A Deep Dive on Submarines

For centuries, humans have been fascinated by the mysteries of the deep sea. The history of submarines is one of extraordinary invention, daring exploration and deadly warfare. From the first experimental underwater vessels of the 17th century to the devastating U-boats of the First and Second World Wars, submarines have transformed naval warfare and revolutionised our understanding of the oceans. Today, Dan visits the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport and is joined by curator Alexandra Geary to discover the eccentric origins of underwater travel and the dramatic submarine battles of WWI and WWII in honour of the 125th anniversary of the Royal Navy Submarine Service. He also speaks to Vice Admiral Sir Tim McClement, who was Second in Command on HMS Conqueror during the sinking of the Argentine ARA General Belgrano warship in the Falklands, as well as First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins on how AI might shape the submarines of the future. You can find out more about the Royal Navy Submarine Service at https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/organisation/submarine-service and plan a visit to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at https://www.royalnavymuseums.org.uk/visit-us/submarine-museum With huge thanks to Commander James 'Dally' Dalrymple and Annarose Hearsum. Produced by Mariana Des Forges, Beth Donaldson and edited by Dougal Patmore Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Dan Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 0:35Dan Snow?

  Okay, let's see, we've got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts? Uh huh. Wait, oh, what did we get Andy and Sandy? And the dogs, oh, can't forget the dogs.

• 0:46Speaker 01

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• 2:24Dan Snow?

  Think of it, on the surface, there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves, their reign ceases. Their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here, I am free.

• 2:52Dan Snow?

  Now, whoa, look at this. I'm entirely encased in this strange, artificial world. This is very cool. I've got a navigation table, I've got the sonar equipment. Friends, picture the most Hollywood-y periscope you can possibly imagine. It's like something out of, it's Jules Verne, it's Tom Clancy, it's Das Boot, it's all of those things. Folks, as is so often the case, you do not find me in my podcast recording studio. You find me and the team, our trusty podcast team, searching out the history in some of the world's most remarkable places. I am currently aboard HMS Alliance at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum down in Gosport

• 3:33Dan Snow?

  on the south coast of England, just across the water from Portsmouth. This is the really HQ of Britain's naval effort for the last couple of centuries. And that is why here we have got the only surviving British Second World War submarine that is left. So, folks, we're fulfilling a dream. Beth, one of the producers of this podcast, has always wanted to go inside a submarine. And in this Royal Navy Museum, you actually can. You can go inside a submarine where you are surrounded by all the original fixtures and fittings. Beth, you having a good time?

• 4:09Speaker 03

  I'm having a great time.

• 4:10Dan Snow?

  Yeah, she's having a good time. She's got a smile on her face from ear to ear. It was actually built, well, it's built towards the end of the war. It was particularly built with a view to send it out to the Pacific. The submarine is not a natural environment for someone who is six foot five like me. I'm crouching down, the control room, I can just about stand up, but nowhere else can I do so. And as I'm walking along the hull of this magnificent vessel, there are little rooms. Ah, the famous toilet, the heads, as they call them in the navy, to my left. That heads is the size of a coffin, folks. And you would not want to go in there after one of your crewmates. You'd want to give them a bit of time, I think, in the heads. And don't forget, a German submarine was sunk during the Second World War because the heads malfunctioned.

• 4:54Dan Snow?

  And then like that, you come to the stern and you've got massive torpedoes, tubes and a few bunks. Imagine that, imagine sleeping next to the torpedoes all night, every night. Now, the reason we are here, apart from Beth, obviously, is that this year marks the 125th anniversary of the Royal Navy submarine service. The first Royal Navy submarine was launched in 1901, and that makes it one of the first submarine services in the world. It was a controversial new way of making war, but clearly it was a very effective way of making war that would soon be absorbed into the military mainstream. And there have been submarines produced in vast numbers that have played their parts in all of the great conflicts of the 20th century and into 21st.

• 5:37Dan Snow?

  And being in here makes me think about that experience for those men and women now in the submarine service. You're working in shifts of six hours on, six hours off, there's little space to move. You're isolated, you haven't seen sunlight or fresh air. You haven't lived regular day and night cycles for some time. It truly is a life for any of the sturdiest among us.

• 6:02Dan Snow?

  Submarines have revolutionised our understanding of our oceans and our warfare.

• 6:11Dan Snow?

