Quotulatiousness

February 23, 2024

The Royal Navy ballistic missile submarine commander’s “Letter of Last Resort”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Britain’s Royal Navy always has a nuclear submarine — currently one of the Vanguard-class — at sea with a unique mission … stay undetected to ensure the survival of Britain’s nuclear deterrent in the form of the boat’s live nuclear weapons. Ned Donovan reposted an article on the mission orders each sub commander has locked in a safe for the duration of the mission:

HMS Victorious, a Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarine in the Clyde estuary on transit to base at Faslane on 8 December, 2003.
Photo: LA(phot) Mez Merrill/MOD via Wikimedia Commons

Somewhere out in the North Atlantic, every hour of the day, every day of the year, a lone submarine glides through the ocean with no real destination. Since 1969, one of the four boats of the UK’s Continuous At-Sea Submarine Deterrent has always been on patrol. Its location is known to only a handful, even many of her crew will have no idea where they are.

While many Royal Navy captains hold responsibility for their crew, Trident submarine commanders also bear a far more macabre role: the duty to play Britain’s final political and diplomatic hand possible. Within the bowels of each boat lays two safes, an outer and an inner, and within that inner safe sits the letter of last resort.

One of the first tasks of the Cabinet Secretary on the appointment by the Queen of a new prime minister, is to have the new leader write that very letter.

After the elation of an election victory, the civil servant informs the politician that this letter will lay out the action the prime minister wishes to take, should the government and chain of command be totally destroyed by nuclear attack. Tony Blair, according to his cabinet secretary, was said to have gone “quite white” on being told of his options.

Options do allow a great deal of latitude, with varying degrees of widespread destruction of human life:

  1. Retaliate with nuclear weapons without prejudice.
  2. Do not retaliate at all.
  3. Allow the commander to act within his own discretion.
  4. Place the boat under the control of an allied navy, specifically the Royal Australian Navy or US Navy.

Given some time alone, the prime minister is requested to decide and write it in a letter addressed to the commanders of each of the Vanguard-class submarines in the navy. The message is then sealed in an envelope and sent to be placed into the boats’ safes. So far, none of these missives have been opened, and the letters are burned at the end of each premier’s term.

The only prime minister to comment openly on their orders was Lord Callaghan in an interview with historian Peter Hennessy:

    If it were to become necessary or vital, it would have meant the deterrent had failed, because the value of the nuclear weapon is frankly only as a deterrent. But if we had got to that point, where it was, I felt, necessary to do it, then I would have done it. I’ve had terrible doubts, of course, about this. I say to you, if I had lived after having pressed that button, I could never ever have forgiven myself.

To get to the stage where the letters can be opened is a long and purposefully difficult journey. First, the prime minister must have perished or become incapacitated in some way. Then, his proposed alternate decision makers would had to have met the same fate. It is only after that point that the submarine commanders go anywhere near their safes.

Updated to fix broken link.

June 28, 2023

How to Fund a War: Lend Lease, Billion Dollar Gift, and Aid to Britain

OTD Military History
Published 27 Jun 2023

Programs like Lend Lease, Mutual Aid, and the Billion Dollar Gift were support from Canada and the United States that helped Britain with war supplies and material in the darkest days of World War 2.
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June 4, 2023

D-Day Series: RCN and Operation Neptune

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Valour Canada
Published 28 Dec 2015

This video describes the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) invaluable contributions to the invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Operation Neptune was the name of the English Channel-crossing portion of the larger Normandy invasion (named Operation Overlord).

1. Overview (0:00)
Dawn. June 6, 1944. D-Day. Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious invasion in history, is about to begin. This is a description of the battlefield prior to the attack and also tells how the RCN played an important role both in the English Channel and along the French coast.

2. Stop the U-boats (2:55)
Churchill said that the only thing that scared him during the war were the U-boats. This describes the problematic German U-boats and how the British and Canadian Navies (Operation Neptune) worked together to find, track, and destroy the underwater menace prior to D-Day.

3. Clear the Mines (6:27)
“There is no doubt that the mine is our greatest obstacle to success” – British Admiral Bertram Ramsay. The size and effectiveness of the German minefield that guarded the D-Day beaches and how the Allied Navies worked together to prepare a route through which the invasion could occur.

4. Cover the Beaches (9:49)
The Canadian Tribal-class destroyers played a significant role in eliminating the German Navy’s major surface warships’ threat to the invasion fleet. The RCN destroyer squadron and their mission of clearing the English Channel of German ships before, during, and after the invasion. A battle between the Canadian destroyers Haida and Huron and four German ships near the port of Brest on June 9 is discussed. Also covered are the two Canadian destroyers, Algonquin and Sioux, that were tasked with shore bombardment at Juno Beach.

