When submarines collide - you can't keep a good man down

Following the passing of my father yesterday, I received a message from a family friend in Carrickfergus, who was in the same BB company as me, in my brother's year at school, and with a longstanding interest in family history himself. The message expressed condolences about Dad's passing, but also asked if I would reprint an article I wrote about him a few years back. 

So hear you go Martin! From Your Family Tree issue 112 in late 2011...

YFT 112 – Case Study: When Submarines Collide

Chris Paton explains how the aftermath of a tragedy in 1999 revealed a much earlier Cold War encounter experienced by his father.

On my father’s 60th birthday in 2005, I gave him an old zippo lighter purchased from eBay on behalf of my sons, which bore the crest of a long decommissioned British nuclear submarine, HMS Warspite. On the side I engraved a simple message – “To Grandad, With Love on Your Birthday – You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”. My father, Colin Paton, has seen his fair share of trauma in his life, not least on his birthday in 1999, when as a train guard working on the Great Western Railway service to London Paddington he survived the Ladbroke Grove train crash. On that fateful October day thirty one people died and five hundred and twenty were injured, including my father, who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. It soon transpired that Ladbroke Grove was not the first time that he had experienced a close encounter with death; in dealing with the train crash old demons soon emerged from a previous near disaster, one which he could not speak of for years.

In 1962 my father joined the Merchant Navy, initially serving as a galley boy, before determining that his real ambition was to serve with the Royal Navy. In March 1963 he signed up to the ‘senior service’, and after basic training at HMS Raleigh in Devonport and HMS Dryad in Hampshire, he was given his first post as an ordinary seaman, serving on board HMS Bulwark. Whilst on the Bulwark he experienced the Borneo crisis at first hand and spent several months in the Far East. In 1965 the real love of his life finally presented itself, however, a chance to join the submarine service.

After a year’s training at HMS Dolphin in Portsmouth he joined HMS Warspite, a nuclear submarine, for his first tour under water. At the vessel’s launch ceremony he invited my grandmother to a reception to celebrate its commission (see pic below), and during the hospitality introduced her to the wife of the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, the guest of honour. 

“Mum, I’d like you to meet Mrs Wilson”, he suggested, to which she replied, “And which Mrs. Wilson is this son?”.  “The Prime Minister’s wife, Mum” was the reply. She immediately retorted “Oh, that Mrs Wilson”, before storming off, making it very public as to where her political sympathies did not lie!

I knew little of Dad’s subsequent involvement in the Navy as a submariner, except that as a child I occasionally got to go on board submarines with my younger brother Colin – I was even christened on board one in 1971, as the first child to be baptised on board HMS Churchill. I knew that he later became a torpedo instructor at Faslane for many years, but did not know much more, other than hearing of tales of manning Green Goddesses during the firemen’s strike in the Seventies, and his many visits to Gibraltar and Singapore. Dad left the Navy in 1978, and said very little about his experiences – until the Ladbroke Grove crash.

During counselling for the incident in its immediate aftermath, he revealed a previous Cold War encounter that had nearly cost him his life. A submariner’s life at that point consisted of long tours of duty under the water, often for months at a time without surfacing, and in the midst of the Cold War, the Royal Navy had much work on its hands keeping an eye on the Soviet forces with whom the West was at loggerheads. This often led the Navy into enemy waters on reconnaissance missions.

In 1968, Warspite was ordered into the Barents Sea to observe a Soviet submarine conducting tests. They shadowed the vessel for several days, hiding behind its propeller to mask the noise of their own approach, and remaining undetected for a considerable period. After a time, however, the Soviets suddenly realised that they were being followed, and turning their vessel, rammed the Warspite in a move feared by every submariner – the ‘Crazy Ivan’.

Dad had just gone off duty, and whilst eating in the mess, experienced the impact of the collision. Warspite suddenly listed 65 degrees to port, and a bottle flew past his face into a clock on the wall above him, shattering the glass panel. Amidst the chaos, he was immediately recalled to the bridge. Arriving in the narrow control room, he was immediately ordered to relieve a rating at the planes controls, which controlled the direction in which the submarine was moving. So traumatised was the screaming rating that my father was forced to punch him to knock him out, in order that he would release his grip on the controls.

The damage had been phenomenal. The Soviet vessel had torn through the central ‘fin’ of the Warspite, knocking out the periscopes, communications equipment and more. With control regained the captain immediately ordered the ship to surface to render the Soviets any aid – as required under naval protocol. They did so, only to realise that the Soviets were signalling for their fleet to converge on the position. The order was immediately given for Warspite to submerge and make good her escape. For several days the enemy fleet tried to locate the British vessel, but the captain had thankfully taken the decision to sail away from the obvious route back to British waters and to take a long way around. Days later, Warspite arrived at the Shetland Islands. Overnight in Lerwick, carpenters were helicoptered out and erected a huge wooden scaffold over the damaged fin, covering it with black tarpaulin to make it seem from a distance as if everything was fine. From there she sailed to Barrow -in-Furness, where a cover story was put out that she had collided with an iceberg.

As a tale, this was more exciting than any Boys’ Own adventure – but was it true? The genealogist in me kicked in and I decided to investigate, in the hope of finding some form of corroboration and perhaps further details. I had my father’s service record, which confirmed his service on Warspite, but I could find nothing about the incident online. Dad did mention that it had been covered in the local newspaper though, back in my home town of Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. A quick ferry trip over the Irish Sea, and sure enough, there it was in the Carrickfergus Advertiser of October 31st 1968 – “Carrick Seaman in Ice Sea Crash”. A few months later I travelled to what was then the Public Records Office in London, now The National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk), to see if I could locate the ship’s logs. Normally these are declassified after thirty years, but to my surprise, I discovered that whilst every month surrounding the incident had been so released, the logs for that particular October were ‘missing’. The only thing I could now do was to place what I had online at my family history website and hope that someone might be lured by it in future months or years, and perhaps reveal more.

The ploy worked – in July 2007 the North West Evening News in England had found my site and turned the story into a feature entitled “Did the Russians Hit Barrow Sub?” To my delight, the article contained two photographs of the submarine, both before and after repairs in Barrow-on-Furness. I was soon contacted by a former shipmate of my father, who had read the piece, and who told me that he had been working in the rear of the vessel at the time as an engineer. He corroborated everything my father had told me. A few days after the first article in the Barrow paper, a follow up piece appeared, and in due course I was able to contact two further submariners who also confirmed the tale. One added that that the damage was so severe that the submarine could only move at a rate of 8 knots, making the journey back a long and terrifying event for all of the crew.  

Although the event has never been formally confirmed by the British Government, the Russians have been more forthcoming. For a book called “Blind Man’s Buff: The Untold Story of America’s Submarine Espionage”, researcher Alexander Mozgovoy was told by Russian officials that after the incident there had been a hole in the Soviet vessel so large that “a three ton truck” could have been driven through it.

I don’t believe in brick walls, only in documents that have yet to be found, and in this case by placing the story onto my family history website I was able to corroborate a story where there was seemingly no other evidence. In 1999, my father, who now lives in Crete away from the site of trains, had the presence of mind to immediately call for the power to the rail lines to be immediately switched off after his train had been crashed into – preventing another collision within minutes on one of Britain’s busiest rail lines. Despite the horrendous casualties, thirty years on his naval training in dealing with disaster had once again kicked in to help save the lives of many.  

RIP Dad x

Chris

Pre-order my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.