The Silent Deep : The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945

\"The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations\" is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain''s armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented cooperation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of World War II to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain''s submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all—from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors—what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep. Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy''s latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet \"Victor III