The loss of a submariner by Tony Green

Image of a Royal Navy submarine

By habit when I turn on my computer the first thing in the morning and access the Internet I check the news. By and large the stories are pretty ordinary. On this day, I was shocked to read the story of a shooting on the British nuclear submarine, the H.M.S. Astute, by one of its crew members.  

From my time aboard a nuclear submarine I learned, even though, submariners represent the navies of various countries each of us are bonded by the fact we chose to serve our countries in a fashion others are not either willing or able to. 

A few years back when I heard about the Russian submarine Kursk getting stranded at the bottom of the North Sea many prayers went out to our Russian comrades. Most of us would have gladly left port to participate in a rescue mission if it offered an opportunity to increase the chances of bringing the Russian sailors home.

While meeting other submariners in port typically an exchange of submarine qualification pins referred as dolphins occurs as a show of brotherhood. Even though we may not all be countrymen every submariner is part of a larger community.  

In my view, a brother has been lost who will never return to serve his country or come back to his family.  The tragedy on the incident is losing a sailor in senseless fashion.  Submarines are inherently dangerous due to the nature of the job but when the boat is on port the crew should be safe.

I am sure an investigation will take place and determine the root cause for this tragedy, however, upon initial glance I cannot think of any reason for submariners to want to shoot a shipmate on their boat. Like your siblings growing up on occasions you may not see eye to eye but in the end you are still family.

The submariner community is special. Many do not choose to silently serve their country under the planet oceans, seas, and lakes. The life of submariner is not easy, exciting nor glamorous all the time. Long stretches can go by with minimum activity while in critical situations periods of little and high stress can stretch men to the breaking point. Which leads me to wonder what kind of circumstances could drive a submariner to bring a gun aboard a submarine with ill intentions?