Page 24 - Demo

32we sailed out and did a trial dive to see what the sonar was like. The operators said that all they could hear was gurgling water.The Captain decided to go ahead with the firing anyway and so we went to the exercise area. When we got there, we received a report that the target ship had gone U/S. Things were not getting better. However, not deterred the Captain decided to shoot at the recovery boat. The torpedoes were set to run for a certain distance and then rise to the surface where they could be recovered. The crew settled down to do this with lots of %u201cup periscope%u201d %u201cdown periscope%u201d mark this or whatever. To me it was very confusing, but it was all very professional with lots of calculations as we got into position. At some point the order was given to open the torpedo bow doors. And then came another blow, one of the doors was reported indicating shut. The Captain now said that he would fire through the doors. I had been going to the bow area to watch the firing, but now decided to go to the stern and stand under the aft escape hatch. Anyway, the firing took place and we surfaced to help find the torpedoes. The first 3 were found quite quickly but not the fourth. I was now standing in the operations room and had not noticed the Captain coming back in. Unfortunately, he heard me saying %u201cplease Mr Neptune, can we have our torpedo back?%u201d He was not amused and promptly said %u201cYou are aircrew and so have got good eyesight, so go up there and look for it%u201d. I quickly climbed up to the top of the sail and joined the 2 sailors up there while the submarine cruised about. There was no sign of the missing torpedo, but we did show willing by investigating the odd oil slick. Of course, for anyone to see what we were doing they would have to climb up the ladder to us and so there was no way we could have been surprised. So actually, we just smoked the odd cigarette and chatted for perhaps an hour before we came back down. Probably after the torpedo shoot we sailed back to Gosport submerged. This journey was OK but on the way, we got a message to say that the sailor