Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

power train.

Living Spaces

Coming back forward on the starboard side is the captain's cabin. The accommodations for the commander of a British SSN are positively Spartan by U.S. standards, with the cabin being only about a third the size of that on the Miami. On the forward end of the cabin is a small desk, with a single bunk along the outer bulkhead aft. Maximum use is made of the space, with a bookcase built over the end of the bunk.

Commander Vaughan likes to add a few homey touches to his cabin, like a pile of books on naval warfare (how pleasing to find a hardcover of The Hunt for Red October on top!) in the bookshelf, a small sound and video system paneled into the bulkhead, and a Thomas the Tank Engine bedspread, courtesy of his son. While it is somewhat cramped, and he does not even have a head to share with Lieutenant Commander Davis-Marks, he likes it. It is close to the control room, and he can get to his action station in just a matter of seconds.

If you proceed down the accommodation ladder to the second deck, you find the rest of the living spaces. Over on the port side are the officers' quarters and wardroom. The first lieutenant and the navigator share the single two-man cabin, with the rest of the officers sharing spaces with three-high bunks. There is a single lavatory for the officers in the passageway leading to the officers' wardroom. There are the usual amenities of a stereo and video system, as well as plenty of storage for the liquid refreshments that make the Royal Navy seem so much more civilized at times than the U.S. Navy. A small pantry serves the officers' wardroom, though all the food is cooked in a central galley serving all the men on the boat.

The rest of the crew eats and assembles in a pair of small mess areas (senior and junior ratings) on the starboard side of the second level. They are just as comfortable as the officers' wardroom; the senior rating mess has the added luxury of a bar with both Foster's Lager and John Courage on tap. Like the officers' wardroom, both are equipped with stereo and video systems.

The berthing areas are split (senior and junior ratings), with access for all of them located on the second level. Again, they are three-high bunks with stowage trays for personnel gear. As on the Miami, there are more junior enlisted personnel than bunks, so some 'hot bunking' is required to fit everyone in.

Life Support Systems-The Machinery Spaces

Unlike the 688I-class boats, in which it is all located in one compartment, the Trafalgars have their life support equipment scattered in a series of different spaces in various parts of the boat. The CO scrubbers and the oxygen production plant are down in a compartment on the third level forward, surrounded by an acoustic enclosure. Up on the second level, just above the scrubber compartment, is the air-conditioning plant, also in an acoustic enclosure. Up on the first deck forward, in the same compartment as the forward escape trunk, are the CO/H burners that are used in the event of an emergency. The main H burners are located on the second deck. The two auxiliary diesel engines are located aft in the engine room. The reason for spreading these different pieces of equipment out around the boat is to put them in places where they can be most effectively isolated, from a noise standpoint.

Weapons-Torpedoes and Missiles

Down on the third level and forward, you come to the torpedo room, which the crew calls a 'bomb shop.' Here are stored the various weapons that arm HMS Triumph. She is equipped with five 21-inch /533mm torpedo tubes (two per side, with one going out under the chin of the bow) and can store twenty- five weapons in the compartment. The torpedo tubes utilize a water ram system similar to the one on Miami, and use a similar loading system. The fifth tube makes it possible to fire a salvo of four weapons of one type, for instance, while still having one weapon of another type in reserve.

Currently the RN is deploying two different types of torpedoes. One is the Mk 24 Tigerfish Mod 2, which is an electrically powered wire-guided torpedo designed primarily for ASW work. It has a 200-lb /91-kg warhead, a maximum speed of 35 knots, and a range of 22,000 meters at 24 knots. It is very quiet (the British captains are fond of calling Tigerfish the stealth torpedo), though the small warhead makes it less effective for shooting at surface vessels.

Replacing the Tigerfish is the new Spearfish torpedo, which has a much larger warhead (660 1b/300 kg), comparable range (approximately 13 miles/21 km), and a maximum speed of around 60 knots. This torpedo is a monster, with many of the same kinds of guidance improvements and capabilities as the Mk 48 ADCAP.

In addition to the torpedoes, the RN deploys a version of the UGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile to give the Triumph a long-range antiship capability. Called Royal Navy Sub Harpoon (RNSH), it is equivalent to the U.S. Block 1C version of the missile.

While the Triumph does not deploy quite the variety of weapons that Miami does, one should remember that the British boats do not pursue the same role and missions as the U.S. fleet. And while the Royal Navy captains might like a weapon equivalent to the Block ID or Tomahawk cruise missiles, budget constraints will probably force them to be satisfied with what they currently have. Nevertheless, they are already capably armed and quite deadly.

Escape Trunks/Swimmer Delivery

Much like the Miami, the Triumph is equipped with a pair of escape trunks for emergency transfer to a DSRV, swimmer delivery, or emergency ascent escape. There is a two-man escape chamber in the forward machinery space on the first level, as well as aft in the machinery space. These chambers are designed to allow emergency escape from depths down to 600 feet/183 meters when used in conjunction with the RN Mk 8 egress/exposure suit. This suit, which uses the same kind of air reservoir breathing system as the American Steinke hood, provides the user with an insulated suit for survival on the surface. So effective is this system that test subjects have been able to survive for up to twenty-four hours in water simulating North Atlantic conditions. Although the British operate in areas where the water is, on average, shallower than that where the U.S. subs operate, they still train all their submarine personnel for deep-water egress. This is regularly practiced in a tower at their submarine school in Portsmouth.

Acoustic Isolation

The Trafalgar-class submarines, much like their American 688I counterparts, are designed to be extremely quiet. And while the British seem to be using many of the same quieting techniques and equipment, there do appear to be a few interesting features. Like Miami, the Triumph appears to use a large machinery raft with isolation mounts for all the large pieces of equipment (turbines, generators, etc.). Even the shaft that is connected to the pumpjet propulsor has a flexible mounting to keep down bearing noise.

As we discussed earlier, many of the noisier pieces of equipment seem to be set in their own acoustic