The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice

Of all the British fighting arms of the two World Wars, the greatest similarities are to be found in the Royal Navy Submarine Service. The platform itself had developed little in the inter-war years and, whatever improvements had been made, the tradition in the Royal Navy of putting the requirements for equipment above the comfort of the crew, prevailed. True, the submarine had become larger, which meant that it now had more torpedo tubes and greater reload capacity; the gun had a longer range and a bigger arsenal; its endurance had been enhanced through more powerful engines and higher fuel storage capacity; communications were now an integral part of submarine warfare; and a ranging form of ASDIC for mine detection had been added to its tactical capability. But all these enhancements called for a higher manning requirement, so there was no relief on the demands for internal space.

Thus, for the men, little had changed. Living conditions were cramped and sanitary arrangements were crude. Minor compensations were the fact that everyone smelled the same, and the daily tot of rum for the sailors (issued on surfacing) was served neat rather than watered down as ‘grog’. Even though by the start of the Second World War the majority of submarines were fitted with Escape Towers and the Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus (DSEA), ‘the war orders were that all escape and other hatches, except the conning-tower hatch, were not only to be clipped internally but also secured by a steel bar externally to prevent a hatch jumping its clips due to depth-charging.’2 Thus the chances of escape once sunk were remote in the extreme.

The two areas of specialist operator growth witnessed between the two wars lay in communications and underwater listening. In the First World War, because of the lack of experience in Wireless Telegraphy (W/T) in the Submarine Service, it was necessary to call for volunteers from the ranks of Boy Telegraphists as they left training in HMS Vernon. There were 16 recruited throughout the war, the youngest of whom was 16½, and of these nine perished. There was a single Hydrophone Listener in the later submarines of the era. In the Second World War the W/T staff had grown to four in number, and the Higher Detection (HD) rating occasionally had an assistant, although a Radio Operator was often to be found on the ASDIC set.

In addition the submarines’ modus operandi had changed little. Although they could travel further and stay on patrol longer, they were still weapons of position in that they relied on their targets to come to them, unless the playing field was levelled by mutual physical constraints of restricted waters; they were required in large numbers to be effective; they still relied on the cover of darkness to allow them to charge their batteries, the life blood of the submarine, and conduct their transits; the sextant and astro-navigation still told them where they were (some of the time); the torpedo was still essentially a straight-runner, whose reliability was sometimes in doubt; and the commanding officers still attacked by eye. In the First World War, in addition to being a torpedo boat, the submarine was used as a minelayer, anti-submarine patroller, shore bombardier and, on one famous occasion, a platform from which to launch a ‘special forces’ operation (HMS E11 and a Turkish viaduct). In the Second World War they were used as gun-boats, minelayers, troop-carriers, store-carriers, tankers, navigation beacons to guide surface vessels, rescue stations to pick up downed pilots, reconnaissance units, survey ships, convoy escorts, anti-submarine vessels, power stations to supply electricity ashore, and for landing and taking off agents on enemy soil.

But above all else their primary role was to disrupt enemy supplies by sinking their shipping; they were weapons of attrition. However, unlike the Germans in the two World Wars and the Americans in the Second, who did most of their attacking on the surface at night in the open sea, preying on large convoys and relying upon their low profiles to avoid early detection, in both wars the British had to seek out their targets in heavily defended waters, much of it shallow and richly populated by mines. As a result they conducted most of their attacks submerged by day, or, if circumstances were favourable, by a brief visit to the surface to use the gun. It was constantly dangerous, and the virtually guaranteed outcome of an attack was a ‘bollocking’ either from escorting anti-submarine (A/S) vessels or aircraft. Commander Ben Bryant, who commanded HMS Sealion and Safari between 1939 and 1943, described the submarine as ‘expendable’3, and perhaps the final telling factor of similarity lies in comparison of loss rates for the World Wars. In human terms, the number of men lost was roughly equivalent to the number serving at the start of the conflict (First World War 1,200/1,418, Second World War 3,200/3,383), and in hull terms, losses were approximately 35 per cent of the total that saw active service (First 57, Second 74).

