Dreadnought HMS (Submarine)

[john sefton]

The seventh HMS Dreadnought (S101) was the United Kingdom's first nuclear-powered submarine, built by Vickers Armstrongs at Barrow-in-Furness.
Dreadnought was laid down on 12 June 1959, and launched by Queen Elizabeth II on Trafalgar Day, 21 October 1960. The reactor was embarked in 1962 and Dreadnought made her first dive, in Ramsden Dock, on 10 January 1963. She commissioned on 17 April 1963.
In the mid-1960s, Dreadnought's visits included trips to Norfolk, Virginia, Bermuda, Rotterdam, and Kiel. She was at Gibraltar in 1965, 1966, and 1967, and on 19 September 1967, she left Rosyth, Scotland for Singapore on a sustained high-speed run. The round trip finished as 4,640 miles surfaced and 26,545 miles submerged.

During her career, Dreadnought performed many varied missions. On 24 June 1967, she was ordered to sink the wrecked and drifting German ship Essberger Chemist. Three torpedoes hit along the length of the target, but the gunners of HMS Salisbury finished the job by piercing the tanks, which were keeping Essberger Chemist just afloat.

Apart from minor hull-cracking problems, Dreadnought proved to be a reliable vessel, popular with her crews. On 10 September 1970, she completed a major refit at Rosyth, Scotland, in the course of which her nuclear core was refuelled and her ballast tank valves were changed to reduce noise.

On 3 March 1971, Dreadnought became the first British submarine to surface at the North Pole. In 1973 she took part in the Royal Navy's first annual Group Deployment, when a group of warships and auxiliaries would undertake a long deployment to maintain fighting efficiency and "show the flag" around the world.

Together with the frigates Alacrity and Phoebe, Dreadnought took part in Operation Journeyman, a deployment to the South Atlantic in 1977 (prior to the Falklands War) to deter possible Argentine aggression against the Falkland Islands.
Due to machinery damage and the limited refit facilities then available for SSNs, Dreadnought was withdrawn from service in 1980. Dreadnought is now at Rosyth Naval Dockyard, laid up indefinitely while her radioactive contamination decays. Her nuclear fuel has been removed and she has been stripped of useful equipment.

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