Naval Engineering

Not amateur radio but club members have an eclectic mix of interests which include general engineering, military history and aircraft amongst other things. In that light I thought that I would share two books that I have just finished reading. The first is Hurricats by Ralph Barker. The book was a serendipitous find in a second hand book shop in Stow on the Wold, the UK capital of used book stores. This book details the story of the hurricanes that were used for convoy protection during WW2. These aircraft were considered disposable in that they could not land back on the ship that launched them, and it was considered by may to be a suicide mission by the pilot. The truth is that by no means all the aircraft launched were lost and the majority of the pilots survived.

The story starts in August 1940 when the German Airforce converted the Focke-Wulf FW 200 Condor to an anti-shipping aircraft to attack allied conveys. This caused alarm in the Admiralty because the allies had no effective countermeasure given the radius of operation that the 1200 mile operation that the condor had and the deep reach into the Atlantic following the fall of Norway and France. This came to a head in early 1941 when the total loss to date was 363,000 tons across 85 ships 19 of which were sunk in February alone. 

After a lot of inter service politics between the Navy (who's job it was to protect the conveys) and the RAF (who had capable aircraft and trained pilots) the idea of launching a near-end-of-life hurricane off a merchant ship came to fruition. The official name was Catapult Assisted Merchant or CAM ships. The launch rail was 75 foot long and was mounted of the ships forecastle. The aircraft was boosted to take off speed by a cluster of 3" rockets achieving an acceleration of 3.5G which should be compared to the 2.5G achieved by the hydraulic launch catapults in service at the time on aircraft carriers.

The method of operation was to attack the condors aiming mainly to kill the pilot, as he was the most vulnerable target,  and would precipitate consequential loss of the aircraft and trained crew, and then to either fly to a land base to recover the aircraft, or to orbit the convoy until fuel ran out and the to bail out at around 2-3000 feet aiming to be picked up by a convoy escort. Although a few aircraft were successfully ditched the large air scoop on the belly of the hurricane made ditching hazardous.

The story starts in August 1940 when the German Airforce converted the Focke-Wulf FW 200 Condor to an anti-shipping aircraft to attack allied conveys. This caused alarm in the Admiralty because the allies had no effective countermeasure given the radius of operation that the 1200 mile operation that the condor had and the deep reach into the Atlantic following the fall of Norway and France. This came to a head in early 1941 when the total loss to date was 363,000 tons across 85 ships 19 of which were sunk in February alone. 

After a lot of inter service politics between the Navy (who's job it was to protect the conveys) and the RAF (who had capable aircraft and trained pilots) the idea of launching a near-end-of-life hurricane off a merchant ship came to fruition. The official name was Catapult Assisted Merchant or CAM ships. The launch rail was 75 foot long and was mounted of the ships forecastle. The aircraft was boosted to take off speed by a cluster of 3" rockets achieving an acceleration of 3.5G which should be compared to the 2.5G achieved by the hydraulic launch catapults in service at the time on aircraft carriers.

The method of operation was to attack the condors aiming mainly to kill the pilot, as he was the most vulnerable target, with consequential loss of the aircraft and trained crew, and then to either fly to a land base to recover the aircraft, or to orbit the convoy until fuel ran out and the to bail out at around 2000 feet. Although a few aircraft were successfully ditched the large air scoop on the belly if the hurricane made ditching hazardous.

On ship there were usually two aircraft, two pilot, a flight direction officer (who held the authority to launch over the authority of captain and convoy commander) and a small number of aircraft mechanics.

Despite an initial assessment that 200 CAM ships would be needed only 35 were deployed, of which 12 were sunk. They sailed 175 voyages. There were only a total of 8 operational launches (some aircraft were launched in order to forward deploy them to land bases). Almost all of the pilots were safely recovered following launch and survived their mission. Six enemy aircraft were believed to be destroyed. However the deterrence effect was huge and whilst the Condor continued to be deployed in a U-boat support roll it ended its days as an anti-shipping aircraft. The CAM ships were eventually replaced by small aircraft carriers which were much more versatile and of course were normally able to re-used their aircraft.

A enjoyable book about a fascinating story of engineering improvisation in time of emergency. If you are able to get a copy I recommend reading it.

My second book is On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service an autobiography Commodore Eric Thompson MBE RN. I picked this book up in a charity shop in Reigate along with a number of other interesting tomes.

Eric, son of a WW2 Captain in the Royal Navy,  joined the Royal Navy as a young officer cadet in 1961. His eyesight was too poor for him to become a pilot or a ships commander (although bizarrely he did duty as a watch keeper). Instead they trained him as an engineering officer, with a speciality in electrical engineering. Being first assigned to diesel submarines he had to turn his hand to anything electrical from propulsion systems to wireless sets. During his career in diesel subs he describes the problems that he needed to solve to test a towed sonar array on a submarine that did not really have the correct glands in place to connect the array to the equipment inside the pressure hull. You can imagine the consequences of a failure at depth! Eric became something of an expert in torpedoes telling the story of the very poor performance of the early wire guided aquatic "missiles" and his role in improving them to the point were they were more likely to sink the enemy than the RN craft that launched them.

From diesels to nuclear submarines followed at a time when the RN was staring to roll out these ships and found that it did not have anything like sufficient qualified nuclear engineers. The result was a multi-year qualification course in Greenwich.  It was drummed into the nuclear engineers that safety came first and protocol and procedures must be followed at all time. The requirement for absolutely safety and absolute adherence to procedure as born in the US Navy during the development of nuclear propulsion and was inherited by the Royal Navy. 

Following initial deployment in hunter-killer craft Eric was deployed to the Polaris programme. It was whilst he was duty engineer on a strategic deterrence patrol that he earned his MBE. A steam leak occurred such that normally the submarine would have surfaced for repair. However surfacing a submarine on a Polaris deterrent patrol was unthinkable and would have damaged the reputation of the navy for unfailing diligence in their duty to protect the UK from attack by the Soviet Union. So Eric worked out a procedure to repair the steam leak, which involved shutting the reactor down so crew could work near it which in turn meant running on battery for a couple of hours, pausing work to restart the reactor to charge the battery, rinse and repeat several times. Then when the boiler was repaired he had to figure out how to refill the repaired boiler whilst submerged at sea, something never attempted before.

Eric had an interesting career, several times expecting his career prospects to be terminated and more than once trying to leave the service for personal reasons. Eventually he becomes Commodore at the Faslane base in Scotland, from where he retired.

A fascinating and enjoyable book which is rich in both personal anecdotes and  insights into service life on the RN nuclear fleet during and immediately after the Cold War. 

Stewart/G3YSX