So lightning did indeed strike twice on a myriad of occasions in British submarines, but how and why, and what could possibly induce a young man to join a life redolent of sardines in a can and with a high chance of ending up just as dead?

Rudyard Kipling attempted to define the submariner in 1916 when he sought to find the origin of the sobriquet that had become attached to the service, still only in its 15th year of existence:

‘No one knows how the title “The Trade” came to be applied to the Submarine Service. Some say the cruisers invented it because they pretend that submarine officers look like unwashed chauffeurs… others think it sprang forth by itself, which means that it was coined by the lower deck, where they always have a proper name for things. Whatever the truth, the submarine service is now “the trade”; and if you ask them why, they will answer, “What else can you call it? The Trade’s “the Trade” of course!’4

A very similar sentiment was expressed by another observer many years later. Following his analysis of the circumstance of every British submarine loss, A. S. Evans concluded that ‘the small dank and foul-smelling interior [of a submarine] crammed with noisy and temperamental machinery, was no place for the faint-hearted; it took first-class men to withstand the unsavoury conditions and to perform skilled work with efficiency and with at least a modicum of cheerfulness.’5 So, from the very beginning submariners had to be submarine ‘types’.

In short, there was a submarine ‘type’ who wanted to belong to a ‘trade’, but this is still far too nebulous to lead to an understanding of why men sought to sign up. Perhaps a ready source of recruitment, consistent with the prevailing view that submariners were ‘pirates’, would have been the gaols, as suggested by Lieutenant Commander Williams-Freeman of HMS H9 in 1915 when he wrote, ‘I cannot conceive why they hang a man, when the foulest crime to be seen would be punished two-fold if they gave him life, and put him in submarines!’6

A better clue is provided by Captain W. R. Fell, a veteran of the Great War submarine operations and mentor of Charioteers (human torpedomen) and X-craft (miniature submarines) during the Second World War, when he stated:

‘To serve in submarines is to become a member of the strongest, most loyal union of men that exists. During the First War and the 21 years of peace that followed, the Submarine Branch was an integral part of the Royal Navy, subject to its discipline and obeying its laws. But it was still a “private navy”, inordinately proud of its tradition, jealous of its privileges, and, if slightly inclined to be piratical, the most enthusiastic, loyal and happy branch of the Service.

Scores of people ask, “Why did men join submarines and how could they stick in them?” There are many answers to that question. For adventure and fun at the outset; then because of the intense interest, and because of the variety of tasks that must be at one’s fingertips. The submariner must be a navigator, an electrician, a torpedoman, a gunnery type, and even a bit of a plumber. He must know men and get on with them, he must use initiative and tact and learn to enjoy hard living. He must accept responsibility when young, and not misuse it. There is every reason why he should join and delight in joining submarines, but the greatest joy of all is the companionship, unity and feeling that he is one of a team.’7

It was not only the officers who felt the strength of the team. Telegraphist William Halter of HMS D4 recounts his experience in 1914:

‘It was an exclusive service because nobody but a submarine rating was allowed in a submarine. We got more pay and a very stiff medical examination. Your character had to be perfect to get in and we were regarded as something a bit special. We went to [HMS] Dolphin for training, messed in the hulk and slept in the Fort [Blockhouse]. Discipline was quite comfortable and after instruction you could lie in the sun on the ramparts; a very different navy altogether. When we got in the boats we were so near the officers… every one was close to each other. No red tape, no falling in and out.’8

Certainly the experience of Lieutenant Leslie Ashmore bears out Fell’s words concerning adventure. He relates: ‘I had ambitions to get into some branch of the service that would give more scope to a junior officer. Watchkeeping and coaling were eating into my soul.’ He found himself visiting the shipbuilding firm of Vickers Ltd in Barrow, Britain’s principal builders of submarines and:

‘…the sight of so many of these sleek little craft in various stages of construction seemed to suggest a solution to my yearnings. It was therefore not entirely by chance that I struck an acquaintance ashore with two officers, considerably my seniors, whom I knew from their conversation were submariners standing by HMS E18, which was nearing completion. The attraction of their mysterious trade for me must have been very obvious and I was soon being questioned by the senior of the two, Lieutenant Commander Halahan, captain designate of E18, as to what I was doing and whether I would like to transfer to submarines.