  Today, we're exploring their incredible history from their earliest iterations in the 17th century and the wooden contraptions of visionary inventors, through to the first submarine battles of World War One. We'll also look at World War Two and the Falklands and what submarines of the future could look like.

• 6:29Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, and this is a deep dive, yes, pun intended, into the history of the submarine.

• 6:53Dan Snow?

  Since ancient times, humans have been preoccupied with what lies in the deep.

• 6:59Dan Snow?

  As a kid, I wanted to dive down on shipwrecks and submerge ancient ruins, voyage through mighty canyons in the seabed, like the heroes of 20,000 leagues under the sea, which we opened this episode with. In fact, I read it to my kids the other day. And I am stunned, side note, on just how Captain Nemo is definitely the poster child for all our tech bros today. Now, that technology, those possibilities that obsessed Jules Verne and his readers, well, much of that technology has now come to pass. It is a reality. And it's allowed human beings to venture deep beneath the ocean's surface. That technology has been centuries in the making. Alexandra Geary, curator at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, is our guide through the museum and the history.

• 7:44Dan Snow?

  Alexandra Geary, nice to meet you.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Nice to meet you, thank you for coming.

• 7:47Dan Snow?

  When do you historians date the beginning of kind of subsea from?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  The beginning of submarines really started hundreds of years ago in 1620, when Cornelius Drebble, under the employ of King James I, tried to do this basically with an underwater rowboat, was very rudimentary. At that point, they weren't thinking about ballast tanks or anything like that. Up until 1879, all the first submarines were driven by manpower, not mechanical.

• 8:12Dan Snow?

  So the idea is they'd just, what, they'd sit just below the surface and you'd sort of row it along?

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Row underneath, yes.

• 8:17Dan Snow?

  Weirdly, one of my first jobs at the BBC was in a department where they were rebuilding that particular submarine. And they did manage to, I think they managed to get it to go briefly underwater, yeah. And I'm very excited, I've wanted to see this for a long time, because you have got the only model in the world of the Turtle.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:34Dan Snow?

  Which is, in fact, by chance, we're here, nearly on the 250th anniversary of its deployment.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  We are.

• 8:40Dan Snow?

  It's very exciting. This was designed to go across New York Harbour and attach explosives to the British flagship when the British were trying to take New York in the summer of 1776, 250 years ago. Tell us all about the Turtle.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  So, the Turtle is named because it looks like two turtle shells that were put together. It's often regarded as the first submarine because it has a ballast tank in the bottom. So they knew that they would need to flood part of the submarine with water to make it sink and then pump it out to make it rise. Royal Navy submarine, you would have compressed air. Here, they have a physical lever that they pump on the Turtle.

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  So you pump the water out?

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:19Dan Snow?

  That's so interesting. So that is how you change your buoyancy in a submarine?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  It is, yes.

• 9:23Dan Snow?

  So we're looking at the Turtle now, it is like a walnut, it's a sphere almost, made of wood.

• 9:31Dan Snow?

  There's an observation turret, you could almost call it, at the top. And there's a little crankshaft attached to a propeller. I mean, it looks like it would go very slowly through the water this time.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  I think it would go very, very slowly.

• 9:42Dan Snow?

  And there's only room inside for one person. It is absolutely, it's tiny. And there's a drill bit on the top. So is that supposed to drill into the hull of a ship?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  It is, and it looks like a big screw, doesn't it? So inside, there is a lever that you turn here.

• 9:58Dan Snow?

  There you go.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Would drill up inside.

• 10:01Dan Snow?

  And that's connected to a huge box of explosives on the end of a rope. You then detach that drill bit and leave all that.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  But leave that hanging, yes.

• 10:11Dan Snow?

  It is totally ingenious.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  It is.

• 10:14Dan Snow?

  The crazy thing about it in the summer of 1700, it very, very nearly worked.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  It was by sheer bad luck that it didn't.

• 10:20Dan Snow?

  He successfully got all the way to the British flagship. There's Admiral Howe chilling out on board. And he couldn't actually get the drill. It was the wrong part of the hull or something, wasn't it? They were trying to get through the iron part, but yeah. And they just didn't find a nice big bit of wood to drill into.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  And you have to remember that visibility underneath a battleship was going to be virtually none. So it's.

• 10:41Dan Snow?

  At night.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Nights, yeah.

• 10:42Dan Snow?

