Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

52 страница из 72

She lay there motionless, tied with ropes forward and aft, 80 per cent of her bulk hidden underwater. Sleek, black and athletic-looking, Britain’s ultimate war machine had more than a hint of menace about her, as if she knew the punishment she could inflict, quite aware that she could disappear like a ghost and travel undetected for months, armed to the teeth with weapons of unimaginable destructive power.

Resolution was a Polaris submarine built by Vickers shipbuilders in Barrow-in-Furness to the south-west of the Lake District. The other three Resolution-class boats – submarines are never called ships, reflecting a time when submersibles were taken out to sea on the back of ships like boats – in the squadron were Repulse, Revenge and Renown, Repulse also being built by Vickers, the other two by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead. The Polaris programme was born of discussions between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that took place in the Bahamas in 1962, and became known as the Nassau Agreement. This ended the programme of airborne-launched nuclear missiles, which had been used by the Americans since the 1950s.