Evidently Halahan thought me likely material, for next time he visited the Admiralty, he pulled various strings with the result that I received orders to join the Submarine Depot ship HMS Bonaventure at Newcastle. In those days, entry into the submarine service was as simple as that. There were no organised training classes and the young enthusiast learnt the rudiments of his trade by going to sea as a “makee-learn” in an active service boat.’9

Although training became more formal as time progressed, nevertheless learning on one’s feet continued as a basic principle. The 1940 experience of Lieutenant Phil Durham, though not typical, nevertheless underlines the principle. As a midshipman Durham had seen active service in a battleship, an anti-submarine trawler (of which he was second-in-command), a ‘County’ Class cruiser, a destroyer and a battlecruiser, and had earned a Mention in Dispatches, yet his goal remained service in submarines. While awaiting training class, he filled his time by joining the training submarine HMS L26, and spending a fortnight of ‘daily seagoing, diving, gunnery and torpedo practice’, after which he ‘had made drawings of air and electrical systems and was able to trim and handle L26 dived’. His enthusiasm made sense of the ‘bewildering mass of pipes, gauges, dials, levers, switches, hand wheels, air bottles, electrical control boxes for rudder, fore and after planes, and centrally, the aluminium ladder leading to the conning tower and the outside world.’ Like Ashmore his talent was also spotted by a senior officer, in this case the revered Commander Jackie Slaughter, who sent him off to join the recently captured German U570 (HMS Graph) with a warning to the Commanding Officer of Durham’s lack of experience, but suggesting that since he had no knowledge of how a modern British submarine was handled, he had ‘nothing to unlearn in finding out how a U-boat worked.’10

It was not until the trainee submariner got to sea that the real test of character began. Ashmore described conditions in the ‘C’ Class in 1915 as:

‘…primitive in the extreme. There was one bunk for the Captain, but all the others had to sleep on the deck, there being no room to sling hammocks. When diving, the atmosphere quickly became foul, fumes from the petrol engine adding their quota to the normally fetid air… Sanitary arrangements consisted simply of a bucket passed up through the conning tower on surfacing. The periscope was raised and lowered by hand winch. By the time we had been dived for some 15 or 16 hours it was as much as one could do to operate it.’11

He also declared that ‘during these early patrols I got to know the characters and temperaments of my fellow officers and of the ship’s company in a way and a speed only possible in the cramped space, enforced intimacy, and shared responsibility of a submarine.’12

His sentiments concerning the atmosphere were echoed by ‘Stoutfellow’ in the ship’s magazine of HMS Oxley of Second World War vintage:

‘One soon gets used to the smell of feet

Of the bath drain blown on the bathroom wall

Of mildewed socks and of putrid meat

One gets to know and like them all

We get so we hardly notice

The smell of fuel and oil

And from ham and halitosis

No longer disgusted recoil

But there’s just one smell like an angry skunk

That, wafted aft by the breeze

Keeps me tossing in my bunk

The smell of that blasted cheese!’13

Add to the smells the daily grind of watchkeeping and the hardships involved in conducting even the simplest functions, and one must begin to wonder if the enthusiasm of Ashmore and Durham (and thousands like them) was not totally misplaced. A letter home from Signalman Gus Britton of HMS Uproar in 1944 summed up the sailor’s life and routine:

‘We have lockers about the size of coffins… and a small table in the fore-ends. Hanging from the ceiling there are about 15 hammocks, so if you want to move around you have to do so in a crouched position… Potatoes and cabbages are piled in one corner and, as it is as damp as Eastney beach, after six days there is the horrible smell of rotting vegetables, and refuse is only ditched at night; and on top of that there is the smell of unwashed bodies… At the moment we are doing about 18 hours dived every day so you can guess that it is pretty thick at night.

