50 years ago today: The Queen launches the first British nuclear submarine

20th century, Humanities, Modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight, ,

HMS Dreadnought, the UK’s first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched by the Queen on Trafalgar Day, 21 October 1960.

Although laid down on 12 June 1959 for an estimated £18.4 million and launched in 1960, she was not commissioned until 17 April 1963, following her first dive on 10 January 1963. The world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, had been completed by the US Navy in 1955, and British manufacturer Vickers Armstrongs was able to use this American nuclear technology to complete the Dreadnought. After 20 years’, service the Dreadnought was decommissioned in 1980.

Minutes of the meeting of the Naval Sub-Committee of the Conservative Parliamentary Defence Committee, which was attended by Lord Selkirk, First Lord of the Admiralty, on 10 December 1958. Selkirk briefed the Sub-Committee on the constraints on new naval construction, the progress being made on the Dreadnought, and the concerns at the Soviet naval dominance and advances in nuclear propulsion [CRD 2/36/7]
Statement issued on the deployment of American Polaris submarines at Holy Loch, dated 16 March 1961 [CRD 3/9/16]
 

The second British nuclear submarine, HMS Valiant, was wholly British in design and manufacture, incorporating a new British nuclear propulsion system co-designed by Rolls Royce. It was ordered from Vickers Armstrongs on 31 August 1960. Later that year, on 1 November, the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons that a sheltered anchorage for American Polaris submarines had been granted at Holy Loch in Scotland.

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