  Yeah, underwater, yeah. That would have blown Admiral Howe sky high, which would have had a big impact on the American Revolutionary War. Wow. So David Bushnell, who designs this, builds it, did he get all the elements? If, as an expert, are you looking at this thinking, yeah, basically he cracked it. They're all the elements of a modern submarine.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  They are. I mean, it has the first ballast tank and it has a small mini conning tower.

• 11:04Dan Snow?

  Yeah. Well, how did it not run out of air?

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Well, there is a ventilation pump to pump out the bad air.

• 11:11Dan Snow?

  So how do we get from this? This is the late 18th century. How do we get from this to the 19th century?

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Well, thankfully, they realised they needed to go to mechanical submarines because obviously peddling this would have been really hard work.

• 11:24Dan Snow?

  A surprising figure enters the story of the submarine here. Your friend and mine, Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1800, he commissioned the American inventor, Robert Fulton, to design a plunging boat that could secretly glide under the British blockading warships and attach explosive mines to their hulls. Fulton's Norseless, as it was called, and yes, I saw where Jules Verne got the name, was hand cranked and had a copper and iron frame. It did successfully complete some test dives on the River Seine. But when it was put out to sea trials, it failed to sink any ships at all. And pretty quickly, the French Navy lost interest and the project was abandoned. But that didn't stop Fulton, nor any other inventors of the 19th century. His designs for submarines became increasingly more ambitious.

• 12:08Dan Snow?

  Hand-powered vessels gave way to experiments with mechanical propulsion, engines, even electric motors. By 1901, submarine technology had advanced far enough for the Royal Navy itself to launch its very first submarine, the impressive Holland I. Built in Britain, designed though by the Irish-born inventor, John Philip Holland, it marked the beginning of a new era in naval warfare and the birth of the submarine service. Holy, whoa, this, it fills the whole gallery. It's much bigger than I thought. Look at that. That is, it's the size of a whale, isn't it?

• 12:42Speaker 04

  It is.

• 12:43Dan Snow?

  Doesn't just look like a whale, it's enormous.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Just over 60 feet long?

• 12:48Dan Snow?

  I love it.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:49Dan Snow?

  So you've got these metal plates on the outside with all the rivets in. And then at the top, it's painted white, big propeller at the back. That is very cool. So this is the first, the Royal Navy's first submarine?

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:03Dan Snow?

  When did the Royal Navy decide it needed to get into the submarine game?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Well, other navies, such as France, were getting into the submarine game already. So that worried the British Admiralty. However, not everybody was as excited. If you go think at this time, it was considered ungentlemanly as a form of warfare. Ships, you know, they were used to ships being broadside and you're looking your.

• 13:28Dan Snow?

  Yeah, big gun battle ships.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, looking your enemy in the eye. And in fact, the controller of the navy, Arthur Wilson, in fact, was reputed to have said they were underhand and unfair and I will regard them as pirates and have them all hanged.

• 13:40Dan Snow?

  Oh, really?

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:42Dan Snow?

  But that didn't stop them getting a few.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  It did not stop them. This submarine was launched in secret because of that, because it was very experimental at the time.

• 13:49Dan Snow?

  And was the Royal Navy almost embarrassed to be embracing this new form of warfare?

• 13:54Speaker 04

  I think at the beginning, but they soon realised its implications.

• 13:57Dan Snow?

  Yeah. Does it fulfil its promise?

• 14:00Speaker 04

  So mostly its job was kind of hootling about the harbour, seeing what worked, what didn't. It was quite unwieldy. It was okay under the water, but on the surface, it was quite hard to control. And they did in fact bump into their mothership at one point. So her first commanding officer, Lieutenant Forster Delafield Arnold Forster, said, "The ingenious designer in New York evidently did not realise that the average naval officer has only two eyes and two hands. Little conning tower was plastered with wheels, levers and valves engaged, which some Superman was to fire torpedoes, dive and steer and do everything else at the same time. After little practice, the boat was found to be very handy under the water, but on the surface, she was a brute. Being short and stumpy, she was awkward to steer on the surface.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  And one day she alarmed the inmates of the sickbay in her parent's ship by poking her big nose right through the ship's side into the berths."

• 14:50Dan Snow?

  Oh my God, so she didn't just hit the ship, she actually smashed through it?

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:54Dan Snow?

  Wow. And so you get a sense, don't you, of just the challenges of dealing with the new technology? What kind of innovations they come up with?

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Well, they were still very much experimenting with gases within an enclosed environment. And obviously, you know, the air that they would breathe couldn't become toxic. So they had white mice on submarines. If you think about canaries in a mine, kind of. But a bit more humane, the mice got to live. When the gas has built up, the mice would squeak and that would mean that they would know the submarine had to surface then to refresh the air in the submarine. We can walk around and go in the submarine if we.

