Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

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ssss1 Naval training is split into three parts: Part 1 is basic training; Part 2 is shore-side specialist training; Part 3 is at-sea training.

ssss1 The dolphins badge is awarded to fully qualified submariners after Part 3 sea training and an oral exam.

ssss1 ‘HMS’ can mean both ‘Her Majesty’s Ship’ and ‘Her Majesty’s Submarine’, with the context usually giving a clue as to which is meant. Here it’s clearly a submarine.

It was time to head north to Scotland. Far from being an alien land to me, this was where my mother and father had moved for Dad’s last job before retirement, to a small village called Houston, just outside Paisley, near the wonderful city of Glasgow. Dad then worked in Govan. I was going further north-west to Gare Loch, a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, about 25 miles from Glasgow. The loch, around six miles long and on average about a mile wide, is not at all what you might associate with potential Armageddon, as it’s mostly a very peaceful place, almost suburban in much of its appearance, flanked by the picturesque, affluent seaside town of Helensburgh, with its polished Edwardian and Victorian houses dominating the skyline of the eastern shore. The village of Rosneath lies on the western shore, among blue-green hills, and it’s at this point that Gare Loch narrows to just 600 metres wide, at what’s known as the Rhu Narrows, after the tiny village of the same name. Here, at its southern end, Gare Loch joins the Firth of Clyde, providing access through the North Channel to the main submarine patrolling areas of the North Atlantic.