Vanguard
The story I'm about to tell you is classified ‘UK TOP SECRET – WESTMACOTT’ sealed until 2065. If I die suddenly, in mysterious circumstances, send this document to every national newspaper. I'm William Kidd, ex-skipper of the Royal Navy ballistic missile submarine, HMS Vanguard. I always wanted to go to sea, and, in my twenties, I became a Dolphin – a sailor who lives and works under the waves. Married with three kids now, I realise I've spent more time down under than at home. I'd dedicated my career to the Silent Service, but things will change only if senior operational officers like me break ranks and speak out.
Returning to Faslane after my last, somewhat eventful patrol, I was summoned to a Naval Board of Inquiry to explain my actions on tour. But the desk Admirals had no truck with my allegations of cost-cutting in submarine operations, in case it jeopardised their strategy to secure the £50bn Trident Replacement. In their infinite wisdom, they decided I’d done my last dive – so I was pensioned off and gagged up – because of the events I’m about to relate.
Eight weeks into our three-month run we were diverted from normal tasking to hunt a Russian boat suspected of interfering with surface operations. It’s the cuts you see – we don't have attack subs swanning around the ocean as much as they used to, on the off-chance Vladimir puts in an appearance, so we were asked, as the nearest strategic asset, to have a sniff. We were in the neighbourhood, at that time, luckily, but boomers aren't designed for attack and evade with surface assets. We don’t know as much about the Russian boats as the Navy lets on, Putin keeps it under tight wraps – a typical KGB operator. Our boys stayed alert, listening for anything unusual. No pinging, by the way, that’s Hollywood stuff – we’d be as well posting our status on Facebook.
In all other respects though, we go about our work like other professions, limited only by the restrictions of the boat. Living and working conditions on the boomer are better than on the attack boats, but human comforts are not top of the pops – there’s no room. Crew quarters are right under the Missile Compartment. Snug doesn’t describe it, even in a boat that’s as long as the Forth Road Bridge is tall there are less than three cubic meters of space per man, and I was one of only three officers who had his own cabin. But, for new ratings, what’s worse than all that is not knowing where they are, just in case the worst should happen. Like MH370.
Of course, I knew. Vanguard cruised five thousand feet above the plateau of the Healy Seamount, a massive undersea mountain. From the summit, there were another six thousand feet to go before its foothills merged into the North Atlantic abyssal plain. Even at that time, we were perfectly safe – Vanguard's operating limit is sixteen hundred feet – and she’d never been down that far.
Renown
We had two crews working shifts of six on, six off. My Executive Officer, Archie Neele, was running the boat and had less than an hour of his shift to go when the explosion happened. I was in my cabin. I’d finished writing up the day logs and was preparing for bed. I can’t sleep at home, but at five hundred feet down I usually have no trouble. Multiple alarms triggered and all thoughts of sleep vanished.
Neele was doing his job calmly when I appeared, snapping into action as wispy black smoke permeated the Command and Control Centre.
‘Fire protocols,' he commanded, as the on-watch crew reacted to the danger. 'Seal all compartments, isolate climate control. Status reports please.’
The safety of the boat and crew was our first concern, so we locked ourselves inside C&CC. Tension crackled through the watch like an electric current. Many were on their first dive and looked to us to reassure them. In a submarine with real nuclear warheads on board, any incident bigger than a blown light-bulb could become catastrophic quite quickly.
‘Power and propulsion?' Neele began his rounds of the watchmen.
'Normal,' the first watchman replied nervously.
‘Reactor levels?'
'Normal.’
‘Pressure hull?'
'Normal.’
‘Sir, CAMP reports that Number Six Tube has breached the Missile Compartment on Four Deck. There’s a launcher propellant fire and toxic smoke.’
Control And Monitoring Position baby-sat our eight Trident II D5 missiles. Each launcher contained twelve MIRV nuclear warheads – and each one could devastate a city the size of London. It’s the cuts you see – only half the tubes have launchers in them. Fire-in-the-hole five hundred feet down could be K-129 all over again if Six wanted out.
‘Casualties?’ Neele demanded to know.
‘No reports sir.’
‘N2 drench,’ said Neele, following procedure for a fire in a sealed compartment.
The MC watch officer broadcast the message with the aplomb of a bingo caller. ‘Attention – MC Four Deck! N2 drench in ten seconds.’