• 15:30Dan Snow?

  Well, let's go inside, this is great. Were they volunteers to go on here? Were they specialists or did they just get assigned at random?

• 15:38Speaker 04

  I do know that the commanding officer only did it because he thought it was going to further his career.

• 15:43Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  And then he absolutely hated it.

• 15:47Dan Snow?

  I don't blame the poor man, it's very claustrophobic in here. So I've just come in now, I can't even begin to stand up inside here. We're in the bow section and are these the torpedo shoes? These do look like something out of Jules Verne, don't they? Like huge, long cylinders, almost like cannon that are in the front of this submarine. And did it ever go into action?

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Not this submarine, no.

• 16:07Dan Snow?

  Okay, so this was just a, an experiment really. And I guess they then would learn and.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  And basically use it as a template for the next class of submarines.

• 16:16Dan Snow?

  And how long could you stay underwater, really?

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Only a few hours, not very long.

• 16:20Dan Snow?

  It's amazing to think that within just over 10 years, submarines would be going into action during the First World War.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And the design had evolved quite significantly.

• 16:29Dan Snow?

  Had it? But this is as close as we can get to the feeling of what it would have been like for those men in the First World War and those still pretty primitive submarines.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  And there's a lot of equipment that's not in here, so it would have been even more cramped.

• 16:40Dan Snow?

  So shall we move forward to World War One?

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Fantastic, I'll take you back to the historic gallery.

• 16:44Dan Snow?

  Let's go.

• 16:52Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere, there's more to come.

• 17:04Dan Snow?

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• 17:48Speaker 01

  Verizon knows that holiday math can be complicated.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  Okay, let's see, we got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts? Wait, oh, what did we get, Aunt Sandy? And the dogs, oh, can't forget the dogs.

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• 19:30Dan Snow?

  We come to First World War Gallery. Was it clear that fright from the beginning were submarines, were U-boats as they're called in Germany, were they going to be involved?

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Absolutely, they were always a threat right from the beginning of the war. Within an hour of war being declared, the German submarine U-9 sank three British warships. And it came to be termed the three before breakfast.

• 19:51Dan Snow?

  Wow, in the English Channel?

• 19:52Speaker 04

  In the English Channel.

• 19:53Dan Snow?

  I mean, that's a humiliation for the Royal Navy.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  It really was.

• 19:57Dan Snow?

  And also asymmetric, because one submarine is much cheaper and smaller than these three mighty warships. So these submarines are a lot more capable now than the one we've just seen. Are they able to go out on sort of longer patrols?

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Much, much longer. You know, you have British submarines patrolling the Dardanelles. They're out in the Baltic, defending our home waters.

• 20:16Dan Snow?

  These are people, they go out, they've got their kit on board, they're sleeping on board.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  They are, absolutely.

• 20:20Dan Snow?

  They're self-sufficient. Okay, wow. The Germans are going to use submarines, as they will in the Second World War, perhaps more famously for people at home, but they will use them to try and strangle Britain, to sink ships, merchant ships, carrying fuel and supplies coming into Britain and Ireland.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  They were, yes. So in 1917, the convoy system was introduced into the Royal Navy. So you had warships travelling with merchant ships to protect supplies. So the Germans realised this. A group of submarines would try and single out a particular ship to attack, wolf pack tactics. Here we have the top section of the periscope of HMS E11, which is a World War One E-class submarine that was patrolling the Dardanelle Straits.

• 21:03Dan Snow?

  So in Turkey, on the way to Istanbul?

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Yes, and Dardanelle Straits are quite a narrow stretch of water, very heavily mined. So it was extremely dangerous for submarines to go down. But obviously, unlike warships, they could go down, they could go underneath.

• 21:16Dan Snow?

  Because the warships, 1915, they famously try and rush the straits. That doesn't work.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  That doesn't work.

• 21:21Dan Snow?

  The glibly landings happen. Those don't work. But the submarine can get through.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  But the submarines got through.

• 21:27Dan Snow?

  And they got all the way through and got to Istanbul effectively?

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Yes, got into the Sea of Marmara. On this occasion, they were spotted. And if you look at the periscope, you can see where a shell hit it and blew a hole.

• 21:38Dan Snow?

