Without going into too much detail our boats were regular 'visitors' This fact has been recorded in a number of publications. The USN were also committed to testing the Russian Navy defences and capabilities.

There has been a move by the Submarine Association to get a medal struck for those people who were on active duty in the Cold War on those submarine patrols. So far it has come to nought.

I preferred the submarine escape tower to the firefighting training.

The tower is 100 feet tall and about 20 feet across. Initially you do what are called compartment escapes where the whole compartment is flooded in a controled manner while you are breathing off the air that is left inside the compartment. There is always a bubble in the top of the hull even after the pressures equalise outside and inside after the flooding.

One deep breath, duck under the escape tower cowling and away to the surfcae breathing all the way out on the way up. Divers in the water are there to stop you if you are not breathing out. The last breath you took was at pressure so the air would expand in the lungs as you ascend, hence the risk of a burst lung. Another problem is that too long at depth and the last men out stand the risk of getting a bend as they have been at depth too long.

The final escape is an assisted one. You wear a rubber suit with a hood filled with air. You climb into the double hatched escape chamber, shut the lower lid and plug a pipe running down the arm of the suit into a connection inside the chamber, this inflates the hood and allows you to breath normally. No risk of a bend as the air is at normal pressure. The chamber with two men inside is then flooded until the pressures equalise and the top lid can be opened.

It only takes about 15-20 seconds to make the ascent, and you come out like a cork out of a bottle when you hit the surface.

The escape trainers practice deep escapes every year from a live boat. The deepest escape recorded for training was from 700 feet in the Med'.

SBS (Special Boat Squadroon) were regular trainees as they used this method of leaving a boat to get ashore to be inserted into hostile territory.

As for sanity, submariners are absolute pro's when at sea, even though RN boats were wet (carried alchohol) we rarely drank if at all. However once tied up in a friendly port our behaviour often left something to be desired. The skimmers would only ever see drunken submariners enjoying the benefits of the extra submarine pay. They never thought about the weeks we were confined on patrol, often not knowing where we were (with the exception of the Wardroom, the Coxswain and navigators mate)or pretending we didi not know where we were because we felt more comfortable in pretended ignorance.

There were lighter moments. The last night of the patrol was traditionally called Channel Night, and restrictions on making too much noise were lifted. On my last boat one of the officers was a good mando player and along with a good whistle player a live concert would be broadcast throughout the boat.

Once we even had a guy who could play bagpipes, a dour engine room rating. One night while coming back off patrol the sound room picked up some strange frequencies on the passive sonar. The captain was called, course was changed to clear our stern and see if the following sound would change bearing. It did not. The skipper called for forward checks, no sources found for self generated noise. Then a smile came across his face. He asked the sound room to broadcast the sound not just check the frequencies. A rather muffled version of 'Flowers of the Forest' was heard.

The source was identified to young Buck Taylor sitting right at the back of the motor room in the sterm practicing a set ready for his stint as a pipe on the casing as we entered harbour the next day. His drones were touching the inside of the hull and that was the source of the mysterious contact.

Buck would pipe us into harbour in full kit. The hem of his kilt had been thoughtfully lined and filled with lead shot by his wife to prevent it blowing up in the breeze and giving the Flag Officer Third Submarine Squadron move of an expose than he should have got.

I had 12 years in boats and I enjoyed every minute of them. But on average submariners were not the type of people you would introduce to mother.