There were some in Washington — not many but some — who cautioned against the post-war tide of national rebirth; but nobody in the White House was listening.
However, not even the most pessimistic of Kennedy’s critics anticipated that things could go wrong so quickly. America enjoyed a year of dominion, mistress of all it surveyed without comprehending that it was the master of nothing.
And then the unthinkable happened.
The next war.
Chapter 10
Lieutenant-Commander Simon Collingwood read his orders one last time and with a sigh and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach he concluded that he had no alternative but to obey them. Flag Officer Submarines was alive and if not exactly on top form, ensconced in a bunker at Devonport Naval Dockyard and his word was law.
There was a knock at the door.
Simon Collingwood turned the two sheets of paper he’d been staring at upside down on the blotter of his narrow desk.
“Yes!”
Lieutenant Dick Manville stuck his head around the door jam.
“The Chief reports he has taken charge of the Emergency War Supplies Store, sir.”
“Any trouble?”
“No, sir. The guards were nowhere to be seen and none of the civilians roaming around the base had attempted to break in. The Chief has posted armed men and he’s gathering up odds and sods for a proper guard detail.”
The Acting Captain of HMS Dreadnought was exhausted but he didn’t have time to be tired, let alone to snatch a few hours sleep. He felt like he’d been in constant motion ever since he was roused out of his bed over thirty hours ago. He stifled a groan, knowing he couldn’t afford to show his weariness even in front of a decent fellow like Dick Manville.
“What about the priority inventory items we need?”
“All present and correct. Unfortunately, there is no reserve for issue to the civilian authorities. There will be hell to pay when the civvies find out, sir.”
Overnight another forty-one naval personnel had reported to Dreadnought. About half these men had been attached to the new Tribal class frigate Mowhawk, fitting out in a nearby dock, others were technicians assigned to the yard, and the remainder either lived in the area or had come to Barrow to report in simply because it was the nearest appropriate base.
Collingwood had sent out a party to secure the local Territorial Army barracks and to seize any weapons it found. He’d surprised himself how quickly he’d begun to make hard decisions. At first he’d hoped to be able to combine the operational imperative of securing the immediate area around Dreadnought and safeguarding his civilian charges, but he’d privately accepted before he’d received orders from Fleet Command that this was not going to be possible.
Most of the civilian dockyard workers had melted away and none of the senior managers had come into the yard since the attack. Simon Collingwood had found himself in command of not only his uncompleted submarine but of the entire dockyard complex. He’d received requests for men to help put out the fires in the town, rescue people trapped in collapsed houses and to provide backup for the virtually non-existent medical services. With insufficient men to secure the dockyard he’d had to refuse all pleas for assistance.
Collingwood hardened his heart anew. In the new world in which they lived today’s hard decisions would be the first of many to come in the days, weeks and years to come. His people, his ship came first. Even if Dreadnought hadn’t been the most sophisticated and the most powerful vessel in the Fleet, even if she’d just been a worn out old minesweeper, she’d have come first. Once he’d reminded himself of his duty his thoughts had swiftly clarified and his resolve set in concrete.
Radioactive fallout was the problem.
Dreadnought could not be made fit for sea for some weeks so she couldn’t steam out into the North Channel and sit out the worst of the radioactive bloom from the attack underwater. Nor could she batten down in the graving dock. She had no internal power and was totally reliant on the land for succour. Therefore, her people, his people had to be protected as best as possible while the boat was being made ready for sea.
Simon Collingwood the man, wanted to protect the civilians sheltering on board HMS Dreadnought; Lieutenant-Commander Simon Collingwood, the acting Commanding Officer of Britain’s first and only nuclear powered submarine didn’t have a remit for sentimentality. In a universe in which the average temperature was approximately two degrees above absolute zero there were, inevitably, times when the well of pity ran dry and this was one such time.
The acting-Captain of HMS Dreadnought redrew his immediate priorities.
One — secure the boat.
Two — draft men with technical or operational experience and, or expertise onto the boat’s roster.
Three — activate the boat’s Westinghouse S5W reactor.
Four — the boat would join 1st Submarine Squadron at Devonport to prepare for her first operational deployment at the earliest date.
Simon Collingwood turned his mind to practicalities.
Securing the boat and identifying men with critical skills would be a relatively straightforward business. Activating the boat’s reactor would be fraught with dangers. Sailing the boat to Devonport he’d worry about if he survived reactor activation.
First things first.
In the training and preparation of its first nuclear submariners the Royal Navy had adopted the tried and tested US Navy model. Simon Collingwood’s training had been long, arduous and comprehensive. He knew Dreadnought’s systems from bow to stern and from the keel to the top of her fin-like sail. Most of all he was a highly qualified reactor engineer fully conversant with the protocols of safe operation and more importantly, all the things that could go wrong with a nuclear power plant. He had medical practitioner’s understanding of radioactive contamination and its effect on the human body.
The radiation monitor he’d had mounted in the cockpit at the top of the sail hadn’t gone off the scale yet. All protective and prophylactic measures against fallout products needed to be instituted now.
Fallout was likely to contain three specific isotopic threats: strontium-90, iodine-131 and 133. Some warheads were intrinsically ‘dirtier’ than others and Soviet weapons tended to be ‘dirtier’ than their western counterparts. However, there was no point worrying about that because there was very little anybody could do to mitigate against the effects of irradiation by the majority of the more esoteric and short-lived fusion and, or fission isotopic by-products. The main thing was to focus on the longer-lived killers that one knew had to be constituent parts of any fallout cloud.
The physics of nuclear fallout both terrified and oddly, reassured Simon Collingwood as he organised his thoughts and regimented his emotions to do what he must do in the next minutes, hours, days and months. The situation was so desperate that only in duty was there a semblance of peace of mind.
The most dangerous fallout by product of a nuclear explosion was strontium-90. Sr90 is a bone seeker which biochemically behaves like calcium the next lightest of the group 2 elements. Like calcium, after ingestion about 70–80 % of the dose gets excreted but virtually all remaining Sr90 is deposited in bone and bone marrow. About 1 % of the total dose accumulates in blood and soft tissue. The presence of relatively low concentrations of Sr90 in bones greatly increases the risk of developing bone cancer, cancer in adjacent soft tissue or leukaemia. The biological half life of Sr90 in the human body was approximately eighteen years. Sr90 attacks the bone marrow and destroys the body’s ability to produce the white blood cells necessary to fight infection. Anybody breathing in air, or consuming food or fluids heavily contaminated by Sr90 might die of something as innocent as the common cold within a week.