any publicity in the media, struck Conley as a missed opportunity.

Conley was not to know it at the time, but the under-ice firings in which he had played such a central part, almost certainly marked the zenith of the Royal Navy SSN force’s history. Extraordinary and unprecedented and unforeseen events in the following year, both at a grand-strategic and tactical level, were to produce dramatic effects upon the Submarine Flotilla. Unbeknownst to any of the participants, British, American and the reconnoitring Russian airmen, their activities in the high Arctic in those weeks of April 1988 marked the end of an era.