I stepped over to his control panel and inserted my NIACS card into the slot. Any crew on four-deck had to get out fast.
The watch officer flicked some switches, relaying the final countdown. 'Five – four – three – two – one —'
I keyed my PIN and the panel light turned from green to red. High-pressure nitrogen gas flooded the Missile Compartment ten metres behind where I stood, instantly extinguishing any flame – and any life.
Repulse
For safety, I took Vanguard up to launch depth. One hundred and fifty feet.
Within the hour a body and two survivors were recovered from MC.
Lead Engineering Technician William McNeilly was dead. ETS Max Mallowan survived courtesy of an Emergency Breathing System mask but suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds to his chest. Lead Cook Simon Doyle was saved by an EBS mask but was in a coma with facial lacerations, concussion and severe bruising. Damage to missile tube six put it out of commission, but the muzzle hatch remained sealed, preventing sea-water ingress that would inevitably have sunk us. This was the worst accident yet.
The standard operating procedure for a boomer is to remain on station unless there is a real risk of losing the boat, so McNeilly was zipped into a body bag and placed reverently in the food freezer. Commander Neele is Medical Officer in a crisis and I’m accountable for everything that happens on patrol, so we met in my cabin to work out a plan.
‘A launcher doesn’t just explode,’ I opened the bowling to Neele. ‘And why was Doyle in there, not his turf, was it?’
‘CAMP said everything was normal, then bang,’ replied Neele. ‘The men are concerned, sir. Do you think you should speak to them? You know what the rumour mill is like.’
‘Not right away, we have to find out what happened. Have you examined McNeilly’s body?’
‘I’ll do it now sir.’
Neele left and I went into MC. The missile compartment runs a third of the length of the boat and was the everyday workplace of Strategic Weapons System engineers like McNeilly and Mallowan. Why was a cook in there? MC hummed like a malevolent wraith ready to spit fire and death, the ragged orange & black scar of MT6 standing out like a lacerated wound. McNeilly’s body was discovered on the port side, between tubes six and eight. The fire team found Mallowan and Doyle lying behind the forward compartment door.
Made of hardened alloy steel and eight feet in diameter, MT6 disappeared up through decks three and two. The bottom of the tube resembled a burst can of tomatoes – jagged, violently torn metal. Launcher debris littered the floor around it. Engineers’ tools mixed with human tissue polluted the steel deck. Inside, the launcher was similarly damaged but hadn’t moved. Whatever the cause, the missile hadn’t gone live. Something caught my eye hiding in the wreckage – was that part of a vape? On MT8 a heavy access panel gaped wide revealing its empty void and there were shrapnel scars and bloody grey-pink streaks crisscrossing it. MT4 was seared and dented but intact. On the starboard side, all eight tubes were pristine.
I stood back and saw the big picture.
Could we have a bomber on board?
Valiant
An hour later I was back in my cabin with Neele.
‘McNeilly is a mess,’ Neele began with some distaste. ‘The shrapnel from the tube sliced him up but I don't think it killed him. The wound patterns suggest he was sitting down, with his head between his knees. Sir, he was dead before the blast.’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged him. ‘You know this for sure?’
Neele waved a clear plastic bag at me, a bloody lump of dark metal just visible.
‘He’d been shot through the eye with a .22 bullet: his head is like a smashed egg. I think the explosion was meant to cover up the murder.’
‘Fucking hell!’
‘Sir, we’ve changed shifts and the junior watch officers are interviewing the off-shift, man by man. CAMP says five SWS techs had permission to work in MC and no one else had access.’
‘Was Doyle on the list?’
‘No sir’
‘I have to talk to Mallowan —’
A polite knock on the cabin door preceded Sub-Lieutenant Ferguson’s entrance.
‘Sir, Mr Pennington’s compliments. He requests your attendance in C&CC.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Sir, Mr Pennington picked up a signature. It’s man-made, behind and below, and he thinks it’s Russian. Sir, we’re being stalked.’
Vigilant
Finding and tracking a ballistic missile boat is the biggest scalp possible for submariners. Even accounting for the magnifying effect of sound in water the enemy would have to be inside ten thousand yards to hear us. Five miles in an empty ocean of five million square miles? What’s the probability? Well, ask the French, they kissed us in the Bay of Biscay in 2009.