5. Land the Troops (13:01)
Shortly after dawn and following a forty-minute naval barrage at Juno Beach, the first Canadian soldiers came ashore. By noon, the beach was held by the Canadians and millions of tons of supplies were being brought ashore. This section describes the first waves of the invasion and the tanks, artillery, vehicles, and supplies that were soon to follow.
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February 17, 2023

America’s War on Japanese Shipping – WW2 Special Documentary

Filed under: History, Japan, Military, Pacific, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 15 Feb 2023

We’ve covered in great depth the Battle of the Atlantic and the war by and against German U-Boats, but what about the other side of the world? Why has the war on Japanese shipping been so much quieter? There are several very specific reasons for that, which we look at today.
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December 5, 2022

The sinking of HMS Courageous, 17 September, 1939

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Northern Historian
Published 5 Feb 2021

17th September 1939, just two weeks after Britain had declared war on Germany, aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was on patrol off the west coast of Ireland. Unbeknown to her, she was being stalked by a hidden predator. Within 20 minutes of being attacked she had slipped beneath the Atlantic surface, taking with her the lives of over 500 men. She became the first British naval casualty of World War Two.

She began her life as a light cruiser during World War One as part of the Courageous class of cruisers. They were a trio of ships comprising HMS Courageous, HMS Glorious, and HMS Furious. These ships were designed and built to support Admiral Lord Fisher’s Baltic project.

Following heavy losses at The Battle of Jutland, HMS Courageous became the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron and took part in the 2nd Battle of Heligoland.

Following World War 1 and due to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, limiting new ship constructions, HMS Courageous along with her sisters HMS Glorious and HMS Furious were converted into aircraft carriers and became the Courageous class of aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy.
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October 10, 2022

Chinese Warlords and the Royal Canadian Navy – WW2 – OOTF 028

Filed under: Cancon, China, Germany, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 9 Oct 2022

In today’s episode of Out of the Foxholes, we discuss the role of Chinese warlords played in the war against Japan, while also shining a bit more light on the Canadian Navy and its impact on WW2.
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September 22, 2022

RAF Coastal Command vs U-Boats

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 5 Oct 2020

The contest between aircraft and U-Boats during the Second World War was one of competing technological innovations, culminating with a decisive struggle in the summer of 1943. The History Guy tells the forgotten story of the development of anti-submarine warfare and the contest between the aircraft of RAF Coastal Command and U-Boats of the Kriegsmarine in the Bay of Biscay.
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August 25, 2022

The Polish Navy – Founding to the Fall of Poland

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Drachinifel
Published 14 Apr 2021

Today we take a look at the how the Polish Navy came to be, how the core of their ships got away to form the start of the Free Polish Navy, and the last stand the remaining ships and men undertook.
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July 29, 2022

Nightmare Fuel For Soviet Submarines; the story of the Canadair CP-107 Argus

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Polyus Studios
Published 4 Dec 2020

Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel!
Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudios

In its day the Argus was the most formidable anti-submarine warfare platform fielded by any NATO country. Canadair adapted the Bristol Britannia into a highly effective low and slow sub hunter. This gave Maritime Air Command the edge in the North Atlantic. It served on the front-line of the Cold War and kept the Soviet submarine threat in check for almost 25 years.
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July 14, 2022

The plight of 1st Canadian Infantry Division during the opening stages of Operation Husky, July 1943

First Canadian Infantry Division had an exciting start to Operation Husky — for certain values of “exciting” — as told in Mark Zuehlke’s Operation Husky: The Canadian Invasion of Sicily, July 10-August 7, 1943:

Every day [during the convoy to Sicily], Major General Guy Simonds and Lieutenant Colonel George Kitching performed the same macabre ritual. Kitching would take a hat filled with equal-sized chits of paper on which the names of every ship bearing Canadian personnel and equipment was written and hold it out to the divional commander. Simonds drew three chits and those three ships were declared lost, victims of torpedoes from a German U-boat — the scenario at times being that about one thousand men aboard the fast convoy had drowned and burned in oil-drenched seas, or hundreds of trucks, tanks, guns, radios, and other equipment in the slow convoy had plummeted to the bottom of the Mediterranean. All lost, gone. Kitching and his staff would then sit down and coldly “examine the effect the loss of these three ships would have on our projected plans.”

