Parachute group drops in

The Royal Navy’s Submarine Parachute Assistance Group (SPAG) is back in Gibraltar for another of its training exercises, this time with a similar team from Italy. The Group’s task is to deploy a team of people with Escape and Rescue knowledge to the scene of a submarine in distress – and to do so as quickly as possible.

Whilst in UK they are always on six hours notice to take-off from RAF Brize Norton, twenty four hours a day, all year round and they remain on that same Notice to Move whilst they are here on the Rock.

The exercise will involve dozens of specialists, including doctors, medics and members of the Submarine Escape Training Tank. It will end with a ‘floating village’ of 25-man life rafts to rescue various casualties from an imaginary submarine in distress. The ‘floating village’ training will be done just inside South Mole whilst others in the Group will be parachuting into the Bay.

‘As long as we are sending people to sea in submarines and fitting submarines with escape hatches (which everyone does), then we need a system to retrieve people from the water and take them back to a safe environment,’ said Lieutenant Jan Ziolo, the Officer Commanding.

‘Gibraltar is excellent for this kind of training,’ added Lt Ziolo, ‘The turn-around time from the sea to the airfield is incredibly quick, the weather is generally good and the water temperature is ideal.’