Sir – I read Dan Conley’s excellent article ‘The Submarine Service – Whereto’ in the Summer 2024 [112/3 p. 363] with great interest. Perhaps readers may be interested in a worm’s-eye view of one episode in the saga that Dan Conley relates, namely the beginnings of the Astute project. All my working life after I left the Navy was spent with the Yarrow-Admiralty Research Department (YARD) which eventually became BAe SEMA and was finally totally swallowed up in BAe Systems. I was recruited to YARD with the idea that I would work on the SSN20 project. When this was cancelled as unaffordable, MoD i…
