Submarine school

Good BBC series…of course its on Youtube:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Interesting the changes in sonar technology, this series has them hand cranking a little handle to adjust it and now they have computerised waterfall displays with trackballs.

I didn’t know there was a Perisher bit to the BBC series as well, found it on Youtube and will now watch!:)

Funnily enough at Easter I bought from a second hand bookshop, a book called ‘Submarine’ which accompanied a 1984 BBC ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary series of the same name. I believe it was a four parter (the book was dividied into four parts entitled Ocean Safari, Perisher, Submersible to Submarine and finally Bomber).
Part One was filmed aboard the Valiant class SSN HMS Warspite and followed her participation in exercise ‘Ocean Safari’. Part Two followed a group of students on the Perisher course. Part Three dealt with the history of submarines and submersibles from the dawn of history until the first SSNs and Part Four followed the same pattern as Part One only this time it was a Resolution class SSBN HMS Repulse that was the subject vessel.
It was quite an eye opener, back in the 80s the Perisher course was carried out aboard Oberon class SSKs. The graduates back then would either get command of an SSK or be XO of an SSN (the SSK COs eventually becomming SSN XOs).
It was a very informative book and a search of You Tube revealed that at least the first two episodes were available, narrated by John (Bergerac and Midsommer Murders) Nettles.

I agree about the XO thing the program gave the impression that they were all off to captain a submarine. The reality is that it can be several years until that happens. Cmdr Jim Perks who was Teacher on the course went through Perisher in 1999 but didn’t get command of HMS Sceptre until 2005. Considering he later went onto FOST he is clearly a talented chap who was probably identified for greater things early on. One curio note he apparently entered the service as a Writer which is in effect an administrator or accountant.

Actually American Dan is the most likely to get a sub first, if you look at his record he is clearly a golden boy in the USN submarines service, considering they also have far more submarines then the RN: 71 in commission vs 11 there are more to go about.

From the History channel blurb:

Such is the reputation of Perisher, even the US Navy puts some of its finest young officers through the British Perisher Course it. Dan Reiss, who like many of his US Navy colleagues has a strong background in nuclear engineering, is up for the US Perisher Course on the road to command. But first he must prove he can cut it on a Royal Navy Submarine. He faces the additional challenge of relearning everything the British way, but will be shown no leniency from Teacher. Just like all the others he can fail the course at any time..

American Dan is a tactical man. Before Perisher he attended the US Naval War College where he earned a Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategic Studies. He also was a research fellow in the Halsey Alfa Research Programme focused on analysing operational warfare in a denied environment with a peer competitor. The research depended heavily on wargaming at the operational and tactical level. LCDR Reiss’ subsequent tour was as head of C4I & Imaging department at the Tactical Analysis Group in Submarine Development Squadron TWELVE where his primary focus was on developing tactics for photonics systems. He also led a team which revised US submarine periscope employment doctrine.

Presumably they will spend several years, if not longer as XO’s before they have any chance of being captain, so any rough edges will be rubbed off.

Has everyone seen this post, apparently its from Jeff Filmore:

http://www.pprune.org/members/361984-submarine-jeff

I don’t mean to be rude, but only one of them seemed to be even half decent. You’ve also got to wonder how many from countries like Saudi just get through based on diplomatic relations. Hopefully those UK guys will have to go through a LOT more training and exercise before they are allowed to command for real. There is limited availability for exercise, and the submarine fleet is ever shrinking, so it’s understandable that it is hard to keep the standards and skills up.

Well it is difficult to judge considering Perisher takes 6 months I believe including four weeks at sea. Considering it was condensed down to four episodes based around the final part of the course it is fairly difficult to judge.

Despite his safety incident over the trawler “American” Dan seemed fairly sharp which seems logical the Americans are only going to send their brightest and best on the UK perisher course.

“English” Dan looked and behaved totally like someone right for the job.

“Filthy” Filtness seemed to be a bit of a bimbler and the telling off over what made the Submarine service famous (not evading all the time) was painful to watch.

Jeff Filmore seemed a bit of a worrier, when he wasn’t brooding over something he appeared ready to go to sleep.

Frankly I think there was something else going on with the youngest “Oily” Gareth Wragg that I don’t think we were allowed to see. I wasn’t surprised to see him go.

So out of all of them American and English dan were the two I could see in command but as I said before it is a very long course and what footage is chosen is often for dramatic reasons.

Not exactly ” Das Boot” is it ??

I found the series interesting and was actually surprised that the sub was not counter detected more often. It seemed to me that as long as the sea was not calm you had good chance to escape from a T23 and Merlin combo, especially if you could sink below the thermocline or sit next to a rock. It also illustrated why we need a LRMPA and I think made a case for getting our own SSK’s (even it is only to cover the Vanguard’s in and out of Faslane) to counter the increase Russia sub patrols. It also showed the limitations of Absalon’s bow mounted sonar – it also maybe made clear why we did not fit an attack sonar to the T45’s if they are not quite enough to make good use of a towed sonar then a bow sonar is a waste of money against a decent sub.

I don’t mean to be rude, but only one of them seemed to be even half decent. You’ve also got to wonder how many from countries like Saudi just get through based on diplomatic relations. Hopefully those UK guys will have to go through a LOT more training and exercise before they are allowed to command for real. There is limited availability for exercise, and the submarine fleet is ever shrinking, so it’s understandable that it is hard to keep the standards and skills up.

I went through HMS Raleigh with a lad from the Saudi Navy in division with us. He’d got PO rank in his service – by passing a written test. Our divisional PO had to do 20yrs plus active duty in the Falklands to get his rank. The Saudi lad got no favours whatsoever and, quite memorably, our dear PO went to some lengths to find the worst English speakers in the division to help translate for him – finally selecting a pair of Glaswegians who managed to talk at about 492 words per minute with relatively little of it actually English!. Diplomatic relations were left at the gate trust me on that!

Elements of that show, shall we say, seem ‘edited for television’ and dont quite ring true.

I don’t mean to be rude, but only one of them seemed to be even half decent. You’ve also got to wonder how many from countries like Saudi just get through based on diplomatic relations. Hopefully those UK guys will have to go through a LOT more training and exercise before they are allowed to command for real. There is limited availability for exercise, and the submarine fleet is ever shrinking, so it’s understandable that it is hard to keep the standards and skills up.

Oh I forgot to say there was also the embarrassment of having to borrow a Canadian CP-140 Aurora in one episode…