What a blessed relief when, at night, comes the order “diving stations” and about 10 minutes later “blow one and six”. The boat shudders as the air goes into the ballast tanks and then up she goes! I am at the bottom of the ladder… and then the captain opens the hatch and up rushes all the foul air just like a fog, and if I did not hang on I would go up with it as well. Beautiful, marvellous air… we are provided with top-notch waterproof gear but the water always seems to find a weak spot to trickle into. Up on the swaying bridge, with a pair of binoculars which you try to keep dry to have a look around between deluges of water, soaked and frozen, you say to yourself, “Why the **** did I join?” Then when you are relieved, you clamber down the ladder, discard all the wet gear and go into the fore-ends, have a cup of cocoa, turn in and, as you fall asleep, you think, “Well it’s not such a bad life after all.”’14

Halfway through this catalogue of complaint Britton hastily points out to his parents (his father himself a submariner): ‘Before I go any further don’t think that I am complaining because I really love submarines and this sort of life, and I wouldn’t swop it for anything.’

Not that surfacing at night, with the promise of the hot meal, a smoke, and the opportunity to ‘ditch gash’ was guaranteed utopia. It could be blowing a gale, and submarines, whatever the era, are wretchedly uncomfortable when on the surface in a storm. The misery was eloquently penned by Lieutenant Geoffrey Larkin RNVR, a human-torpedoman in 1942:

‘I can feel, see and hear for a space

The blindness and the deafness both have gone.

Again I feel a love towards my race

Who recently I hated loud and long.

I feel an urge again to smell and eat

The faintest of a half felt urge to sing.

Strange, since my recent thoughts have been delete

And minus, strike out – leave not anything.

I know this saneness probably will last

And flourish just as long as we remain

At rest. Though still I hope this daily dying’s past,

I feel tomorrow’s dawn will see again

The same insensate blankness – nothingness.

A life of one dimension – of complete

And utter soul destroying hopelessness,

Longing for death and spared that final treat

Now for a while, tho’ ’tis but short and sweet,

I smell and taste, and can appreciate

The beauties of this life, and can create.

When she begins to roll – I terminate.’15

Those who were sea-sick missed out on the delights of the submarine menu. During the First World War submarines did not carry trained cooks, and kitchen facilities were limited to one hot plate and a ‘fanny’ (water boiler). Submarine comforts (during both wars submariners got the best of provisions that were available) consisted mainly of tinned fare – soup, sausages, bacon, ‘tickler’ jam (even in the 1980s this was always plum-flavoured!), and bottled confections such as fruit. Ironically, fresh vegetables like onions and cabbage, sources of much-needed ‘roughage’, were invariably banned by Commanding Officers because of their residual smell! Bread and potatoes lasted only a few days, but by 1939 most submarines had trained cooks, and they would bake bread overnight for next morning’s breakfast. The range of processed foods available to them had also improved. Tinned sponges – perennially referred to as ‘Mrs B’s’ – became a firm favourite, and ‘pot-mess’, a conglomeration of left-overs, would make a regular appearance on the menu. As patrols became longer, food, like the receipt of mail, played a larger part in the ‘morale factor’ and chef’s creations gave rise to many hours of debate.

Since the most basic of human needs is to relieve one’s bowels, it is unsurprising that the ‘heads’ (or often the lack of them) are a common unifying bond for submariners of all generations. Constipation was a constant companion, but because of the limited diet, lack of exercise and, to begin with at least, sheer embarrassment at having to ‘perform’ in front of an audience, often only a ‘pill’ would sort out the problem. The most famous pills in RN submarine history were those taken onboard HMS E9 in 1914.

Max Horton was engaged on a week’s scouting duty in the Heligoland Bight early in the war, cruising with periscope awash by day and lying ‘doggo’ on the bottom at night.

‘Five or six days of this cramped existence, living mainly on tinned foods, had affected very seriously the digestive apparatus of one of his officers. The latter, seriously perturbed, decided on drastic remedies, and before turning in one night demolished about ‘half a guinea’s worth’ of a certain well-known brand of proprietary medicine. By the early hours of the morning the result of the experiment had passed his most sanguine hopes, but conditions in the confined and stagnant atmosphere lying on the ocean bed are not ideal ones for such shattering effect. That, at any rate, was the view taken by Horton and the rest of the crew. The latter sacrificed their morning beauty sleep without a murmur of protest when their commanding officer decided to rise to the surface an hour before the usual time. All on board were unanimous in expressing an earnest desire to fill the lungs with fresh morning air with as little delay as possible.