Vanguard is the oldest bus in the fleet so she creaks a bit. Named after Nelson’s flagship at The Battle of the Nile she’d never once fired ordinance in desperation or anger. I didn’t want that blot on my reputation so I slowed her to three knots and dived, hoping the muzzle hatch on MT6 wasn’t compromised. Over the next forty-eight hours I played three-dimensional chess in my head with an unseen adversary.
Then everything changed again. At 03:40 Zulu I was in my cabin, resting. Neele knocked then came in.
‘Sir, Doyle’s dead.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’ Investigating the murder and explosion had taken a back seat recently.
‘Sir, he’s been strangled.’
‘Good God man, what’s going on in this boat?’
Neele was visibly distressed. ‘He’d been connected to monitors and apart from the coma, he’d been stable on a saline IV. He was OK an hour back; then MPO Allerton responded to an alarm five minutes ago and found him with a bandage around his neck.’
‘What about Mallowan?’
‘No change sir, Allerton’s kept him out on a saline and morphine mix.’
‘Can we wake him?’
‘I’ll check sir.’
Neele withdrew, clearly worried. Lt Cdr Pennington was in C&CC – he knew what he was doing – so I decided to focus on the murders. One was bad enough, but two—
Victorious
By 10.55 Zulu I’d read through fifty separate personnel files and spoken to the sub-lieutenants who’d interviewed the crew. I was tired, but the seeds of a solution were rooting. If I was right, there would be another murder attempt before this boat saw daylight again. Both Neele and Allerton felt Mallowan could be woken so we agreed on a six-hour window to weed him off the morphine. Both men were then despatched on missions I judged vital to springing the trap.
Then I laid on my bunk and was instantly asleep. At 16.25 I awoke sharply.
Sub-Lieutenant Ferguson stood over me, fear plastered across his guiltless young face.
‘Sir, we’re stuck in dive. Mr Pennington requests—’
I didn’t wait. Already fully clothed, I dashed out of my cabin, going straight to the sick bay. Doyle was gone. Mallowan looked serene. Allerton confirmed my suspicions. I entered CAMP and checked the access logs. They told me how Doyle got into the MC.
Only then did I go to C&CC. The watch officers were tense but Pennington was his usual calm self.
‘Forward planes are jammed, sir. We’re sinking below 1,600 feet.’
‘Where’s our Russian friend?’
‘No signature these last hours’ sir, I think we’ve lost him – he won’t risk coming down this far. Engineering says there’s seawater in the hydraulic pipes, preventing us from adjusting the planes, but it’ll take a day to fully flush out.’
‘We’ll be crushed on the bottom by then Mr Pennington. Tell the Chief he’s got three hours – otherwise, we’re lost.’
Resolution
At 17:10 I sat in sickbay, unseen behind the door, staring at Mallowan. A shift change was on. Minutes later ETS Guy Richetti entered quietly and approached our comatose patient. He stood a moment as if paying his respects, staring at the burns on Mallowan’s face, then he began adjusting the morphine IV.
‘You can wake up now Mallowan,’ I said. ‘We have our murderer.’
Richetti spun around, instinctively saluting me.
‘Sir!’
Cdr Neele and Sub Lt Ferguson appeared, both with side-arms. Allerton came in and closed the sick-bay door. Mallowan opened his eyes.
‘Well done Mallowan, I don’t know how you did it. Allerton, Ferguson, help him sit up then give him morphine.’
Wearing latex gloves, Allerton removed the cannula and bag Richetti had touched, replacing the IV with a genuine one. Mallowan’s face eased.
‘Isotonic saline,’ I said. ‘With Doyle dead, only Mallowan knew you were involved too. Where’s the pistol?’
‘Sir, I dropped it down the heads.’
‘Lt Ferguson, ask Coxswain Fanthorp to organise a search. Tell him it's evidence to be bagged. Then come back here.’
I turned to Richetti again, ‘You planned to put my boat on the bottom of the sea where she’d be lost forever. When we failed to return home your friends – SNLA I assume – would release news of a disaster of unprecedented magnitude that would wipe Scotland clear of nuclear forever. But for McNeilly and Doyle we’d all be dead. You have sailed with me for years, yet our vetting people never clocked you’d been radicalised. Your mates thought you were simply a fervent supporter of Scottish independence but didn’t think you’d kill them to achieve it.’
