HMS Sceptre (S104)
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| Career
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| Ordered:
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| Laid down:
| 19th February 1974
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| Launched:
| 20th November 1976
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| Commissioned:
| 14th February 1978
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| Decommissioned:
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| Fate:
| In service
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The fifth HMS Sceptre (S104), 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 a Russian submarine and her reactor's protection systems would
have performed an automatic emergency shutdown (scrammed the reactor), but
her captain ordered the safety mechanisms overridden (battleshort enabled).
The crew were told to say that they had hit an iceberg. This incident was
disclosed when David Forghan, former Weapons Officer on the submarine, gave a television interview that was broadcast on September 19, 1991.
In 1987, Sceptre was fitted with an improved reactor core (Core Z).
In March 1990, there was a coolant leak from 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 Defense, "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, and should get her first deployment after such a long refit in 2004.
See HMS Sceptre for other ships of the same name.
