Letter: Low water mark

It looks like the commander of HMS Astute is being made a scapegoat for the recent grounding of the submarine (your report, 28 November).

There have been too many incidents of this type in recent years involving our submarines, and it is wrong of the Navy to go on attributing these statistically significant occurrences to one-off human error, not least because if the incidents keep up at this rate we will end up losing a nuclear submarine.

In the past, commanders had to win their spurs on conventional subs before they were let loose on nuclear boats. This involved handling submarines close inshore and in challenging situations that could never be safely attempted in a nuclear boat.

The worry is that, now all the conventional subs have gone, standards of seamanship are declining and are the root cause of these incidents. Shore-based simulators may be excellent training tools in emergency scenarios, but they are arguably not much use in training the crew in the more mundane causes of accidents that are becoming too common (such as using out-of-date charts, or hitting rock pinnacles).

Rather than burying its head in the sand, the MoD should be holding a formal inquiry into this whole spate of incidents, and why they keep occurring, not looking at the incident in isolation and blaming the crew yet again.

(Dr) MARK CAMPBELL-RODDIS

Pont Crescent

Dunblane, Perthshire