Photo: Cold War Submarine Memorial Royal Navy Marker

Photographer: Stanley and Terrie Howard
Taken: May 16, 2009
Caption: Cold War Submarine Memorial Royal Navy Marker
Additional Description: We Come Unseen Heralded by the motto of the British Royal Navy Submarine Service, this stone commemorates the part played by its submarines during the Cold War.
Justifiably described as the Third World War, this conflict followed close on the heels of the bloody conflict of the Second World War, during which the Royal Navy (RN) had suffered one in three submarine casualties, and the US Navy had lost almost one in five submarines. Thus the two submarine navies already shared a proud heritage of sacrifice and extraordinary courage.
The links of history were never stronger than during the Cold War, when we stood shoulder to shoulder against a common threat. From the late 1940s RN diesel driven submarines participated in the earliest, often dangerous and uncomfortable, surveillance operations in the farthest reaches of the North Atlantic against a growing Soviet Navy. The RN joined the nuclear club in the mid 1960s. The fact that its early SSNs were christened with the greatest of ship names from the past (Dreadnought, Valiant, Warspite) indicated that a new era of capital ships had dawned. President John F. Kennedy had transferred Polaris technology to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan under the Nassau Agreement in late 1962, and when HMS Resolution undertook her first deterrent patrol in early 1968, she and her sisters – HMS Renown, Repulse and Revenge – provided the United Kingdom with “the best insurance policy the nation ever had”. The four Resolution Class SSBNs were to undertake 229 unbroken patrols until Repulse decommissioned in 1996. The Swiftsure and Trafalgar classes of attack submarines appeared in the 1970s and 80s, and they continued the excellent record of the Churchill-class before them.
The Cold War was won beneath the waves, out of sight and often out of mind. Future American and British submariners, facing a different threat, will carry forward the proud legacy of underwater cooperation and achievement that has been so firmly built on deep friendship and quiet trust among the submarines of the two nations.
Submitted: June 4, 2009, by Stanley and Terrie Howard of Greer, South Carolina.
Database Locator Identification Number: p65784
File Size: 1.093 Megabytes

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