Submariner goes on the run after claiming Trident is not safe
THE Royal Navy is investigating a whistleblower’s claims that serious security and safety l apses have turned the Trident submarine fleet into ‘a disaster waiting to happen’.
An 18-page dossier detailing numerous allegations about Britain’s nuclear deterrent, based at Faslane on the Clyde, was compiled by a submariner who has since gone on the run.
William McNeilly says he was on patrol with HMS Victorious earlier this year and alleges that the Trident missiles i t carries are vulnerable to a terrorist attack that ‘would kill our people and destroy our land’.
The 25-year- old able seaman’s report, called The Secret Nuclear Threat, claims to lift the lid on the alarming state of the UK’s ageing and short-staffed nuclear deterrent warning that offers infiltrators ‘the perfect opportunity t o send nuclear warheads crashing down on the UK’.
Mr McNeilly went absent without leave from the Royal Navy last week after publishing his allegations online, alongside a photo of his Navy ID card. He said he had ‘sacrificed’ his freedom and a well-paid career to make the claims and expects to be arrested.
He told the Sunday Herald newspaper: ‘This is bigger than me, it’s bigger than all of us. We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public. If we don’t act now, lives could be lost for generations.’
In his report, Mr McNeilly alleges 30 separate safety and security f l aws on Trident submarines, including failures in testing whether missiles could be safely launched, burning toilet rolls sparking a fire in a missile compartment, and security passes and bags going unchecked.
‘If airport security and nuclear weapon s ecurity were both compared to prisons,’ Mr McNeilly writes, ‘the airport would be Alcatraz and base security would be house arrest.’
The Navy confirmed yesterday it has launched an investigation into Mr McNeilly’s report but said it completely disagreed with his criticisms, dismissing them as ‘subjective and unsubstantiated personal views made by a very junior sailor’.
It added it was working with civilian police to find Mr McNeilly, saying it remained ‘concerned for his whereabouts and wellbeing’.
Mr McNeilly, from Newtonabbey, near Belfast, said he raised concerns with senior officers but decided to publish his claims as they were ignored.
He says he joined the Navy in July 2013 and arrived at Faslane a year ago.
After six months’ training he went on patrol from January to April this year on board HMS Victorious, describing his role as an ‘engineer- ing technician’. Mr McNeilly claims that there was a ‘massive cover-up’ of what happened when HMS Vanguard collided with the French nuclear submarine, Le Triomphant, in the Atlantic in February 2009.
He quotes a senior officer on Vanguard at the time as saying: ‘We thought, this is it, we’re all going to die.’
John Large, an i ndependent nuclear submarine expert, said Mr McNeilly appeared credible, but added: ‘ Even if he is right about the disorganisation, lack of morale, and sheer foolhardiness of the personnel around him – and the unreliability of the engineered systems – it is likely that the Trident system as a whole will tolerate the misdemeanours, as it’s designed to do.’
The Government has pledged to renew Trident, something which is strongly opposed by the Scottish Nationalists.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson demanded action. He said: ‘These revelations, if true, are extremely concerning.
‘It reads as a nightmare catalogue of serious safety breaches .
‘They add to what appears to be a chaotic, shambolic safety culture on these aged subs.
‘Broken or faulty equipment with no spares leading to slapdash patch-up jobs have no place in the Navy and just shows how utterly stretched it is.’
Peter Burt, of pro-disarmament lobby group Nuclear Information Service said: ‘William McNeilly has done not only his colleagues but the nation a service by exposing the risks that submariners face because of cost-cutting, staff shortages and lax management.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: ‘The Royal Navy takes security and nuclear safety extremely seriously and we are investigating both the issue of the unauthorised release of this document and its contents.
‘The naval service operates its submarine fleet under the most stringent safety regime and submarines do not go to sea unless they are completely safe to do so.’
‘Kill our people, destroy our land’ ‘We thought, we’re all going to die’