DEFENCE SPECIAL - Nov 2006

Lives On The Line At Barrow

As part of our global submarines survey Iain Ballantyne TAKES an in-depth look at the Astute programme, which is one of the most complex warship construction projects ever undertaken in the United Kingdom.

An artist's impression of an Astute Class submarine at sea. Image: BAE Systems.

The submarine builders of Barrow-in-Furness are keenly aware that lives depend on them. Prominently displayed throughout the construction yard are signs that say: 'Lives Depend on Us Doing Our Job Right'

A sign at the submarine yard gives everyone a stark reminder. Photo: Nigel Andrews.

Brian Benn, one of the BAE Systems managers, who started out on the shopfloor building Cold War submarines a quarter of a century ago, reflects: "We are building a gigantic tin can and putting a nuclear reactor in it. The Navy takes it down to a depth where no human normally goes, where it will quite literally be under enormous pressure. If something goes wrong at that depth, because of something that we have done here then people will die - it's as simple and stark as that." But it's not solely fear of making a mistake that motivates the 3,200 people employed in the 170-acre submarine construction yard, which is situated at the foot of the spectacular Lake District in the north-west of England.

What drives them on is a fierce pride in getting it right, which flows fast through their veins. After all, Barrow has been in the submarine construction business for a long time, building the first Royal Navy boat, Holland 1, in 1901. When the nuclear-powered revolution arrived for the British fleet 59 years later, it was in the shape of the attack submarine Dreadnought, constructed on one of Barrow's slips. In the late 1960s four Polaris missile boats were built at Barrow, with six Swiftsure Class and seven Trafalgar hunter-killers following in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the decades the workers watched the fruit of their labours sail over the horizon to take part in a Cold War of which few details have even today emerged, although there was a startling revelation about one Barrow boat in the summer of 2006. When the Warspite, launched in September 1965, returned to Barrow in late 1968 with a tarpaulin concealing damage to her fin (conning tower), it was claimed she had been been in collision with an iceberg. However, this summer Barrow's local newspaper, the North West Evening Mail, claimed to reveal that the true cause of the Warspite's damage was a collision with a Soviet Navy Echo Class boat during a game of underwater cat and mouse. More recently, in the era of the War on Terrorism, the exploits of Barrow-built submarines have been more widely publicised, including the Trafalgar Class attack boat HMS Triumph, launching cruise missiles at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and HMS Splendid, unleashing the same long-reach weaponry against Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War of 2003. Regardless of the politics surrounding such events, the Barrow-in-Furness workers have on each occasion over the years been proud to note that the vessels they created have been at the heart of world events. It is the source of the pride that drives them on - for their efforts are at the centre of the Nation's defence, despite Barrow being one of the most remote big towns in the UK, stuck out on a windswept peninsula in the Irish Sea. Barrow also has a fine reputation for building surface warships and their names shine like stars in the firmament of British naval history: The legendary WW2 aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, which was so tough she survived both Luftwaffe Stukas and Japanese kamikazes; the cruiser Ajax that took on the pocket battleship Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate; the Falklands War task force flagship HMS Hermes, still going strong in the Indian Navy as the INS Viraat; the first Sea Harrier carrier HMS Invincible, also a veteran of the Falklands, which also saw service in the Gulf, launching her jets against Saddam's SAMs in the late 1990s. Among the warships built for foreign navies by Barrow was the somewhat unsuccessful, submarine Nordenfelt I, which in the 1880s gave the Turks something to boast about, if nothing else. The pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa was a more successful Barrow export product. She was Admiral Togo's flagship during the epic clash between the Japanese and Russian fleets at Tsushima in May 1905. Mikasa still exists today, taking pride of place as a lovingly restored museum 'ship' land-locked in a park at Yokosuka. More recently Barrow has returned to the surface warship game, fitting out and, in 1998, commissioning the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, the largest warship in today's Royal Navy. Wave Class tankers for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and two Albion Class amphibious assault ships followed in the early years of the 21st Century. It was while those vessels were in progress that Barrow returned to submarine construction following a fallow period caused by conclusion of the Vanguard Class ballistic missile submarine programme in the late 1990s. Today, Barrow is home to one of the most complex, and challenging engineering projects in Europe, if not the world: Construction of three nuclear-powered Astute Class attack submarines at a cost of more than £3 billion. A BAE Systems profile of the programme puts it like this: 'Design and construction of the Astute Class is arguably the most challenging engineering project in the UK and has been described as "more complex than the space shuttle", involving the production of over 7,000 design drawings.'

Tackling such an ambitious project at the same time as the surface vessels was something that, initially at least, threatened to overwhelm Barrow, as even BAE Systems will admit. As touched upon in the Astute overview in the last edition of this magazine, the problem was created by: The sheer ambition of the programme; a dramatic skill fade at Barrow, due to a lack of submarine contracts (the Vanguard programme provided work for 15,000 people, most of them made redundant); the fact that the Computer Aided Design (CAD) system simply could not cope.

