HMS Conqueror (S48)

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HMS Conqueror p1
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (Naval War Flag) United Kingdom
Ship type Nuclear submarine
class Churchill- class
Shipyard Cammell Laird , Birkenhead
Keel laying 5th December 1968
Launch 18th August 1969
Commissioning November 9, 1971
Whereabouts 2nd August 1990 Decommissioned
in Devonport
Ship dimensions and crew
length
86.9 m ( Lüa )
width 10.1 m
Draft Max. 8.2 m
displacement submerged: 4,900 t
 
crew 103 men
Machine system
machine 1 Rolls-Royce reactor
propeller 1
Mission data submarine
Top
speed
submerged
28 kn (52 km / h)
Armament

The HMS Conqueror (identification: S48) was a submarine in the service of the Royal Navy . She was of the Churchill class . The Conqueror is the first and so far only nuclear submarine that has sunk an enemy ship in combat. Aside from the Pakistani hangor , it is the only submarine that has sunk a ship since World War II .

Data

The length of the Churchill- class submarines was almost 87 meters, with a width of 10 and a draft of 8 meters. When submerged, the boat displaced around 4,900 tons of water. It could fire torpedoes and anti-ship missiles from its six torpedo tubes .

history

HMS Warspite (left) next to the Conqueror and the HMS Valiant in the background

Construction began at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead on December 5, 1967. On August 28, 1969, the Conqueror was launched and put into service in late 1971. Their primary task was to monitor Soviet ship movements.

Falklands War

However, when the Falklands War broke out, the submarine was relocated to the waters around the Atlantic archipelago on April 3, 1982, after a 21-day voyage it reached them.

The task assigned to her included the search for the Argentine aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo . However, on April 30, the boat caught the light cruiser General Belgrano . This was located southwest of the Falkland Islands , just outside the exclusion zone that the British had declared.

After the first shots in the war, the ship received the order to sink the light cruiser, the British government confirmed the order to prevent the Argentines from the south ( General Belgrano ) and from the north ( Veinticinco de Mayo ) from entering the task force at the same time could attack the Royal Navy .

The Conqueror shot a fan of three Mark VIII torpedoes at the General Belgrano , two of which hit. After twenty minutes the ship had sunk almost completely and was then abandoned by the crew. 323 men were killed on the General Belgrano . Of the two destroyers , the General Belgrano accompanied, was hit a third of the torpedo, but which did not explode. In their confusion, the two warships fled the scene and did not return until night to rescue the castaways.

After the sinking, the submarine mainly carried out reconnaissance missions, observed aircraft leaving the mainland and reported the movements to the fleet.

On her return to Faslane-on-Clyde , the Conqueror had put the Jolly Roger on the tower , a tradition of the Royal Navy when a submarine returned with a sinking submarine.

1984 it was discovered that the navigation log the Conqueror was untraceable. Members of the opposition suspected that the "disappearance" of the logbooks was a deliberate government action to cover up the exact circumstances of the sinking of the General Belgrano . After the publication of new files, however, Stuart Prebble suspects that the disappearance of the logbooks could be more connected to Operation Barmaid ( see below ).

Operation Barmaid

In August 1982, just weeks after the Falklands War ended, Conqueror conducted a top-secret mission called Operation Barmaid . In doing so, she penetrated Soviet territorial waters in the Barents Sea and, with a special tool, cut the towed sonar of a submarine hunter ship operating under the Polish flag . The tow sonar was stolen and examined by the British and American side.

Further service time

In July 1988, Conqueror collided with the Dalriada , a sailing ship owned by the Army Sail Training Association, off Northern Ireland .

The Conqueror was decommissioned in 1990 and its periscope can now be seen in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport . The submarine itself is still in Devonport , waiting to be scrapped. Since 2009 it has given its name to Conqueror Island , an island in the archipelago of South Georgia in the South Atlantic .

Web links

Remarks

  1. Hansard of the House of Commons meeting on November 7, 1984 (excerpt), available at hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed October 12, 2012)
  2. a b Neil Tweedie, HMS Conqueror's biggest secret: a raid on Russia , on telegraph.co.uk , October 12, 2012 (accessed: October 12, 2012)
  3. ^ Report of the House of Commons of November 2, 2010 (accessed: October 12, 2012)