'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is
the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most
secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy
Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the
Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The
Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service
from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most
complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine
fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations
and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the
first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the
denizens of the silent deep.
Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite
gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest
ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS
Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or
Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an
exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain
known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first
full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it
was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to
collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology
from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever
before.
In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since
June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the
awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The
story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme
of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have
once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide
whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent
Deep provides an essential historical perspective.
