Pictures: LA(Phot) Dan Rosenbaum (and his GoPro...)
WOOOSSSSHHHH…
High-pressure air thrusts a Sting Ray torpedo out of its launcher aboard HMS Westminster – as Britain’s senior submarine hunter tests one of its last lines of defence against an underwater foe.
Ideally the Portsmouth-based warship’s sonar arrays should have picked up a submarine long before it gets within range to pop off a torpedo of its own – and a Sting Ray launched by the frigate’s Lynx helicopter dealt with the menace.
But should a boat slip through that invisible net, the Magazine-Launched Torpedo System is one counter-measure to keep Westminster and her 200 sailors and marines safe.
It’s got to be tested on a regular basis because anything can happen in the next half hour (sorry).
So a red-tipped dummy torpedo was prepared by Westminster’s weapons engineers and fired at a simulated submarine contact after the sonar operators in the operations room had located their ‘target’.
A klaxon sounded as the launcher doors – just forward of the ship’s hangar – opened and, with a ‘whoosh’, the Sting Ray was pushed out over Westminster’s side before a small drogue parachute opened and slowed its descent into the ocean.
The drogue parachute helps slow the torpedo's descent into the ocean
Sting Ray is smaller and much lighter (seven times) than the Spearfish torpedoes carried by submarines. It still packs a punch – a 100lb explosive charge – as it’s powered through the water at more than 50mph. In this instance, the dummy weapon was recovered once the exercise was complete.
The bulk of Westminster’s deployment has been spent patrolling the Indian Ocean on the hunt for pirates/smugglers/terrorists and other criminal elements, as well as providing assurance to law-abiding mariners.
But the ‘capital ship’ is also the Royal Navy’s leading frigate in the never-ending tussle between submarine and hunter on the surface – she’s commanded by a former submariner, Capt Hugh Beard, who’s Captain Anti-Submarine Warfare.
With the exercise contact visible on the ship’s sonar display, PO(UWW) George Linehan, the ship’s anti-submarine warfare director, went through his well-rehearsed drills and received the approval of his commanding officer to launch.
“It was a thrill to receive the order ‘Engage’ and actually fire the dummy torpedo from the weapon panel.
“Shore-side training, where you carry out touch drills, prepares you, but it is nothing like the real event. To actually press the ‘fire’ button and launch really adds a sense of realism to the training.”
Sting Ray is recovered by one of Westminster's boat teams
CPOET(WE) ‘Gunter’ Batten, whose team looks after the system and prepared the Sting Ray for launch, added: “It is good to actually see a training variant of the torpedo leave the torpedo tube, demonstrating that the weapon system works. I get a great sense of satisfaction and achievement knowing that all my hard work in maintaining the system has paid off.”
Westminster is in the final few days of her east of Suez deployment; she’s due to hand over to her sister HMS Somerset in early February, returning to the UK later in the month.