The boat rose slowly, Horton’s eye to the periscope. The pleasing sight of the German cruiser Hela was reflected to his delighted gaze as she steamed slowly by, and within two minutes she was sinking, a torpedo in her vitals. It was that box of pills, undervalued at a guinea, that brought Horton to the surface at that propitious moment.’16

Horton, probably the greatest submariner in our history, strode the two World Wars like a colossus. His renowned attacking and leadership qualities during the First War carved out for him a glittering career and reputation, while his performance as Flag Officer Submarines in 1940–42, then as Commander in Chief Western Approaches 1942–45, earned him a place in the annals of outstanding national military leaders. He was also the first submariner to raise the Service’s battle ensign – The Jolly Roger (JR). After his successful patrol he remembered Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson’s words that ‘all submariners captured in war should be hanged as pirates’17, and raised the flag on entering harbour to denote his achievement. The practice of flying the JR on returning to home base, now adorned with symbols to depict a variety of activities, became standard practice during the Second World War.

However, back to basics; there are numerous stories from both World Wars about some submariners’ total aversion to using the heads, but few took it to the extremes of Lieutenant Commander Robert Halahan, Commanding Officer of HMS E18. Leslie Ashmore tells the story:

‘For Halahan I had great respect and affection. He inspired considerable devotion amongst his juniors and repaid it by resolute and fearless leadership. He had one idiosyncrasy, I remember, which used to cause us some anxiety. He could never bring himself to submit to the uncomfortable complications involved in the use of the submarine’s rather intricate sanitary arrangements. He therefore insisted, no matter where we were, in taking the boat to the surface every morning so that he might exercise his natural functions in a simpler way over the side.’18

One day the inevitable happened and they were ‘bounced’ by a German airship. The Captain scrambled down the ladder ‘pantalone en bas’ and the boat escaped with a minor pounding.

However, the inability to handle ‘intricate sanitary arrangements’ that resulted in exploding heads discharge bottles did take their toll on the unsuspecting or the untrained, either at best by providing the operator ‘with his own back’, or, as on two sad occasions, death. This poem, from HMS Torbay’s ‘Periscope Standard’ in 1944, warns of the worst case:

‘This is the tale of Joe McGee

Who couldn’t work our WC.

He didn’t realise when to vent

Nor did he know just what flush meant.

And so, with pressure ninety pounds

(Accompanied by explosive sounds)

He pushed on the lever “Hard a’ blow”

With hull valve shut (cor stone a crow!)

A second later Joe was seen

Impaled upon the Fruit Machine

Where, there unto this day he sticks…

Grim warning to those men whose tricks

With submerged heads, with hands unskilled

Come close each day to being killed.

All because they do not know

When to flush and when to blow.’19

Living was hard enough, but to this must be added the strain of being under attack. Ben Bryant again:

‘The swish, swish of the propellers of the hunter passing overhead, the waiting for the explosion of the charges as they sank slowly down. Had they been dropped at the right moment? Were they set to the right depth? The knowledge that there is no escape, that you must just wait for it. Then the shattering roar, the lights going out, the controls going slack as the power is cut, and the paint raining down. Then silence and the faint sounds of running water where a gland has started to trickle. It seems magnified one hundredfold – a serious leak is what you dread. For a few there is something to do, to make good the damage, provide alternative methods of control; others just have to wait for the next attack… For the CO being under attack was an absorbing business, you had far too much to think about to have time to be frightened. I always imagined it was very much worse for the crew, though most of them were kept pretty busy in controlling the boat as you twisted and turned, speeding up and slowing down. However, they never seemed to mind though critical interest was taken in the performance of the chaps up top – all of whom, judging by the remarks, had not only been born out of wedlock, but, blessed with amazing stamina, were credited with an almost continuous indulgence in the sexual act.’20