Sailor 'risked life to save crew'

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A sailor set on fire by an explosion on board a British nuclear submarine risked his life to help his shipmates, an inquest has been told.

Richard Holleworth was seriously hurt when he braved smoke to reach the men trapped on HMS Tireless in March 2007.

Mechanics Anthony Huntrod, 20, from Sunderland, and Paul McCann, 32, from Halesowen, West Midlands, died during the war games exercise in the Arctic.

The inquest in Sunderland is expected to last six weeks.

Submariner, Richard Holleworth, 35, passed out after attempting to drag them to safety, an inquest heard on Wednesday.

An oxygen processing machine had blown up, filling the forward escape compartment with fire and smoke and buckling the hatch doors so rescuers could not reach them.<a class="bodl" href="#graphic">See where on the submarine the explosion happened</a>

Mr Holleworth was working at his computer when the self contained oxygen generator (scog) exploded.

He said: "I was about a metre away when I heard a really, really loud bang.

"I turned my head to the right and just saw this oxygen candle bounce off the cage behind me. It had a lot of smoke and flames coming out the top of it and I knew it was going to hit me.

The inquest is expected to last for six weeks

"I just started yelling in anticipation, then pain, and then I was on fire.

"I was patting myself down to put out the flames, and breathing in the atmosphere so I stretched out my arm to try and find the emergency breathing apparatus, but it was not there.

"I went into the forward escape compartment itself, which was just filled with a white cloud, and I could feel someone there. I thought it was Tony.

"I could see he was on fire.

"I put my arm down to grab the fire extinguisher but it was not there so I started hitting at the flames with my forearms."

Mr Holleworth said he guessed he was within two metres of the escape hatch on the deck.

"I knew there was 30 lads down there with breathing apparatus who could help," he said.

Anthony Huntrod, left, and Paul McCann died in the explosion

"I thought I would just grab Tony and carry him with me.

"I was stamping on the doors trying to smash them down, and shouting and screaming to the people below.

"But it was futile. I knew I was going to die.

"That's when I heard Paul's voice."

Guided by the light of instruments glowing on a control panel, he staggered to an oxygen relay point and pulled on a mask.

He said he then passed out for about 40 minutes when help arrived.

He told the inquest many of the scogs on board HMS Tireless were battered and dented and looked "well used".

Coroner Derek Winter heard scogs were prone to malfunction if not kept in pristine condition, and could burn with "ferocious violence".

At the time of the accident, HMS Tireless was submerged hundreds of feet under an ice pack, about 170 miles north of Deadhorse, Northern Alaska.

The hunter-killer submarine immediately surfaced so that Submariner Holleworth could be airlifted to Anchorage in Alaska.

Tireless, which had around 130 men on board, had been taking part in a joint exercise with an American submarine, the USS Alexandria, to test their capability and tactics in Arctic waters.

The inquest is being heard at Sunderland's Regus Centre without a jury.

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