On July 3, Simonds pulled from the hat chits for three ships travelling in the Slow Assault Convoy — City of Venice, St. Essylt, and Devis. The coincidence was chilling, for it was aboard these vessels that equal portions of the divisional headquarters equipment — including all the trucks, Jeeps, radio sets, and a panoply of other gear that kept a division functioning — had been distributed. Were one or even, God forbid, two of these ships sunk, the headquarters could function almost as normal. But lose the three and the division was crippled.

Kitching considered the “chance of all three ships being sunk as a million to one”. Deciding there was no point in studying the implications of such a wildly remote possibility, he asked Simonds to draw another three names from the hat, which the general did.

As you’ve probably already figured out, the one-in-a-million situation turned up on schedule. City of Venice took a torpedo during a submarine alert, with Royal Navy escort ships dropping depth charges on a suspected U-boat position. The convoy instructions were for damaged ships to be left behind and for the undamaged ships to carry on, as the danger was greater if the whole convoy slowed or stopped to aid the stricken ship(s). City of Venice could not be saved, and ten crew members and ten Canadian soldiers were killed, but the other 462 men on board were transferred to a rescue ship. A few hours later, two more ships from the convoy were lost: St. Essylt, and Devis.

While the loss of lives aboard the three torpedoed slow convoy ships was relatively small, the amount and nature of equipment and stores sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean was serious. A total of 562 vehicles were lost, leaving 1st Canadian Infantry Division facing a major transportation shortage. Also lost were fourteen 25-pounders [gun-howitzers], eight 17-pounders [heavy anti-tank guns, equivalent to German 88mm guns], and ten 6-pounder anti-tank guns that would significantly reduce the division’s artillery support. “In addition to the above,” the divisional historical officer, Captain Gus Sesia, noted in his diary, “we lost great quantities of engineers’ stores and much valuable signals equipment.” The biggest immediate blow was the loss of all divisional headquaters vehicles and equipment, including many precious wireless sets — precisely the nightmare scenario forecast and rejected by Kitching as infeasible when Simonds had drawn these ships by lot a few days earlier.

Equally serious was the loss in equipment and lives suffered by the Royal Canadian Army Medical Coprs personnel attached to the division. Due to a loading error, instead of No. 9 Field Ambulance’s vehicles being distributed among several ships, fifteen out of eighteen were on Devis. Accompanying the vehicles was a medical officer and nineteen other ranks and medical orderlies. Four of the other ranks were among the fifty-two Canadian troops killed and another four suffered injuries. The other field ambulance, field dressing station, and field surgery units assigned to the division were largely unaffected. No. 5 Field Ambulance’s vehicles had been distributed correctly so only two of them and a ton of medical supplies went down with St. Essylt. City of Venice had just one medical officer, Captain K.E. Perfect, aboard and he escaped uninjured. But Perfect was overseeing safe passage of nine tons of stretchers and blankets, which all went to the bottom.

[…]

A fully accounting of the losses would not be completed for days. Even on July 7, reports were still coming in that City of Venice remained under tow and bound for Algiers. Finally, at 1900 hours on that day, its sinking was confirmed. The report also stated that most of the surviving Canadian troops had been loaded on a Landing Craft, Infantry in Algiers and were en route for Malta. From there, they would eventually rejoin the division.

Compounding the loss of so many vehicles was the fact that the division had left Britain with a smaller than mandated number due to lack of shipping capacity. Once the seriousness of the situation was appreciated, Lieutenant Colonel D.G.J. Farquharson, the division’s assistant director of ordnance services, and his staff “tried to make [the losses] good … by emergency measures, improvising and obtaining what could be obtained buckshee from the Middle East.” They soon had commitments for some vehicles, but these would not be available until after the initial landings. The fact that every vehicle to be found locally was a Dodge posed “a considerable ordnance problem, because what spare parts we had were based on Ford and Chevrolet makes.” Improvisation would be the order of the day.

