Female sailors will staff laundries on nuclear subs as reports of missing undies emerge

FEMALE sailors will staff laundries on nuclear subs — to keep their knickers from vanishing.

Reports of missing undies emerged in a top-level Navy inquiry into claims of misconduct on submarines.

Its 35 recommendations included the need to “promote a culture on board where women need not feel concerned that their laundry may go missing”.

Where possible, female sailors should be present alongside males when the laundry is in operation, it added.

Another recommendation said resources should be made available so female sailors could “choose to wash their own underwear where feasible” — rather than have male colleagues clean their clothes.

The report said: “In addition to reinforcing, publicising and ­verifying healthy working ­cultures through the measures outlined in other recommendations, laundry facilities will now be staffed by both male and female personnel wherever possible.

“These processes will be reviewed at least annually.”

The inquiry was launched in 2022 by First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key after whistleblower ex-lieutenant Sophie Brook complained of a “constant ­campaign of sexual bullying”.

The heavily redacted report listed multiple incidents of abuse and harassment, some by senior officers, against their female colleagues.

There were allegations of lewd comments, sexual gestures, captains having stashes of porn they codenamed Black Ops Hard Drive and crew repeatedly sniffing their female colleagues.

It also highlighted reports of bras being stolen from the ­laundry, while claiming some engineers would openly sniff women’s underwear.

A Navy spokesperson said: “There is no requirement to guard women’s laundry in submarines.

“The recent report into the culture within the submarine service has recommended that female members of the team staff the laundry alongside male counterparts to make female sailors feel more comfortable.

“This is one of the many recommendations that the Royal Navy has already implemented as a result of the investigation.”