  I mean, that is extraordinary. The periscope is, it's a sort of perfect periscope, but halfway down, the metal has been twisted out. Did the submarine survive?

• 21:46Speaker 04

  The submarine did survive, and the commanding officer was awarded the Victoria Cross. In Britain, about one in three submariners perished.

• 21:54Dan Snow?

  Wow. So submarine warfare comes close to having a really decisive effect on Britain in World War One, but just doesn't quite do it.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:03Dan Snow?

  The Germans aren't successful in the end.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  They're not, thankfully.

• 22:05Dan Snow?

  But has technology moved on a lot?

• 22:06Speaker 04

  By the end of the war, submarines are, they're bigger, longer range, much more reliable. The interwar period is a period of experimentation and design. One of them was the M-class submarines, which were absolutely huge. Almost the guns that they carried were the same weight and size as a warship would have carried.

• 22:25Dan Snow?

  Oh, so the idea is they'd sort of surface and then fire these guns?

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Have that firepower. But one of the class was actually designed to have seaplanes.

• 22:33Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Onboard.

• 22:34Dan Snow?

  A little hangar on board?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  A little hangar at the back of the submarines. They would surface and the seaplane would exit.

• 22:39Dan Snow?

  How did that go?

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Not very well, sadly. Unfortunately, a hangar door was left open and the submarine flooded and sank.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  The crew managed to get a small help message out, which washed up afterwards, which we have on display here.

• 22:53Dan Snow?

  Is that this thing over here?

• 22:54Speaker 04

  It is. It reads, "Help, M2 gone down, number two hatch open." And on the other side, it says "help" and then the abbreviation for lieutenant, because that's who wrote it.

• 23:05Dan Snow?

  And so they're trapped in an air pocket?

• 23:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:08Dan Snow?

  Below?

• 23:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:09Dan Snow?

  That is just terrible. Did anyone survive?

• 23:12Speaker 04

  No.

• 23:12Dan Snow?

  I guess with the submarine service, there have been these tragedies that have then provided, you know, opportunities to improve and learn from those mistakes.

• 23:24Dan Snow?

  During the Second World War, submarine warfare reached a terrifying new intensity. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous campaign of the war, a desperate struggle for control of the seas on which Britain's survival depended. It was fought from the first to the last day of the Second World War.

• 23:45Dan Snow?

  Lurking beneath the surface of the Atlantic, German U-boats hunted Allied convoys, attempting to sever the supply routes carrying food, fuel, weapons and troops to Britain. In fact, Winston Churchill famously later wrote in his memoirs that "The only thing that ever frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril." And it's not hard to understand why. World War Two is littered with astonishing stories of submarine warfare.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  HMS Upholder was based in the island of Malta. She was part of the 10th Submarine Fatale, which they coined the Fighting Tenth. Malta was a hugely important base in the war because it was on route from Italy and North Africa. So the Germans would have liked it. They bombarded the island relentlessly, so submarines essentially set up a base there to protect Malta. So it must have been incredibly hard working there because they were constantly being bombarded by bombs at night, but also trying to get to supplies into the island as well. The submarines did what they called "magic carpet runs". So on a submarine, they would take out a battery compartment, increase the space on board,

• 25:01Speaker 04

  and they would fill that with ammunition, aircraft fuel, post, food, anything they could fit on board.

• 25:07Dan Snow?

  That's how desperate they are to get supplies.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, to get the supplies on board.

• 25:11Dan Snow?

  But did Upholder also sink Axis shipping?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Yes, she was very successful, one of the most successful submarines in World War Two. She in fact sunk 120,000 tonnes of Axis shipping during the war.

• 25:23Dan Snow?

  In charge was Lieutenant Commander Malcolm David Winklin, a 29-year-old officer who'd become one of Britain's most celebrated submariners. And here's why. On the 24th of May 1941, Upholder spotted a heavily escorted Italian troop convoy off Sicily. Among the vessels was the enormous Italian troop ship Conte Rosso, carrying thousands of men destined for North Africa. Despite failing light, damaged listening equipment in the presence of enemy destroyers, Winklin manoeuvred his submarine into position and launched his torpedoes. They struck the Conte Rosso, which sank rapidly. More than 1,200 people lost their lives. The attack was a devastating blow to Italian forces.

• 26:06Dan Snow?

