John Winton (1999) Life in British Submarines 1901-1999; The Silent War BBC 2, part 2, ‘The Russians are Coming’.

The first Inspecting Captain of Submarine Boats, as they were called, was advised never to go near them by the Director of Naval Construction, Sir William White, as he had once descended in a submergable boat in a London dock in 1887 and had been stuck on the bottom for an hour or so.

          Three American type ‘Holland’ submarine boats were built in Barrow in Furness in 1901.   They were sixty-three feet long and were shaped—in a way associated with more modern submarines—as a very fat and stumpy cigar. ‘Fug trials’ as they were called were more concerned with petrrol engine fumes killing the crew. White mice were kept in cages to monitor the level of carbon monoxide poisoning. The movement to diesel engines proved no less hazardous.  But submarine crews were paid more than their naval counterparts and the threat of the U-boats at the end of The First World War and begining of the Second World War in starving Britain of food and supplies almost lead to defeat. The humble submarine had become the most potent weapon in any navies’ armoury. This was shown in The Cold War with US, UK and USSR locked in an underwater arm’s race, one that had not been seen since the great Dreadnought ship building programme, but in this case modern weaponery had went nuclear.

          The Silent War takes us through this Cold War era and is multinational, it interviews Russian Admirals and ordinary seamen. It brings to life the battles that where thought day in day out underneath the Atlantic, the  Barents Seas and beneath the Artic ice. These are submariners that are proud of what they have done, what they have achieved. Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties the Allies had the upper hand. One of the reasons for this was technology. An underwater cable that ran from the UK and stretched across the Atlantic to the USA, with the codename SOSUS, was able to pick up the signature of Soviet submarine engines entering the Atlantic. Many of the Soviet submarines although they had nuclear missles still had diesel engines. For the nuclear missiles to effective they had to come within a 1000 miles of the USA. Hunter-killer subs were sent out to follow them and to destroy them before they could get their missles away. Even the new Soviet-type Delta class submarine with nuclear engines and weaponry, introduced in 1973,  was tracked by the British submarine Flying Fish on its trial runs in the Barents Sea. Sound is magnified underwater and Soviet subs were disparingly called ‘Bellowing Cows’.    

          Admiral Cherwann and Commander Alikon on the Atrivira  related how, in 1981, five Soviet submarines entered the Atlantic and, with new technology, were able to evade detection and mount a mock nuclear attack on America.

            Fast forward to 1983 and Reagan’s ‘Star War’ project. The Soviet built Typhoon series is the biggest nuclear submarine ever built. It has saunas and a swimming pool for its sailors. It can stay submerged for six months. It can hover underneath the pack ice of Antartica, twenty nuclear -interballistic- missles, with ten warheads on each, with a range of over 2000 miles, which can take out every American city within twenty minutes.  The Star War project is Cold War rhetoric, a piece of paper, not even at the planning stage.   

          John Lehman, Secretary of the American Navy, relates how the Cold War was won and the part he played. When the Berlin Wall fell he tells us the USSR was in the poor house. They were spending almost half their GDP on arms, while the US and Nato countries were spending six to seven percent.

          Let us look at the fault lines of the greed is good model. John Lehman a navy pen pusher and his son a mid-ranking naval officer, between 1981 and 1989, they sold secrets to the USSR.  This, arugably, enabled the USSR to catch up with the USA and their NATO alliance partners in submarine warfare and cost billions of dollars. The strongest ship is only as strong as its weakest component parts.  

          The fate of the K219 at the end of the Cold War in the Barrens Sea is also worth looking at.  Like the Holland type series pioneered in Burness all those years ago the commander said ‘I did not panic. I just thought it was unfair’. The submarine had diesel engines, was one of those ‘Bellowing Cows’that made up the majority of the Soviet fleet and was sinking . But it also had sixteen nuclear missles, fire had broken out and the deactivation system had broken down. This is the equivlent of a number of planes that have blown up on the runway, others that had  fell out of the sky with nuclear weapons aboard, but more deadly. A Soviet sailor sacrificed himself saving his comrades, perhaps saving the world.