Red Sailor
Airman
- 16
- Jan 20, 2016
Getting Your Own Back
I am currently in Malta as I write this. This afternoon I went down to Sliema Creek where we used to be based many moons ago. It was hard to recognise many familiar landmarks as the whole place has been transformed into an expensive marina full of rich men's toys. It did bring back some old memories though and here is one of them.
If there is a term for a submarine firing a torpedo that decides to malfunction by doing a 180 in return-to-sender mode it would probably have to be "friendly fire". I can testify there is nothing 'friendly' about being on the receiving end of such a mishap even when you know it is fitted with an inert warhead. I am reliably informed that such boomerang malfunctions with both with live and inert torpedoes are not as rare as I first thought, so someone else out there may have had a similar experience.
We were off Malta doing our thing with torpedoes. It was early afternoon and we were into the first in a series of firings before returning to Sliema Creek for the night. To paint the picture I must first mention my old ship mate, Jimmy "Pancho" Villa, a sonar supervisor, who had been drafted in for the day from spare crew due to the illness of our own man . It was no secret in the squadron that Pancho liked his drink and he usually had a ready supply of the amber nectar stashed away somewhere on each patrol, but no one had ever never seen him bother on daily exercises. Pancho was actually a very skilled sonar man but his drinking reputation preceded him, and this led to that old mistake of giving a dog a bad name being made that disastrous afternoon.
The attack team was closed up and the first torpedo fired with Pancho relaying distance to target to the team. One thousand yards, two thousand yards, three thousand yard, etc, all the way out to five thousand yards, and then, inexplicably, the range figures began to decrease in increments of one thousand yards, as the torpedo headed back towards us. Pancho was amazingly calm as he read off the decreasing distances but the skipper was far from relaxed and hastily ordered that "that drunken bugger Pancho" be relieved on the sonar No sooner had his replacement appeared than there was one almighty crashing sound of impact and crunching as the torpedo struck the boat. We immediately blew everything, surfacing to find the torpedo had struck our fin and was firmly embedded there.
As everyone gathered to assess the damage, the skipper, although visibly shaken by the incident was man enough to give this instruction, "Okay, clear the bridge and allow the Chief Tiffy and his men to see what can be done here. Coxswain, get Pancho back in the control room as I owe him an apology in front of the attack team." Being one of the Tiff's on the scene it was soon found that there was not too much we could do with the errant fish which had now become part of the superstructure. We would need dry docking and a couple of cranes to solve the problem. The best we could do was drape the fin and the ends of the torpedo in a tarpaulin for our return to Valletta. To enter Grand Harbour you had to pass beneath the high walls of Fort Saint Angelo, better known to us as HMS St Angelo, home of the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean. You can imagine the red faces as we entered harbour in summer evening daylight and the subsequent p*** taking we got from the lads back at the submarine base.
Investigations did reveal two areas for immediate action/improvements to be made. The data guidance system of the torpedo had failed needing urgent electronic modifications plus the malfunction of our hull sonar transponders giving warning of incoming torpedo attack were highlighted. Not that we really missed the latter at the time as Pancho had already given us ample warning with his professional and accurate running commentary. Perhaps we should have taken evasive action at the first indication of trouble and possibly if our regular sonar supervisor had been aboard we probably would have done so. It is not for me to comment further as I was not privy to the findings of the enquiry that ensued, and being in the engine room at the time a lot of this information came to me after the event. But ifs and ands do not make pots and pans; suffice to say that the skipper retained his command which would indicate that his actions were acceptable to his examining board of officers.
I am currently in Malta as I write this. This afternoon I went down to Sliema Creek where we used to be based many moons ago. It was hard to recognise many familiar landmarks as the whole place has been transformed into an expensive marina full of rich men's toys. It did bring back some old memories though and here is one of them.
If there is a term for a submarine firing a torpedo that decides to malfunction by doing a 180 in return-to-sender mode it would probably have to be "friendly fire". I can testify there is nothing 'friendly' about being on the receiving end of such a mishap even when you know it is fitted with an inert warhead. I am reliably informed that such boomerang malfunctions with both with live and inert torpedoes are not as rare as I first thought, so someone else out there may have had a similar experience.
We were off Malta doing our thing with torpedoes. It was early afternoon and we were into the first in a series of firings before returning to Sliema Creek for the night. To paint the picture I must first mention my old ship mate, Jimmy "Pancho" Villa, a sonar supervisor, who had been drafted in for the day from spare crew due to the illness of our own man . It was no secret in the squadron that Pancho liked his drink and he usually had a ready supply of the amber nectar stashed away somewhere on each patrol, but no one had ever never seen him bother on daily exercises. Pancho was actually a very skilled sonar man but his drinking reputation preceded him, and this led to that old mistake of giving a dog a bad name being made that disastrous afternoon.
The attack team was closed up and the first torpedo fired with Pancho relaying distance to target to the team. One thousand yards, two thousand yards, three thousand yard, etc, all the way out to five thousand yards, and then, inexplicably, the range figures began to decrease in increments of one thousand yards, as the torpedo headed back towards us. Pancho was amazingly calm as he read off the decreasing distances but the skipper was far from relaxed and hastily ordered that "that drunken bugger Pancho" be relieved on the sonar No sooner had his replacement appeared than there was one almighty crashing sound of impact and crunching as the torpedo struck the boat. We immediately blew everything, surfacing to find the torpedo had struck our fin and was firmly embedded there.
As everyone gathered to assess the damage, the skipper, although visibly shaken by the incident was man enough to give this instruction, "Okay, clear the bridge and allow the Chief Tiffy and his men to see what can be done here. Coxswain, get Pancho back in the control room as I owe him an apology in front of the attack team." Being one of the Tiff's on the scene it was soon found that there was not too much we could do with the errant fish which had now become part of the superstructure. We would need dry docking and a couple of cranes to solve the problem. The best we could do was drape the fin and the ends of the torpedo in a tarpaulin for our return to Valletta. To enter Grand Harbour you had to pass beneath the high walls of Fort Saint Angelo, better known to us as HMS St Angelo, home of the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean. You can imagine the red faces as we entered harbour in summer evening daylight and the subsequent p*** taking we got from the lads back at the submarine base.
Investigations did reveal two areas for immediate action/improvements to be made. The data guidance system of the torpedo had failed needing urgent electronic modifications plus the malfunction of our hull sonar transponders giving warning of incoming torpedo attack were highlighted. Not that we really missed the latter at the time as Pancho had already given us ample warning with his professional and accurate running commentary. Perhaps we should have taken evasive action at the first indication of trouble and possibly if our regular sonar supervisor had been aboard we probably would have done so. It is not for me to comment further as I was not privy to the findings of the enquiry that ensued, and being in the engine room at the time a lot of this information came to me after the event. But ifs and ands do not make pots and pans; suffice to say that the skipper retained his command which would indicate that his actions were acceptable to his examining board of officers.
