Secret Warriors: British Submarines in the Cold War

272 pages

Dr Andrew Boyd

Dr Paul Brown is a noted maritime historian. His previous books include Elizabeth’s Navy, describing the evolution of the Royal Navy across the 70 years of the late Queen’s reign, and Abandon Ship, a forensic examination of the sinkings in the Falklands War. The latter received the distinguished Anderson medal from the Society for Nautical Research.

Brown’s latest book Secret Warriors provides a comprehensive account of the Royal Navy submarine classes that served in the Cold War. He begins with the selected survivors from the classes laid down before or during the Second World War, ‘T’s, ‘S’s, ‘U’s, and ‘A’s, along with four X-craft midgets, and records the various modifications and upgrades these received through the 1950s. The core of the book is the creation of a modern submarine force capable of outperforming the primary potential enemy, the Soviet Navy, beginning with the conventionally powered ‘P’ and ‘O’ classes and then moving into the nuclear age with the Dreadnought, Valiant, Swiftsure and Trafalgar SSNs and Resolution SSBNs.  He ends with the four Upholders, although strictly speaking only two of these commissioned before the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991. Along with a description of each class and its evolution, Brown summarises the developing role and deployment of British submarines through the Cold War era and provides a representative sample of specific operations. He also records significant mishaps and disasters.

An obvious question is how this book compares with the comprehensive history of the post 1945 Royal Navy submarine service The Silent Deep published by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks in 2015. While there is inevitably considerable overlap, Secret Warriors is pre-eminently an illustrated history, a pictorial record of each submarine class that served, with every variant faithfully captured. Around 165 photographs are included with many never previously published. The vast majority are of the boats themselves but some feature key personalities and a small selection of Soviet submarines for comparison and context. There are excellent data tables for each class and beautifully reproduced machinery diagrams explain diesel-electric, HTP and nuclear drive. The number and quality of these images explains why Secret Warriors retails at twice the price of a Silent Deep hardback.

Despite its obvious strength as a pictorial record, the value of Secret Warriors is not confined to its images. An opening chapter titled ‘Strategy and Tactics’ provides an excellent overview of the evolution of Cold War operations, stressing the importance of intelligence gathering in the Barents Sea and, from 1980, the growing need to counter Soviet SSBN deployment under the Arctic ice. It also rightly emphasises that, despite its professionalism and many outstanding achievements, the Royal Navy submarine service was hampered through most of the Cold War by totally inadequate weapons. If hot war had come before 1985, it would have struggled to deal with its Soviet opponent. Specific examples of operations conducted by each class of submarine are included within their associated chapter. Most of these have featured in earlier works but some details are new, for example in the account of Sceptre‘s collision with the Soviet Delta III SSBN K-211 in the Barents Sea in May 1981. Although official records of sensitive Cold War operations remain closed, Brown’s new material reflects greater willingness of surviving participants to speak about events now more than four decades old and the recent availability of some important private memoirs.

Alongside his accounts of representative Cold War operations, Brown provides a comprehensive record of those boats within each class that suffered significant damage, or in four cases total loss, through error, negligence, accident or technical failing. While few of the incidents he catalogues are new, he reminds us how many there were with some thought-provoking references to near misses as well. The message is that, despite increasing professionalism and technology improvement across the period, submarine service remained intensely challenging and unforgiving.

There are occasional errors, for example in sonar equipment fitted and getting the respective commanding officers of Spartan and Splendid in the Falklands War the wrong way round, but these are very minor and do not detract from the overall quality of the book. No doubt some submariners of the Cold War generation will quibble with the list of ‘great’ COs of the era at the end of the first chapter. It is perhaps inevitably subjective, has some surprising omissions, and is heavily tilted to the pre 1980 generations.

Finally, it is sobering to reflect on Brown’s table of submarine strengths at the beginning of his first chapter. In 1950, the Royal Navy had just 20 frontline boats from the wartime classes, with some of these in refit, a further 20 confined to anti-submarine training, and 20 more in reserve. In 1990, the frontline had risen to 30 boats, two thirds nuclear powered including four SSBNs carrying Britain’s strategic deterrent, and all at last equipped with effective long range anti-submarine and anti-surface weapons. In terms of capability, this was an extraordinary national achievement comparable to the creation of the Dreadnought fleet 75 years earlier.  Sadly, as readers will know all too well, the descent over the next three decades has been precipitous. At present, the Royal Navy seems reduced to just one deployable SSN and two SSBNs. Whether this parlous state is recoverable, only time will tell.

Overall, Secret Warriors does not replace The Silent Deep for those readers wanting in depth history. But it does offer those submariners who served, and many others too, a fine memento of a vanished era.