Sometimes the exercises Oberon took part in involved the clandestine night landing of special forces. One of the most common techniques of doing so was to embark four Royal Marines with two canoes. Surfacing well to seaward of the designated landing spot, the craft and their occupants would be placed on the casing and the submarine would be submerged underneath them. A raised periscope would then pick up a rope rigged between the two craft and the submarine would tow them towards the shore to a suitable release point where they were let go by simply lowering the periscope. The reverse was achieved at a predetermined rendezvous point in darkness by each of the canoes lowering a simple but distinctive acoustic device which the submarine would home onto using its sonar. Steering between the bearings of the two devices would enable the rope between the canoes to be snagged by the raised periscope and the tow out to sea effected. Communication between canoes and submarine was achieved by the means of a simple code passed both ways by red torchlight through the periscope lens.
Conley had but to admire the Marines as they headed towards tricky landing spots such as mango swamps which harboured a variety of unpleasant and venomous creatures. In later years, some of the ‘O’ class were fitted with diver lockout chambers in the fin which enabled Marines to be landed without the need for the submarine to surface. This could be a dangerous operation and one trial involving the Orpheus killed two Marines. The exercise, held in Loch Long, went wrong when the submarine, entering less dense water, suddenly lost her trim and went deep. Her commander increased speed to regain control and the two Marines, having left their chamber loaded with kit, were swept off the casing and were unable to reach the surface.
In November 1970 Lieutenant Conley was informed by his captain that he was to be elevated to the position of first lieutenant, second in command. There had been an evident personality clash between the commanding officer and his ‘number one’ and the latter was to be moved to a shore job in the base. With only three years’ experience in submarines, the twenty-four-year-old Conley knew that he would not have been his captain’s first choice, but presumed there was no alternative at short notice. Difficult months were to follow as Conley bedded into his new responsibilities and headed up a wardroom consisting now of close friends. However, learning from his Sealion experience, he was not to be afraid of privately challenging his superior, whose judgement on occasions could be eccentric.
All too soon the deployment was over, and in September 1971 Oberon left Singapore and headed home on surface passage to join the Third Submarine Squadron in Faslane. On 31 October 1971 the Far East Fleet sailed from Singapore for the last time, ending a ninety-year connection with Sembawang. Most of the remaining barracks and shore buildings were transferred to the Australian army under a five-power agreement (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia) but with no permanent Royal Navy units in the region.
Meanwhile, on 1 July that same year the ‘A’-class submarine Artemis had sunk while lying alongside a jetty at HMS Dolphin. Fortunately, no one was killed in the incident and the three ratings trapped onboard overnight escaped successfully from the torpedo compartment. The sinking was not due to material failure, but incompetence and slack practices on the part of key personnel, who failed to monitor the trim of the submarine during fuelling, allowing flooding to occur through an open hatch near the waterline. Indeed, this incident, where there had been a litany of professional failures, was a severe jolt to the Submarine Service that prided itself in its professionalism.
Clearly, it needed to shake off the somewhat cavalier ethos embedded in a number of its officers and senior ratings. Artemis had been in refit at Portsmouth Dockyard at the same time as Oberon and therefore its officers were well-known to the Oberon wardroom who, on hearing about the event the following day, were very relieved to hear that no one had been killed.
Oberon’s return passage was largely uneventful, again spending some time in South Africa visiting the ports of Durban and East London, in addition to a period alongside for maintenance in Simonstown. In early December the submarine arrived in the Clyde submarine base before departing a few days later for Barrow-in-Furness where she was to undergo a two-month routine docking and repair period in the hands of the Vickers shipyard rather than in the Clyde submarine base as originally planned. This was not welcome news for those married members of the ship’s company, whose wives, having moved from Singapore to Faslane in August, now faced further separation from their husbands
The rather grim Cumbrian industrial town of Barrow was a stark contrast to the bright, vibrant, modern Singapore and although it had the redeeming feature of being very close to the stunning countryside of the Lake District, many of Oberon’s crew found it difficult to adjust to the much longer harbour working hours, the routines of submarine life in northern climes and the loss of their generous overseas allowances. Most of the longer serving officers and ratings, having done their standard two-year time onboard, were being posted elsewhere, but their replacements were not always up to the mark in terms of either attitude or competence in comparison to their predecessors. In particular, the new officers were rather an indifferent lot. For Conley’s part, despite having been onboard well over the two-year mark, he was required to remain in post for another six months for continuity reasons.
Conley and Woods had made a good team, despite the significant gap in age and seniority between them, and the latter had delegated well. At sea he trained his second in command in how to conduct visual attacks against aggressive warships and proved a good mentor. He had also allowed Conley on his own to move the submarine between berths in the dockyard, a challenging experience on his first time, manoeuvring in a narrow basin crowded with warships. A year into the job, Conley had matured and gained much experience, developing into a capable second in command, and possessing a superb knowledge of the submarine’s systems. They were both strict disciplinarians who ran a taut and efficient submarine, where the crew knew exactly what was expected of them in terms of standards of behaviour and performance. Therefore, Conley was sorry to say farewell to Woods, and he was never to build nearly the same level of confidence or rapport with his new captain.
With no barrack accommodation available in Barrow, it was a major challenge to get the crew’s accommodation arrangements sorted out in the run-up to Christmas, most being set up in lodgings run by landladies of a very kindly and hospitable disposition. Conley arranged accommodation for himself in a remote Lake District cottage, where several officers standing by the build of the SSN Swiftsure were already ensconced.
In 1971 the Vickers shipyard and engineering works was a vast, sprawling complex which employed over 13,000 people. Barrow and Vickers were almost synonymous, most of the town’s 80,000 population either working for the company or having a close relative involved in it. The shipyard was a hive of activity with two ‘O’-class boats being built for the Brazilian Navy in addition to Swiftsure and two sister submarines in various stages of construction. Besides submarines, the first of the Type 42 destroyers, HMS Sheffield, was being fitted out, and a small liner was on the stocks. However, in marked contrast to Singapore’s Sembawang, the yard was very inefficient: trade demarcation remained rife, the layout and geographic spread of its facilities were not in the least conducive to good working practices and planning/project management procedures were weak. That said, the management and workers exuded a great deal of pride in their work, and were scornful of many aspects of the standard of work which had been undertaken during the Portsmouth Dockyard refit.