We Come Unseen: The Untold Story of Britain's Cold War SubmarinersJIM RING270 PAGES, ILLUS, MAPS
From the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat of a nuclear Armageddon was an everyday reality. The front line of what Churchill called 'the balance of terror' was the submarine forces of the Soviets and the West that were responsible for the delivery of the nuclear ballistic missiles targeted on the world's largest cities. Hundreds of feet beneath the waves, these leviathans vied for supremacy, a supremacy that would signal to their respective political masters their ability to achieve global dominance - or indeed destruction.
Alongside them worked the attack submarines, tasked with locating and trailing the missile submarines and - in time of war - with destroying them. Together they played a deadly game of nuclear hide-and-seek. Hitherto, on this side of the Atlantic, little more than hints of this remarkable tale have come to light. Now, granted exclusive access to its leading submarine commanders by the Royal Navy, Jim Ring tells for the first time the story of this critical aspect of the Cold War. The backdrop is the achievements of the submarine branch during the Second World War, and the gradual development of a new, post-war role.
The story proper begins with the acquisition of a submarine nuclear power-plant from the US, and subsequently of the Polaris missile system in 1962, and with the inception of the Polaris patrols in 1968. With more than a side-glance at the Falklands War, it culminates in the submarine operations of the Reagan-Thatcher Star Wars era that finally convinced the Soviet Union that the war at sea could not be won. In the words of Sir John Coward, Flag Officer Submarines at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall: 'There was a war and we won it.'
This book is as much about the personnel of the submarine squadrons as their operations, and it follows the careers of six submarine commanders from their early days at Dartmouth to their remarkable escapades in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Norwegian and the Barents Seas. It provides a fascinating insight into the sort of men trained and prepared - literally - to press the nuclear button, who in the end gave us peace in our time. As the book demonstrates, they are the more than worthy successors to Churchill's Few.
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