READING the letter from your ‘nameless’ correspondent about the Cold War period (Letters, May 2) brought back a memory for me from the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.

I was third engineer officer on the SS Makrana and we were about to depart from Colombo, Ceylon, for the USA.

The skipper called us all to a meeting in which he told us the situation in Cuba was getting very tense and there was a good chance Britain could soon be on a war footing.

The ship had been designed as an ACB (W) or Atomic Chemical Bacterial (Warfare) ship: the engine-room ventilation fans could be closed down and all

access doors shut to seal the engine room so that the engine room and the personnel ‘on watch’ wouldn’t have been contaminated if the ship had to sail through a contaminated area.

I was senior watch-keeper on the morning watch when the order was given to stop the ventilation fans, shut the engine room skylights and ‘secure’ the doors.

In tropical waters the temperature in the engine room normally would be quite ‘cosy’. Soon after the vent fans were shut off the engine room temperature started to climb, rapidly reaching a scorching 65C (149F). I contacted the chief engineer and told him the conditions were becoming so dangerously hot they could be life-threatening.

He immediately contacted the skipper, who agreed the exercise must be stopped. Doors and engine room skylights were opened and fans restarted.

We proved that morning that the ABC (W) system would not have worked in the tropics.

Philip Roe,

Roman Avenue South,

Stamford Bridge