![The Royal Navy’s Polaris fleet was retired in 1996 when the four ‘Resolution’
class SSBNs were replaced by four ‘Vanguard’ class SSBNs carrying Trident missiles.
Here HMS Resolution escorts HMS Vanguard up the Clyde into Faslane.](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/sub_91_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqJ6RiS5Rjb_N6p5OO4zvsknbHJ5dPtkUSvp1hoAV-gg8.jpg?imwidth=680)
The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945 by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks, review: 'authoritative'
![The Royal Navy’s Polaris fleet was retired in 1996 when the four ‘Resolution’
class SSBNs were replaced by four ‘Vanguard’ class SSBNs carrying Trident missiles.
Here HMS Resolution escorts HMS Vanguard up the Clyde into Faslane.](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/sub_91_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqJ6RiS5Rjb_N6p5OO4zvsknbHJ5dPtkUSvp1hoAV-gg8.jpg?imwidth=680)
In a year when Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK’s shore, and in which both the SNP and Jeremy Corbyn have called for Britain to abandon its independent nuclear deterrent, this history of our submarines since 1945 could not be better timed.
The authors insist that while the book is neither an authorised nor official history, it has been written with “a high level of cooperation from the Royal Navy” in the form of “unprecedented access to documents, personnel and submarines”. This sounds suspiciously like having your cake and eating it, but Hennessy and Jinks demonstrate their undoubted objectivity with a wide-ranging survey that is exhaustively researched, well written, authoritative and full of interest.
![In May 1991, HMS Tireless surfaced at the North Pole to play cricket
against the USS Pargo.](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/silent_deep_92_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqr-CAX0237pW5VS1eHdEbwpU-An9opmG3Vcew0s9o34Q.jpg?imwidth=350)
We learn, for example, that the fatality rate for Second World War British submariners was an astounding 38 per cent (second only to the losses of Bomber Command and more than five times the figure for the Royal Navy’s surface fleet). Another little-known fact is that the first post-war British submarines were based on a revolutionary Nazi design that used highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide (HTP) to reach underwater speeds of up to 25 knots.
Yet HTP was inherently unstable – one of the Royal Navy’s prototypes, HMS Explorer, was nicknamed “Exploder” – and the last boat was decommissioned in 1964. Even after these operational problems became apparent, Jinks and Hennessy contend that the Navy was right to persist with HTP boats as a temporary solution to combating “Soviet submarines of similar capabilities”.
READ: The Secret History of the Blitz by Joshua Levine
A few years earlier, the Royal Navy rejected nuclear propulsion, partly on the grounds of expense and the availability of vital components. But it changed its mind in 1957 when the US Navy’s Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, sailed rings around the Royal Navy’s entire fleet during a 10-day exercise in which it successfully “attacked” 16 ships and covered 3,400 miles at an average speed of 14.4 knots. “It was a devastating demonstration of her potential,” wrote one naval officer, “which changed our thinking forever.” Within five years Britain had its own nuclear submarine – HMS Dreadnought – thanks to Congress passing a bill that allowed the US to share its atomic technology with its allies. More nuclear subs followed – in the form of the improved “Valiant” class – but the real game-changer was the acquisition from the Americans of the submarine-fired Polaris ballistic missile system in 1962.
![In the 1990s, the Service
was equipped with the
powerful Tomahawk missile,
capable of striking land-based
targets hundreds of miles away.
Since the end of the Cold War,
Royal Navy submarines have
fired Tomahawks in a variety
of conflicts in the Middle East
and Afghanistan.](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/silent_deep_96_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLgh7iYB6BmgO3j6FNL9QbxGzZNFaGI2UXrZByBZx1K0.jpg?imwidth=350)
Polaris was “possibly the most revolutionary development in weapon technology in the 20th century”, combining “the advantages of land-based ballistic missiles with the flexibility of air-launched missiles but with the disadvantages of neither”. Crucially, it was virtually invulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. Yet to acquire Polaris, Britain had to agree to President Kennedy’s request to assign the new nuclear-armed submarines to Nato. The get-out clause was that the UK reserved the right to use its nuclear forces independently in circumstances “where Her Majesty’s government may decide that supreme national interests are at stake”.
The sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano by the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror in the early stages of the Falklands War in 1982 has attracted much controversy. The ship was, say the critics, outside the British-imposed total exclusion zone and steaming away from the Royal Navy’s task force, and therefore posed no threat. Yet it was sunk on Margaret Thatcher’s orders “to scupper an American-backed Peruvian peace plan”.
![HMS Talent off the Isle of Arran](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/silent_deep_105_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq--rrEcV6TAmynCsoSb2C3JfmSZ86JXhT37bn7RrgzI4.jpg?imwidth=350)
The authors explode this conspiracy theory with a detailed account of the events. The Belgrano did alter course, but this was not known in Whitehall until after the sinking. Nor would it have made any difference: the War Cabinet had decided that the ship and its escorts posed a threat to the task force – if not that day, then soon – and had to be sunk. “The military decisions on the rules of engagement were easy,” wrote Defence Secretary John Nott, “and the Belgrano was the easiest of the lot.”
Polaris was duly replaced by Trident in the Eighties, although the destructive power of Britain’s submarine-borne nuclear deterrent was reduced by more than 70 per cent from the end of the Cold War to 2000. It is now due for an upgrade – a huge financial commitment to which the new Conservative government has already signed up – and the authors seem fairly confident that, Corbyn or no, there will be “a British bomb with a 'bloody Union Jack on top of it’ somewhere in the grey wastelands of the North Atlantic in the 2030s, 2040s and 2050s”.
The Silent Deep should stand the test of time. Although it is light on the experience of the ordinary seaman, and the close detail sometimes slows the reader to a crawl, its broad historical perspective gives essential insight into the nuclear debate.
The Silent Deep by Peter Hennessy & James Jinks
864pp, Allen Lane, £30, ebook £12.99. To order this book from the Telegraph for £25 call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
![Silent Deep](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2015/12/10/silent_deep_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqji8xE7ZMe703zi26Pj6RAvMBKbNHfI4l7wDQQ7aFRk0.jpg?imwidth=350)