NATO submarine rescue exercise at Faslane

Experts from three nations gathered at Faslane last week for a large scale NATO submarine rescue exercise.

The Northern Diving Group played a lead role in the project, which used the £130m Transfer Under Pressure (TUP) therapeutic recovery system.

Based in a purpose-built 150-metre hangar at HM Naval Base Clyde, this can cleanse the crew from contaminants and crucially, re-compress oxygen-saturated sailors.

This is stored in sequence, ready to be loaded on to trucks and then to heavy transport aircraft, for onward transit to the incident.

There the NATO team would will requisition the nearest appropriate ship on which the entire TUP system can be welded to the stern.

Lieutenant Commander Steve Brown, who runs the Northern Diving Group at Faslane, said: “It is a quite brilliant stand-alone system designed simply to save submariners’ lives anywhere in the world.

“That said however, it is a brutal reality that if a submarine were to go down in really deep water there is nothing that anyone could do because the pressures would become too great for anything to survive.”

“Speed is essential in getting to a stricken submarine and the fact that we can be on the move in three hours with 360 tonnes of equipment and a team of around 75 specialists from the UK, France and Norway is impressive in its own right.”

Bruce McQuillan, one of the first men at the scene in the exercise.

Surgeon Commander Richard Webber inside the tactical command/control part of the TUP system

The SRV sitting in front of the TUP inside the hangar at Faslane.

Lizzie Ashley watches as a French medic treats ‘Fred’, one of the lifesize mannequins used during the exercise