The Royal Navy is set to investigate after official documents about one of its £1.3bn “hunter killer” submarines were reportedly found in the toilets of a Wetherspoons pub.
Files carrying details about the HMS Anson were left in the Furness Railway in Cumbria, the Sun reported. The documents showed the inner workings of the nuclear-powered submarine and were used by submariners learning how to isolate and depressurise elements of its system.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: “These are generic training documents that carry no classified information. However, we take all security matters extremely seriously and will investigate the circumstances of their discovery.”
The newspaper quoted a source as saying that the pub was packed when the files, marked “official sensitive”, were discovered on the floor of a cubicle.
The Furness Railway is a short distance from a BAE systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, where the submarine has previously been pictured.
HMS Anson is the fifth of the new Astute-class attack submarines to join the Royal Navy fleet. The vessels are capable of firing tomahawk missiles and are described on the navy’s website as the “largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines” it has ever used.
A naval source told PA: “These documents enable submariners and contractors to understand how systems interact. They do not detail how they work, just that they exist.”
They added that the files contained only simplistic designs of the systems onboard, without revealing how they work.
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