June 1, 2022

How To Kill A U-Boat – WW2 Special

World War Two
Published 31 May 2022

How to kill a U-Boat? The threat of the illusive and nearly undetectable submarines had been on the mind of every Allied naval planner since the Great War. As the Kriegsmarine once more unleashed its wolfpacks to the high seas, it became a race against time to find a way to stop the deadly stalkers from beneath the surface.
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May 29, 2022

Black May, Nazi Subs Defeated – WW2 – 196 – May 28, 1943

World War Two
Published 28 May 2021

German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the U-Boats to leave the Atlantic this week; the losses lately have just been too great for their patrols to continue there. There is active fighting in China, the Aleutians, and the Kuban, and there are special weapons tests in the skies over Germany.
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May 1, 2022

Sinking of the General Belgrano – Falklands War Documentary

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Historigraph
Published 30 Apr 2022

Go to https://squarespace.com/historigraph to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Falklands War series:
[1] Invasion of the Falklands https://youtu.be/BUYp3Wqz00A
[2] Recapture of South Georgia https://youtu.be/4mCZBpX4pxs

To help support the creation of more videos, consider supporting on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/historigraph

#FalklandsWar #Historigraph #Belgrano

Come join the historigraph discord: https://discord.gg/ygypfs3BEB

Buy Historigraph Posters here! historigraph.creator-spring.com

This video was sponsored by Squarespace.

► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/historigraph
► Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIj…
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraph

Sources for the Falklands War Series (so far):

Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands
https://archive.org/details/battlefor…
Martin Middlebrook, Operation Corporate
Martin Middlebrook, Battle for the Malvinas
Mike Norman, The Falklands War There and Back Again: The Story of Naval Party 8901
Kenneth Privratsky, Logistics in the Falklands War
Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days
Paul Brown, Abandon Ship
Julian Thompson, No Picnic
John Shields, Air Power in the Falklands Conflict
Edward Hampshire, The Falklands Naval Campaign 1982
Hugh McManners, Forgotten Voices of the Falklands
Cedric Delves, Across an Angry Sea: The SAS in the Falklands War
Rowland White, Vulcan 607
Vernon Bogdanor, “The Falklands War 1982” lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bWw…
Arthur Gavshon, The sinking of the Belgrano https://archive.org/details/sinkingof…
Gordon Smith, Battle Atlas of the Falklands War 1982 by Land, Sea and Air
http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL198…
Hansard- https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha…
Recording of Thatcher’s statement to the Commons is from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvbhV…

Music Credits:

“Rynos Theme” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

“Crypto” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

“Stay the Course” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

Other music and SFX from Epidemic Sound

April 28, 2022

Britain’s Incredible Recapture of South Georgia – Falklands War Documentary

Historigraph
Published 27 Apr 2022

Go to https://squarespace.com/historigraph to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of
a website or domain.

In just three weeks after the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland islands, Britain threw together a task force out of thin air, sailed it 8000 miles around the world and started taking its territory back. This is how it happened.

Made with thanks to the Fleet Air Arm Musuem in Yeovilton, Somerset. https://www.fleetairarm.com/

To help support the creation of the rest of the Falklands series, consider supporting on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/historigraph

#Falklands40 #Historigraph

Come join the historigraph discord: https://discord.gg/ygypfs3BEB

Buy Historigraph Posters here! historigraph.creator-spring.com

► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/historigraph
► Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIj…
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraph
Thumbnail credit Daniel Behennec: https://www.naval-history.net/FxDBMis…

Sources for the Falklands War Series (so far):

Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands
https://archive.org/details/battlefor…
Martin Middlebrook, Operation Corporate
Martin Middlebrook, Battle for the Malvinas
Mike Norman, The Falklands War There and Back Again: The Story of Naval Party 8901
Kenneth Privratsky, Logistics in the Falklands War
Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days
Paul Brown, Abandon Ship
Julian Thompson, No Picnic
John Shields, Air Power in the Falklands Conflict
Edward Hampshire, The Falklands Naval Campaign 1982
Hugh McManners, Forgotten Voices of the Falklands
Cedric Delves, Across an Angry Sea: The SAS in the Falklands War
Rowland White, Vulcan 607
Vernon Bogdanor, “The Falklands War, 1982” lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bWw…
Arthur Gavshon, “The sinking of the Belgranohttps://archive.org/details/sinkingof…
Gordon Smith, Battle Atlas of the Falklands War 1982 by Land, Sea and Air
http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL198…
Hansard- https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha…
Recording of Thatcher’s statement to the Commons is from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvbhV…

Music Credits:

“Rynos Theme” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

“Crypto” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

“Stay the Course” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

Other music and SFX from Epidemic Sound

April 27, 2022

Why It Sucked To Be on a Merchant Ship in World War Two – WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Apr 2022

Serving on board a merchant ship during the Second World War was a hazardous endeavor. Stalked by submarines, attacked by surface raiders, and hunted by bombers, the convoys and individual cargo ships faced constant danger on their routes across the seas. And that is in addition to the job’s typical hazards. But what was life like for a regular sailor on board these ships? And what motivates a man to sign up for such a dangerous job?
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