  Winklin was awarded the Victoria Cross for his courage and determination. Over the following months, Upholder continued to wreak havoc on Axis shipping in the Mediterranean, disrupting supplies to Rommel's forces in North Africa. But in April 1942, Upholder set off from Malta on what was supposed to be her final patrol before returning to Britain for a much-needed refit. The submarine headed for the waters off Tripoli in Libya. A few days later, Upholder rendezvous with another British submarine, HMS Unbeaten. But this would be the last confirmed contact with her. Upholder disappeared, never heard or seen from again. On April the 14th, other British submarines in the area heard prolonged depth charge explosions.

• 26:48Dan Snow?

  The Italian anti-submarine vessel Picasso subsequently claimed to have destroyed a British submarine, but there's never been any proof it was Upholder. Some say she could have struck an Italian mine. Either way, all 33 men aboard were lost. There's a very poignant photograph just behind you, as you were saying now. I'm looking at the crew of HMS Upholder in late 1941, and they're all smiling away. There's officers and men very close. It seems like, is there an informality in the submarine service that perhaps is different from the rest of the navy?

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Most definitely. Submarines were a lot smaller than warships. So the officers and the commanding officer in particular would work closer alongside the ratings than they would in a warship where it was very separate. The uniform was more informal as well. You can see in the photo that they're all kind of just wearing overalls.

• 27:34Dan Snow?

  Yeah, they're all smiling. They're standing in a kind of rough group rather than in a neat sort of military fashion.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Uniform would have been kept for best. Uniform would have been put away as soon as they were on the submarine. That would have just only been done when they came back into harbour to look smart, when they were standing on the casing to greet their families. On board, it was very informal. In World War Two, 36% of submariners were lost compared with 7% of the surface fleet.

• 27:59Dan Snow?

  So a third of people that went to sea in submarines in the Second World War never returned?

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:05Dan Snow?

  It's extraordinarily dangerous.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  It was, and mainly due to enemy action. But you have to remember, trying to identify another ship or a submarine was incredibly dangerous as well. And sometimes people got it wrong.

• 28:16Dan Snow?

  Oh, some of it was friendly fire?

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Some of it was.

• 28:19Dan Snow?

  So British submarines in the Second World War, obviously they're trying to sink a lot of Axis shipping. It's useful for intelligence work. What other jobs are submarines doing in this period?

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Well, they were trying to get close into harbour as well to sink warships. So you have big warships like the Tirpitz, who would moor up in a very protected anchorage and then put minefields in front of it. Full-size submarines couldn't get that close, so they invented miniature submarines called X-Craft.

• 28:48Dan Snow?

  Oh, have you got one of those?

• 28:50Speaker 04

  We do have one of those.

• 28:50Dan Snow?

  Let's go and check it out.

• 28:53Dan Snow?

  Okay, Alex, this is superb. This is, I think you've described this as a sort of midget submarine. It looks like a submarine in shape, but not in size. It's really small. How long would this be?

• 29:02Speaker 04

  This is about 52 feet long. And it was designed very last minute. The reason was that British warships were sunk in harbour by Italian human torpedoes. And Winston Churchill said, well, why aren't we doing anything about this? Why do we not have this technology? So off the back of that, the 12 submarine battalion was developed where they built British human torpedoes and these miniature submarines, X craft, that could get close into.

• 29:29Dan Snow?

  And a human torpedo, just which, a human torpedo is sort of a torpedo with divers just.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Sat on it, yes.

• 29:35Dan Snow?

  Sat on it. I mean extraordinarily brave and very effective as well for the Italians.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Very effective, yes.

• 29:40Dan Snow?

  So no wonder Winston Churchill wanted one. So this is, if we come round, you've chopped it in half very usefully so we can look inside. We've got an engine in the stern compartment. I mean, I couldn't, you couldn't stand up in there. There's a little seat in there, it's rather nice.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  There is. So the only place you could stand was by the periscope and only the commanding officer got that privilege. And he couldn't stand up fully.

• 30:01Dan Snow?

  So everyone else is crawling along.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Everyone else is crawling.

• 30:03Dan Snow?

  I mean, it's what, four foot, maybe five foot high?

• 30:06Speaker 04

  About that.

• 30:07Dan Snow?

  So it's got all the elements of a submarine, it's just, it's miniature. So what's that?

• 30:12Speaker 04

  That is called a side cargo. And that would deliver two tonnes of amytol explosives. The two big wheels that are in the middle of the submarine, you would turn those to release that. So these submarines would go into a harbour and position themselves underneath the warship, set the timer, release the charge.

• 30:34Dan Snow?

