RN Polaris subs: Some ideas and Questions

[uk 75]

The UK Polaris fleet in the 1960s consisted of 4 SSBns built to a design which used the Valiant class SSN as a basis with a US missile launching section. Names were:

Resolution
Renown
Repulse
Revenge

Apparently a fifth boat was planned, but cancelled in 1965. No name seems to have been allocated, though one source uses Ramilles (based on Battleship names presumably).  Would be interested to know more?

The RN ar one stage hoped to simply buy up to 12 George Washington class SSBNs with Polaris.         No names of course, but some names which I have seen associated with Polaris subs in fiction and other places:

Retribution
Retaliation
Reprisal
Resolve
(Chapman Pincher's novel "Penthouse Conspirators" in 1968)

Royal Oak
Royal Sovereign
(an aside in a US novel

That gives us 12 names, but there are also older battleship names like

Redoubtable (French SSBN as well)

Alternatively if the UK and US had fallen out (perhaps a UK De Gaulle after Suez) the RN might have had to develop home grown boats using British missiles. Like the French stuff it would have been bigger and perhaps had fewer tubes. What about forward launchers like on the Russian Typhoons.

At the end of the 70s there was some talk of buying a class of cruise missile submarines to replace the R boats. These would probably have ended up loking like the Trafalgars, but again there might have been some radical thoughts to house bigger UK designed cruise missiles.

Any thoughts or info welcome

UK 75

[Guest_P1127_Whatif-curious]

Did they  use a US design? The Rs were pretty different IIRC, looking like typical British boats (Fatter nose, planes on hull and not sail)

[elmayerle]

I think they took the same approach that the US took with the original George Washington-class and sectioned an attack submarine to add a "Sherwood Forest" section of missile launch tubes.

[RP1]

That was quite literally the original plan - chop Valiant in half and stick the launchers in the middle.  In the end the ******* design was wrapped around a US SSBN-627 design midships.  Some extension of the ends was needed to provide more accommodation.  

Note that the Valiant design itself was Dreadnought's front end stuck on the first British back end.  (Dreadnought was a British front end stuck to a Skipjack back end).

Real cut'n'shut stuff.

RP1

[RP1]

What the hell?  Why is ******* edited out?

I'll write that again:

*******

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RP1

[RP1]

Oh well, on the assumption that no other words will go missing:

I don't think we'd go for forward tubes.  It can make compensation for missile launches difficult, although this was solved on the Typhoons (4 missile salvos, and all that) they are very different to all other boats.  If the UK was going it alone we would need to reduce risk.  The Cruise missile armed vessel could be a derivative of the SSBN, much like the solitary Yankee, K-240 with external launchers amidships.

WRT machinery, if anyone is interested, we had a design and prototype PWR similar to the S5W (no, it wasn't copied) - the supply of US equipment was simply to speed the process, so that shouldn't be affected.  In fact, if we use a UK design, maybe we would sell it to the French?

RP1