The Underwater Killers
During the Cold War the Royal Navy's underwater hunter-killers were designed for one purpose alone; to hunt down and destroy enemy submarines and shipping while remaining undetected by the enemy.
Further roles of the conventional and nuclear powered attack submarines are that of patrolling choke points such as the GIUK gap, maintaining the security of sea-lanes and inserting Special Forces teams onto enemy coastlines.
The Fleet Nuclear Powered Submarines
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The Royal Navy's first nuclear-powered submarine was HMS Dreadnought, which was followed by the Churchill/Valiant, Swiftsure and Trafalgar class SSNs, with the only other nuclear-powered submarines being the Royal Navy's' Ballistic Missile Submarines. |
To achieve their mission, fleet submarines have to be fast and able to take maximum advantage of oceanic conditions by operating at various depths and prolonged periods at sea without outside support. Also they are fitted with systems to detect enemy vessels with the minimum of revealing emissions.
A typical attack against a surface ship steering a straight course would be to fire a spread of torpedoes, but if the ship is zigzagging the difficulty of obtaining a hit increases greatly.
To date, the only nuclear-powered submarine to fire on and sink a surface warship in anger was HMS Conqueror during the Falklands War.
The Patrol Submarines
These were conventionally (usually diesel) powered submarines, which were similar to the U-boats and only had a limited underwater endurance. However, they did fill a vital role in reconnaissance of Russian naval ports as well as maintaining standing seaward patrols supplementing the nuclear powered vessels. The later patrol submarines were phased out at the end of the Cold War, and the last examples, the Upholder class, were all sold to Canada at the end of the Cold War. |
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We would like to thank Paul Hill for his help in writing this page
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