Petty Officer Paul Williamson
Sonar, Royal Navy
Paul was obsessed with the idea of trailing Soviet submarines as a child. When he was about nine or ten, his parents gave him a Revell kit of the USS George Washington. Paul says 鈥淚 thought all my birthdays and Christmases had come at once. Apparently I even took it to bed with me鈥�.
He joined the Royal Navy in 1978 aged 16 and quickly made sonar his speciality. Paul was of a new generation of sonar operators, using the revolutionary new towed array system to detect Soviet submarines. For Paul it gave submariners the ears to hear what the other submarines were up to. Paul says sonar operators before him identified enemy submarines more by accident than design: 鈥淭hey鈥檇 say 鈥業鈥檝e never done it, I鈥檝e never detected one.鈥� So now when you put the towed array on - that鈥檚 a totally different ball game. The game had changed big time.鈥�
