Themes

Article Highlights

• Introduction

• Promotion Point

• Experimental anti-submarine station

• Accommodation at the base

• World War Two defences

• Submarine training

• Famous visits to the base

• HMS Dolphin today

Submarine training

By the 1920s submarine training had already established itself in a format it was to retain for many years consisting of lectures on submarine systems, equipment and techniques backed up by practical experience at sea in running boats. The submarine school, originally housed in a collection of wooden huts, became known as the ‘brown area’, where students would learn, amongst other subjects, physical training, seamanship, lectures on submarine batteries, testing gyroscopes, torpedo training and semaphore instruction. Although during World War Two some of the training moved to Blythe in Scotland, because of the air raids on the base, after the war most of the more specialised training continued at HMS Dolphin. This specialised training included submarine coxswains courses, the preliminary course for the Commanding Officer Qualifying Course (COQC), radar course together with most of the higher torpedo and A15 instruction.

Find out more about the COQC course

Lecture on submarine batteries at HMS Dolphin (RNSM)

Training certificate from the Royal Naval Submarine School given to Dean Thompson in 1986 (RNSM)

The Submarine Escape Training Tank, a thirty metre deep container of water used to instruct all Royal Navy submariners in pressurised escape, opened in 1954 at HMS Dolphin. The escape apparatus issued to the trainees consisted of an oxygen bag hung around the neck of the submariner and strapped in front of his chest, a pair of goggles, a mouthpiece and a nose clip. The submariners got into a compartment at the base of the tower, sealed with a watertight door. The instructors then opened a valve to flood the compartment and as one submariner described:

“Once the compartment was full we opened the lid and started upwards. Glass ports in the side of the tower enabled instructors to watch our progress with rescuers at the top of the tank ready to dive in if anyone got into difficulties.”

Over the twentieth century personnel from fifteen foreign and Commonwealth Navies have trained in the escape tank with a peak of 4,500 students a year in the 1960s and 1970s.

Learn about developments in submarine escape

Submarine Escape Training Tank at HMS Dolphin (RNSM)

To discover which famous people have visited HMS Dolphin, select Next