‘Nukes don’t belong in a civilised country,’ Richetti spat. ‘But we’re stuck with them. Democracy didn’t work, so it was time for right-thinkin’ men like us to take action. We were willing to die – our names would live on with Wallace and Bruce as liberators of our country!’
‘Mallowan, you saved Doyle’s life in MC,’ I’d heard enough propaganda from Richetti. ‘Then you killed him in here. You’ve been swapping the morphine to keep him under sedation.’
‘He started to come round,’ croaked Mallowan. ‘He knew what went down and if he talked, we was done for. But I couldn’t take the pain any longer, I needed all the morph there was. Doyle’s appearance changed things – we could’ve handled McNeilly – he was fresh on the boat and on top of the job but he knew we weren’t doing standard procedures.’
I put it to Richetti, ‘You shot him.’
‘He saw the bomb – the bastard was gonna shop us. We’d been plannin’ this since the vote went the wrong way. I brought the gun on board just in case. It was so easy – nobody searches us – it's harder to get on a plane.’
‘And the bomb?’ I asked, feeling angry that these idiots would happily have killed the whole crew.
‘Components,’ said Mallowan. ‘Some PE-4 in a Wrigley’s gum wrapper, the detonator inside a vape and a wristwatch for a timer. The launcher had everything else.’
‘PE-4 won’t ignite NEPE-75 propellant,’ I informed him. ‘It explodes but doesn’t burn for long enough. You were trying to trigger the ejection system to force six up through the muzzle hatch, but your bomb just made sure it wouldn’t launch. What happened in there, exactly?’
‘We set up at MT6,’ Mallowan recalled. ‘But McNeilly got suspicious and came over to see what we were doing. Then it got physical. I didn’t know Guy had a gun. Next thing, McNeilly’s dead. Doyle appears from nowhere and grabs the gun out of Guy’s hand. Guy smacks him in the face and he fell, hitting his head.’ Mallowan glowered at Richetti, ‘Then this useless fuck picked up the gun and ran aft, leaving me to mop it up. I tried to dump McNeilly in MT8, it was empty. I opened the hatch but I couldn’t lift him up on my own. Doyle came to and jumped me and we both fell over the toolbox. He started to the forward door and I swung a wrench at his ankles. He tripped, head-butted MT4 and collapsed. I panicked – tried to set the timer on the bomb and ran for the door when the fuckin’ thing went off. I don’t remember anything else.’
I'd heard enough. ‘Ferguson, hand-cuff Richetti and escort him to the brig. Allerton, cuff Mallowan to his bed – he’s not to be left alone.’
Revenge
The hydraulic system patched up, we limped home at two hundred and fifty feet, arriving at Faslane on a bright spring morning. I really thought then it was over – the boat and crew were safe. Everyone just wanted to go home. I signalled ahead, informed the Admirals of events and had the evidence bagged and tagged. I knew why Doyle was in MC, but it wasn’t relevant, it didn’t seem right that secret should come out, in my judgment.
Until a few hours before we sailed up the Firth of Clyde when Allerton reported that Mallowan had died of his wounds overnight.
As it turned out, that would be the official cause of death adopted by the Board of Inquiry for all four deceased.
Richetti was arrested by RNP on arrival at Faslane. His trial never made the news, if it even happened. Allerton is still on Vanguard – he’ll probably go to the breakers yard with her. Ferguson made full Lieutenant and was posted as Naval Liaison to Australia. You know what happened to me, I mentioned it upfront. Pennington was promoted to Commander as the new skipper of Vanguard.
That left one loose end, and you know the Admirals don’t like dangling threads.
I charged Commander Neele with the murder of Max Mallowan by lethal overdose of morphine. Doyle was his lover and Neele signed him into MC, as he’d done many times, on many patrols. Afterwards, he told me he didn’t think it fair for Mallowan to face trial. He and Doyle were to be married at the end of this patrol and the thought of living without him was unbearable.
Neele never made it to Faslane: he too died of his wounds.
No subsequent patrol ever encountered the ghost sub again, but the sound signature is in the database as ‘possibly Russian’. Ironic really – they lost a nuclear missile boat in the Pacific in similar circumstances in 1968 – all hands dead, no nukes recovered.
Wilson Smillie
August 2015