Royal Navy Polaris submarine options presented to Cabinet in December 1962

[uk 75]

Prof Peter Hennessy's "Cabinet and the Bomb" from 2007 (OUP publisher) has been mentioned
before on this site as a useful source.
I was able to spend a wet afternoon with the Oxford Library copy and came upon the record of
a presentation by the First Lord of the Admiralty (Navy Minister in today's money) Lord Carrington
to a Cabinet meeting on the 21 December 1962 of the two options being considered by the Navy for procuring Polaris submarines.
The first was to buy 4 (note 4 not 5!) subs with 16 missiles each to be on full deployment by 1969. Cost would be 290 million Pounds for subs and missiles.
What is much more interesting is option 2:
Purchase 7 submarines each with only 8 missiles. These would take longer and only be fully deployable until 1971 and cost 290 million Pounds. These sbmarines would also be able to carry out the full military role of 7 hunter killer submarines.
At the same meeting Carrington noted that the option of leasing US submarines had not been considered in the recent communications with the US, and that there would be a gap in capability from 1965 resulting from the degrading of the V bombers without skybolt (the famous gap in nuclear arsenal covered so well in Vulcan's Hammer).
I have never seen any other mention of this 7 boat option. Nor have I seen any discussion of a smaller Polaris ssn style ship.
It is also interesting to note that the 5 submarine option (later announced by the Macmillan Government) has not yet emerged.
We need more info!

 

[Thorvic]

Regarding the 5th Resolution class i had a model of Ramilles on the Project Cancelled SIG at SMW this weekend and had an ex-Submariner start discussing the 5th boat as he served on HMS Churchill and said the fittings at the front on the boat were stamped up as SSBN whilst the rest of the boat was SSN and as she was the first of the improved Valiants it appears it was started as an R class and switched to become the new batch of Valiants.

 

[CNH]

I have seen mention at various places in the PRO of a hunter killer type with Polaris missiles [BND(SG) 1962?], but it was thought to be a Bad Idea. Hunter killers are supposed to be aggressive; Polaris types very retiring.

 

[Barrington Bond]

I haven't the books name to hand at the moment (a small paperback about British Polaris each chapter written by someone who worked on a different aspect of it) but it was definitely said that there were a fifth set of missle tube castings that were sold back to the US... perhaps other stuff for a 5th boat was made before cancellation.

Regards,
Barry

 

[uk 75]

Thorvic and
Barry

Hennessy's documents do at some point mention that a fifth set of weapon facilities/tubes had already been ordered and would have to be cancelled. They also note that Vickers were expecting the order for the 5th boat and needed to know as soon as possible what would happen to it. Some items may well then have found there way into other RN applications.

CNH

The US Navy does not seem to have pursued an SSN with Polaris. As you say the two roles would seem mutually exclusive. However, in 1960 or so nuclear weapons were still seen as being usable in a war. It might have been intended to use Polaris in lieu of Thor and F100 Sabres to hit operational Warsaw Pact targets. Kennedy's experience during the Cuban Missile Crisis at finding he only had a nuclear option led to the flexible response doctrine and made Polaris a weapon of last resort.
The RN may in 1962 have been hoping to preserve the schedule of its SSN programme. Brown/Moore mentions that it was thought to be relatively simple to split a Valiant in half
and add the Polaris silo amidships. Further study showed this not to be the case.

The rationale for the fifth boat seems according to a document in Hennessy to have been that 32
missiles at sea represented a full replacement of the destructive capacity of the V Force on a permananent basis. Four submarines meant that there was about a third of the year when only one boat (16 missiles) would be at sea.

 

[JFC Fuller]

Do we know what the SSN programme looked like prior to the decision to accept Polaris in lieu of Skybolt? ie, how did the Resolution class disrupt the SSN programme?

 

[CNH]

'Vanguard to Trident' probably covers that.

 

[Pirate Pete]

Barry.


Would the book you refer to be "The Impact of Polaris" ????
- The origins of Britain's seaborne nuclear deterrent -


Edited by Captain J.E. Moore R.N.
Published by Richard Netherwood Limited, 1999


It does make an interesting read, but I have to admit not having read it for some time, and seem to recall that where it is written by different parties, i.e. it is a something of a compilation of material, it's not the "easiest" read.....

 

[Graham1973]

Tangentally related to the OP. The proposal to purchase US Subs led to the appearance of one of the more interesting novels of the early 1960's

Antony Trew's "Two Hours to Darkness" is set aboard a US Polaris sub (One of six) purchased by the RN for "...close on thirty millon (Pounds ?)..."

See also the thread linked below.

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,11647.msg112155.html#msg112155