HMS Sceptre (S104)
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| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | HMS Sceptre |
| Operator: | Royal Navy |
| Ordered: | 1 November 1971 |
| Builder: | Vickers |
| Laid down: | 19th February 1974 |
| Launched: | 20th November 1976 |
| Commissioned: | 14th February 1978 |
| Motto: | Honour With Authority |
| Status: | Active in service as of 2008 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Swiftsure-class submarine |
| Displacement: | 4,900 tonnes (dived) |
| Length: | 82.9 metres |
| Beam: | 9.8 metres |
| Draught: | 8.5 metres |
| Propulsion: | One Rolls-Royce pressurised water nuclear reactor (PWR1) |
| Speed: | In excess of 20 knots, dived |
| Complement: | 116 officers and men |
| Armament: | 5 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes Spearfish torpedoes RN Sub Harpoon missiles Tomahawk missiles |
The fifth HMS Sceptre (S104) is a Swiftsure-class submarine built by Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness. She was commissioned on February 14, 1978, by Lady Audrey White. She was the tenth nuclear fleet submarine to enter service with the Royal Navy.
Sceptre suffered several accidents. In the early 1980s she collided with an iceberg.
In 1987, Sceptre was fitted with an improved reactor core (Core Z). In March 1990, there was a coolant leak while Sceptre was at Devonport. On October 20, 1991, there was a fire onboard while the boat was moored at Faslane. In August 1995 Sceptre was forced to abort her patrol and return to Faslane after suffering, in the words of the Ministry of Defence, "an unspecified fault in the propulsion system." A defect in Sceptre's reactor was discovered in 1998, though its seriousness was not appreciated until after the investigation of another serious accident.
On March 6, 2000, Sceptre suffered a serious accident while inside a drydock at the Rosyth yards while undergoing trials towards the end of a major refit. The test involved flooding the drydock, and running the main engines slowly with steam supplied from the shore. However, too much steam was used and the engines went to full speed. Sceptre broke her moorings and shot forward off the cradle she rested on. The steam line ruptured, scaffolding buckled, a crane was pushed forward some 15 feet, and the submarine moved forward some 30 feet inside the dock.
The investigation into the runaway also looked at Sceptre’s reactor problems, and recommended that the boat be scrapped. In January 2002, with Sceptre still laid up, Defence Minister Adam Ingram declared that the problem was "small original fabrication imperfections" in the reactor pressure vessel. He could not say how long it would take to inspect and repair the problem. In December 2003, Sceptre was accepted back into the Fleet after rigorous sea-trials.
On 3 February 2005 Sceptre put in at Gibraltar for repairs, expecting to leave within six days. British officials assured Spanish officials that damage is in the cooling system of the boat's diesel generator, not to the nuclear propulsion system. (Tireless (S88) spent much of 2000 at Gibraltar repairing a leak in her reactor coolant system.) Nonetheless Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos registered Spain’s "firm protest" with Jack Straw, and insisted that Sceptre be the last British submarine repaired at Gibraltar. In addition, Peter Caruana, Gibraltar's Chief Minister, claimed that he had been misinformed about the repairs by the British Ministry of Defence, and that he had learned the true extent of the problems from Spanish sources. Apparently London officials had told him that the repairs were all external, neglecting to mention the diesel generator's cooling system. On 7 February 2005, British military spokeswoman Katherine Purdhoe announced that repairs had been completed; the boat left Gibraltar on 9 February.
[edit] Affiliations
- Scots Guards
- Yorkshire University Royal Naval Unit (YURNU)
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