Exercise Gib Splash, involving members of the Royal Navy’s Submarine Parachute Assistance Group (SPAG) has been running throughout the week, a British Forces spokesman has confirmed. The Group, which is always on six hours Notice to Move, consists of specially-trained medical staff and experts in submarine escape and rescue.

Lt Commander Gary Tregunna, the Officer in Charge of the Submarine Escape Training Tank said: “On receiving information that a submarine is in distress, the group would deploy in a C-130 aircraft and, having arrived on site, would parachute into the sea, taking all their equipment with them.

Their first task would then be to build a floating medical centre which would act as the base for rescue operations.

“Depending on the conditions inside the stricken submarine, we might advise the submarine’s crew to wait until we can bring other rescue resources to the scene. But if time is tight, the best advice might be for the crew to escape through the boat’s tower in their survival suits. When they reach the surface, we would collect them and provide whatever immediate treatment is necessary.”

In this week’s exercise, the floating medical centre was quickly established off Western Beach where several ‘survivors’, were recovered from the sea. The exercise rehearsed the skills of underwater radio communication and of the boat crews whose job it was to pull the survivors out of the water and to get them back to the medics as quickly and safely as possible.

“This is the most important part of the exercise and it went off brilliantly. They were especially good at setting up the floating village – within an hour of arriving at the beach, they were ready to receive casualties.” said Lt Cdr Tregunna.

The other main exercise is that of training to parachute on to the sea with all the Group’s equipment. Wednesday morning’s training was cancelled at the last minute when the Drop Zone in the Bay became unavailable but two drops were accomplished off Europa Point in the afternoon and five more took place on Thursday.

“Gibraltar is a perfect place to conduct this type of training. The proximity of the airfield to the sea means that we have a shorter turnaround time than anywhere in UK. In addition we rely on excellent support from Gibraltar Squadron, the Gibraltar Defence Police and from RAF Gibraltar,” added Lt Cdr Tregumma.