STANDING in the shadow of the 265 tonnes Forward End Construction of Ambush, the second Astute boat, Gary Davies, the man who manages the New Assembly Shop, which is a steel fabrication facility where the submarines begin to take shape, put it succinctly: "It was a steep learning curve; when we returned to submarine building. We found that some of the most experienced people were no longer available."

Avove: The forward end of Ambush in one of Barrow's cavernous construction sheds. Image: BAE Systems.

Below: Gary Davies in the new assembly shop at Barrow. Photo: Nigel Andrews.

Gary has worked on every submarine built at Barrow since 1977, so he represents a rare continuity not found in most industries today, never mind the BAE Systems yard in Barrow. Even with men like Gary, when the Astute programme started, the collective memory at Barrow had still become rusty. However, the basic knowledge of how to put a submarine together was still there and the injection of some American innovation, from the Electric Boat Company helped. The US Navy's next generation Virginia Class attack boats had presented the same challenges a few years earlier on the other side of the Atlantic.

A government-level agreement facilitated the creation of a secure trans-Atlantic computer link that enabled Electric Boat's draughtsmen in the USA to apply their experience to the Astute designs on the CAD system in the UK. Getting the CAD system right was fundamental, as within the programme's strict time and budget limits there is no time to construct a prototype boat. Therefore, what BAE Systems calls 'virtual prototyping' is employed, capitalising on powerful computer test and visualisation, allied with continual analysis of the design and systems.

EVIDENCE of the new era literally lies all around in the New Assembly Shop, where gigantic sections of not only Ambush but also the next boat, Artful, were being worked on. Gary Davies explained that the raw material - steel plate - comes in at the far end of the gigantic building, where cutting machines produced parts for 'kits', which are then delivered to the welders, who construct gigantic hoops that will eventually be put together to form the pressure vessel, while also fabricating the towering surface structure (outer casing). Welding is the key skill and there is no room for error, illustrating perfectly the 'lives at stake' ethos that drives everyone to aspire to 100 per cent defect free work. BAE Systems Submarines considers that it has the best welders in the world and theirs is by no means an easy job. The young men and women who weld wear rubber protective suits, masks and breathing equipment while they work in confined spaces in temperatures of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. To put together a section of an Astute Class submarine can involve three miles of welding, consisting of hundreds of welds, all of which are thoroughly inspected not only by the welder at every stage, but also by their section leaders. The welds are X-rayed and if they are not up to standard the welders are taken off the line and sent back to Barrow's welding school.

MODULAR construction is the key to moving such a complex task along as swiftly as possible, while still retaining the necessary quality, enabling each element of the submarine's construction to progress almost simultaneously.

As soon as a module is fabricated it is sent out the other side of the New Assembly Shop and over to one of several other cavernous buildings, where equipment is fitted and tested, a process we will look at in the next part of this series.   When the moment comes to put all the pressure hull sections together as a complete submarine, once again there is no room for error, as everything is done within millimetres of tolerance. Gary Davies explained how building the submarine wrong can be necessary to get it right:  "High tensile steel is difficult to manage. A weld can put it out, distort it dimensionally because of the heat. Therefore, a lot of heavy engineering structures, including Astute, are built wrong deliberately, so that when you weld them they come back into tolerance." In the old days at Barrow they also used to build submarines on the horizontal, which added the extra challenge of getting heavy equipment in place within a narrow, if somewhat over-sized, tube. However, Astute is being built anti-ship wise, in other words on the vertical. One of BAE Systems' executives explained:  "When you build something in the horizontal, to fit something in at the far end, you need to swing it in like Tarzan. We found that Electric Boat favoured vertical out-fitting, which entails using gravity to position equipment within the pressure hull." Once each section is fully fitted out internally and in position in the Devonshire Dock Hall, where the submarines are assembled, it is then carefully turned into the horizontal so that it can be married to the other modules, to form the complete submarine. An added benefit of working 'anti-ship wise' is that scaffolding towers can be built inside with multiple levels, enabling work on the fitting out to go ahead not only using the benefit of gravity, but also avoiding people having to work overhead with the resulting debris falling into the bottom of the boat (or on them). With anti-ship wise any debris falls out the bottom of the section onto the floor of the Devonshire Hall, where it can simply be swept away. Getting much of the hot welding process inside the modules completed in the New Assembly Shop, before this vertical out-fitting process, also removes the problem of putting a stop to other jobs in certain sections of the boat.

IN the New Assembly Shop, the names of the submarines under construction are displayed on noticeboards next to the modules. It gives the boats a personality, making the towering steel constructions into more than just cold metal.

They are the latest in a long line of legendary names built at Barrow and the workers will watch their future exploits with a deep sense of pride, knowing they are contributing to making the world a safer place. Gary Davies feels the Astute design is like no other: "It has a very distinctive look about it. The Vanguard was similar to the US submarines, but this one is different from any other. I think it will turn a few heads."

•More insider information on the Astute submarine programme is revealed in the current edition of WARSHIPS IFR magazine.