  And it's almost as big as, half as big as the submarine itself, though this, okay, this giant compartment, that's just full of explosives, right? Nasty. And when was this most famously deployed?

• 30:45Speaker 04

  In Operation Source, the attack on the Tirpitz.

• 30:48Dan Snow?

  So Tirpitz, Bismarck's sister ship.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  It was.

• 30:51Dan Snow?

  Very impressive German ship, stuck in a fjord in Norway.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Yep, very protected. It had a torpedo net in front of it and an anti-submarine net. But these submarines actually can go underneath those nets.

• 31:05Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Or would find a gap and manage to get through.

• 31:08Dan Snow?

  So these submarines, just they're so small, they can just get round the edge or underneath a conventional submarine net. So it's pitch black in the freezing cold North Atlantic, but somehow you're just sort of beetling around trying to sort of find a way around or underneath this submarine net.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  Yep, they would surface and they would use the periscope to try and find gaps in places. As you can imagine, if you surface and put your periscope up, you're basically saying, I'm here to the enemy. So that makes them very vulnerable.

• 31:36Dan Snow?

  Yeah, you don't do that very often.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  They did manage to lay their charges. It was X5 and X6 laid their charges and they did cripple the Tirpitz so it couldn't move.

• 31:45Dan Snow?

  But then it's the RAF who get the credit.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  And swoop in, yeah.

• 31:48Dan Snow?

  They swoop in, Dan Buster Squadron, scoop in and finish the job. But it's the navy that put Tirpitz out of action effectively. Yeah, let's not forget that, folks.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  We do have a section of the Tirpitz against the wall down there, so you can just see.

• 32:01Dan Snow?

  Really? A bit of Tirpitz, let's have a look.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  It's this massive chunk of metal.

• 32:05Dan Snow?

  I, I thought this was a bench. That's a piece of the armour plating.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:10Dan Snow?

  Well, that just shows, doesn't it? That's the armour that is required on those battleships to stop enemy shells penetrating the hull. The success of this X craft, it had a big impact on the course of the war.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And Winston Churchill indeed said in January 1942, "The destruction or even crippling of this ship is the greatest event at sea at the present time. No other target is comparable to it."

• 32:31Dan Snow?

  And so midget submarines proved their worth.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  They did.

• 32:35Dan Snow?

  Was that the end of the war for these guys?

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Absolutely not. Two of her sister submarines would go on to perform a very crucial role in D-Day. In fact, it's a very little known fact that the first two craft off the coast of Normandy were midget submarines, X20 and X23. Not only did they carry out the reconnaissance work, so they would go close into the beach and wait until nightfall and then divers would go up onto the beach and check the beach gradients and the quality of the soil. In fact, they collected soil samples in condoms because they were strong.

• 33:09Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And brought them back, but they acted as beacons for the incoming landing craft. So they shone a green light out to sea that could only be seen by craft coming in to show the craft which beaches they should go to.

• 33:27Dan Snow?

  Wow, so they played a huge role in the, in the Normandy invasion as well?

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 33:31Dan Snow?

  Okay, so the war in the Pacific goes on after the war in Europe. And, and British submarines play a key part, do they?

• 33:36Speaker 04

  They absolutely do. In fact, midget submarines carry out Operation Struggle and Operation Sabre and Foil. Operation Struggle was attacking a Japanese cruiser by attaching limpet mines to its hull. That took them 19 hours without much sleep. And as you can imagine, aside a midget submarine, the air would have been getting quite toxic after a while.

• 33:58Dan Snow?

  The bravery of these people is just astonishing. And then what's Sabre and Foil?

• 34:02Speaker 04

  So in July 1945, HMS XE4 and 5 cut the underwater telephone cables, which forced Japanese to revert to radio communication, which the British could then intercept.

• 34:13Dan Snow?

  The things that you've listed show how versatile these submarines are. They're destroying ships, they're cutting cables, they're putting people ashore before D-Day, they're mar- they are really versatile.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Very versatile, very effective.

• 34:30Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's history at submarines in the Cold War and beyond, coming up.

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• 36:00Dan Snow?

  In the post-war years, submarines evolved again rapidly. The discovery of nuclear power meant submarines could stay underwater for much longer periods of time, travelling vast distances without needing to surface. But it wasn't just military submarines that advanced after the Second World War. Scientists were beginning to adapt underwater technology for an entirely different purpose, exploring the deepest parts of our oceans. In 1948, Swiss inventor August Picard developed the world's first bathyscaph, a bit like a submarine but with a key difference. Instead of travelling long distance horizontally under the waves, it was designed to plunge vertically down to great depths, a bit like an underwater lift.

