Since Conley’s year as a midshipman was coming to an end, he left the Cambrian on 6 August and transferred by boat to the British India Steam Navigation Company’s Waroonga, which was bunkering in the harbour. He had arranged to complete his homeward passage aboard a merchant ship for the experience it offered. The Waroonga was a cargo liner, not quite the luxurious passenger liner he had hoped for, but a ship bound to a schedule, unlike a tramp ship. In the event, the several weeks he spent in her, visiting Djibouti (at the time a French Foreign Legion outpost), Genoa, Marseilles and Dunkirk, served to broaden his maritime knowledge. With a lascar crew, life in the Waroonga was comfortable and Conley was impressed by the professionalism of her officers, but for the young midshipman, with his sharp eye and quick perception, it seemed a life dictated by routine and commercial imperatives. With individual officers standing the same watches each day, this seemed a dull existence compared to the Royal Navy. Even the menu was governed by the day of the week, so that he began to expect curried chicken on a Sunday.
These comparisons forced on him during his passage home made him focus on his achievement so far. He had, he considered, learned a great deal during his midshipman’s year about the workings of the Navy, how ‘Jolly Jack’ functioned, and what was expected of a junior officer undertaking basic seamanship and the more abstruse skills of bridge watch-keeping. He had been afforded and accepted responsibility, had had several adventurous experiences and served with a friendly wardroom alongside a resilient and committed ship’s company in a happy ship. One of the most enduring benefits of his period as a midshipman in Cambrian was encountering and engaging with people from very different cultures and possessing values other than those of the West; like most seafarers, his eyes had been opened to a wider world.
On his return to the United Kingdom, Conley was promoted to acting sub lieutenant and returned to Dartmouth for his year of academic studies. When this socially very enjoyable but academically disappointing period was over, he spent a further twelve months in the Royal Navy’s specialist schools — aviation, navigation, gunnery, etc — which existed at the time. When the year of courses ended, he and his fellows would be stuffed full of detailed information, a large proportion of which they would never refer to again, but from the social perspective, it was a very enjoyable time. Travelling round the country, staying in a number of stone-frigate wardrooms where a strong sense of camaraderie and first-class facilities existed, Conley was able to enjoy most of his evenings and weekends. Unsurprisingly, it was the serendipitous pleasures that left the most lasting impressions, and the highlight of these was a low-level flight over the north of Scotland from the Lossiemouth naval air station in a twin-seat Hawker Hunter jet trainer. It proved ‘absolutely thrilling’ to fly up a glen in brilliant sunshine at over 500mph, following the contours before cresting the summits of snow-covered mountains. However, kitted out in a tight fitting G-suit, the downside to the experience was a slight feeling of claustrophobia in the cockpit, a worrying paradox for Conley as he had already volunteered for submarines.
In 1967 the Labour government under the leadership of Harold Wilson had made the decision to withdraw British forces from east of Suez and, as mentioned earlier, started to pay off the aircraft carriers. On the other hand, they remained committed to the introduction of Polaris-armed nuclear submarines, despite many of them having been active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, better known as the CND. However, the number of submarines to be built to carry the missile would be reduced from the planned five to four. In addition Wilson’s government also confirmed a commitment to build up a potent force of the nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) following the commissioning of HMS Valiant, the first all-British nuclear submarine.
Thus the Royal Navy with its limited resources was to shift focus from naval aviation to submarines, a clear indicator of Wilson’s intention to abandon underwriting an increasingly outdated foreign policy and move towards shouldering more of the burden of Cold War confrontation. This appealed to Wilson both as an advocate of the ‘white heat of technology’ and as a means of signaling to Washington that in laying down her imperial burden, howsoever reduced her circumstances, she remained a key ally.
4
Joining Submarines
In September 1967, almost exactly four years after arriving at Dartmouth, Conley was appointed to the Submarine School at HMS Dolphin — the submarine base in Fort Blockhouse, Gosport. Here he would undertake the Royal Navy’s twelve-week course intended to convert him into a submariner. The course concentrated on the operation of the Royal Navy’s conventional submarines of the ‘O’-class, the latest so-called ‘diesel boats’ in service. Conley and his colleagues would focus on learning in detail about the submarine systems and the skills necessary to monitor sensors, comprehend the control of the boat and undertake supervised control room watch-keeping when they joined their first operational submarine as a trainee officer.
There was a real buzz about Fort Blockhouse as the Submarine Service was rapidly expanding. The shift of Britain’s nuclear deterrent from the Royal Air Force to the Royal Navy offered a change of gear in the Navy’s fortunes and was the oxygen of liberation for ambitious young officers like Conley. Alongside the top-secret role of the nuclear-powered, Polaris-armed submarines, the first two of the five nuclear attack submarines of the Valiant class, popularly designated ‘hunter-killers’, but known to the navy as SSNs had been commissioned, and the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, had been in service for four years.
The decision by the Labour government of Harold Wilson to confirm stewardship of the nation’s nuclear deterrent to the Royal Navy, while restoring to the Senior Service its traditional task of ‘the nation’s sure shield’, also conferred benefits on the local economies on the banks of the Clyde, the Mersey and the northwest of England. British shipyards were a hive of activity, with six nuclear submarines under construction at Vickers Armstrong’s yard at Barrow-in-Furness and the Birkenhead yard of Cammell Laird & Co. Besides these, three ‘O’-class submarines were being built at HM Chatham Dockyard and Scotts of Greenock for the Canadian and Australian navies, all of which provided a strong industrial base to underpin the Submarine Service’s rapid expansion.
In the post-war years, many submariners had felt that the domination of naval aviation and the Royal Navy’s commitments east of Suez had to an extent marginalised their arm of the Service. Although most of the submarines remaining in commission after 1945 — chiefly those of the ‘T’ and ‘A’ classes — had been modified, there had been no new construction. It was true that some of this modification, known as modernisation, which consisted of streamlining and in some cases enlarging battery capacity to increase submerged speed, extended the ageing boats’ useful life, but it was into the 1950s before the Admiralty turned its attention to a new class of submarine. The result was the Porpoise class, the name vessel of which, HMS Porpoise, was commissioned in 1958. She was followed by seven other boats and to these were added thirteen of the similar ‘O’ or Oberon class. The latter differed chiefly from their predecessors in having a stronger hull construction and the outer casing and fin being made of glass fibre. Highly regarded, not least for their operational low noise level, these were capable of up to 17 knots when dived.