| Work on further units
of the Valiant Class was suspended as emphasis switched to
the production of Resolution Class ballistic missile
submarines. However as the polaris project neared completion,
three new nuclear powered submarines were laid down -
Churchill and Courageous at Vickers and Conqueror at Cammal
Laird.
Appropriately Churchill is one of
the few warships to have been named during the lifetime of
her namesake. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston
Churchill had insisted that submarines be named rather than
numbered, as a mark of respect to those who last their lives
in the silent service. Churchill had the distinction of
being the last nuclear submarine to be refitted at Chatham
Dockyard. She decommissioned on February 28th 1991 and is
laid up at Rosyth.
Courageous served in the Falklands
Conflict under the command of Rupert Best. She was the first
RN sub fitted with sub-harpoon. She paid off on April 10th
1992.
Conqueror was the only fleet
submarine to be built by a company other than Vickers and
was one the most distinguished warships of recent years,
being the only nuclear submarine to sink enemy warship, and
the first to fire in anger. Under the command of Christopher
Wreford-Brown (who was later awarded the DSO) Conqueror
spotted the Argentine Cruiser General Belgrano. The war
cabinet approved the sinking and on May 2nd 1982 Conqueror
fired three torpedoes (Mk 8 torpedoes, rather than the less
reliable but newer Mk 24 Tigerfish) two of which hit the
Belgrano, and the third reportedly hit her escorting
destroyer Hippolite Bouchard without effect. Bouchard and
her sistership Piedra Bueno attempted to depth charge
Conqueror as she withdrew. 321 members of Belgrano’s crew
were lost, making her destruction the biggest loss of the
war. During the conflict Belgrano carried out a 90 day
patrol, the longest ever by a Royal Navy submarine.
Conqueror was fitted with sub-harpoon in 1985. She collided
with a yacht in July 1988 off the Mull of Kintyre. Paid off
together with Warspite in a joint ceremony at Devonport in 2
August 1990. After decommissioning her reactor core was
removed, her hatches sealed and her inside gutted. |