• 36:40Dan Snow?

  Its crew sat inside a tiny reinforced steel sphere, suspended beneath an enormous float, while heavy ballast helped carry the vessel down into the darkness. Picard's next iteration of a submarine was even more ambitious. In 1960, the Trieste carried two men, almost 11 kilometres beneath the surface, to the deepest known point of the earth, the Mariana Trench. It was an extraordinary breakthrough, making possible what had once been the stuff of science fiction. Humans were discovering new underwater ecosystems and crucially for me, long-lost shipwrecks. Meanwhile, the world was in the grip of the Cold War and military submarines were taking on a remarkable new role.

• 37:24Dan Snow?

  Armed with nuclear missiles, they became a crucial part of the nuclear deterrent lurking undetected beneath the oceans, ready to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack on their homeland. British, American and Soviet submarines played a deadly game of cat and mouse, secretly tracking one another through the ocean depths. But interestingly, it wasn't a NATO clash with the Soviets that saw the first sinking by a nuclear submarine of an enemy warship. It was actually during the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain's nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror, described as a hunter-killer submarine, demonstrated just how deadly these vessels had become. On the 2nd of May, Conqueror torpedoed the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, sinking it.

• 38:09Dan Snow?

  323 lives were lost. This is Vice Admiral Sir Tim McClement, Second in Command of Conqueror, on board at the time of the attack. Tim, great to have you back on the pod. Thank you very much. You submariners are a breed apart. What's it like living in such close, I mean, is it true what they say about sharing bunks? Yes, to start with, when you're a trainee, you don't have your own bunk and to make room for the.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Trainees, you have what's known as hot bunking. And that's very easy because you do six hours on watch, six hours off watch. So you have two to a bunk. When you're sleeping in a bunk, when it's your turn to get up, you take your sleeping bag off, put it underneath the mattress, take your mates up, put it on the mattress, take the picture of your girlfriend down and put the picture of his girlfriend up. And you will go off and have a meal and he gets into his bunk when he comes off watch.

• 39:00Dan Snow?

  Do you have any idea where you are in the world when you're on a submarine? If you're a normal enlisted man or woman?

• 39:06Speaker 03

  If you're on one of the deterrent patrols, no. Only a few people will know where the submarine is for obvious reasons.

• 39:14Dan Snow?

  Does the temperature feel different depending on where you are? Can you ever tell?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Yes, certainly. When I was operating under the ice in my Trivago class submarine, you knew it was cold. And the thing was that it was so cold outside, the condensation on the inside of the pressure hull was dripping onto all the electronics. So we had to design, the sailor was a brilliant at doing it, using plastic sheeting to catch the condensation and make a funnel so it wouldn't get on the machines. But if you're crossing the equator, you know it's hot. But actually, the submarine systems are pretty good at maintaining the temperature.

• 39:51Dan Snow?

  Tell me about going down to the South Atlantic in the Falklands conflict.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  That was a big change for us because we were Cold War warriors. And we were very good at playing with Soviet submarines, three dimensional chess in the dark in the Atlantic. And that's all we did.

• 40:07Dan Snow?

  Your job was to keep the Atlantic open in the event of World War Three?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Yes, our primary role in the SSN fleet was to take out the Soviet SSNs. Or some of us were tasked with taking out their bombers. But it was submarine versus submarine. That's what we did.

• 40:23Dan Snow?

  So there's an element of submarine to submarine work going on in the South Atlantic. But would you also realise that you might have a role against surface ships?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Yes, when the captain sat down with the three heads of department, myself as second in command, the engineer and the weapons electrical officer, Tuesday, the 28th of March, I can remember it, 12 o'clock lunchtime, he said, gentlemen, we've been ordered to store for war and sail with all dispatch for the South Atlantic. It's not in the public domain, but intelligence believes they're about to be invaded. You could have heard a pin drop.

• 40:54Dan Snow?

  So you have got a Rolls Royce nuclear reactor on board, we should say. So fuel getting down there, not a problem. You could cruise for a thousand years.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Yep, we didn't have a problem. So we could sail with all dispatch. But what we hadn't got time to do on the way down, which is what you alluded to earlier, was train the ship's company up for surface ship attack, surface ship surveillance, close inshore navigation. So my job as second in command was to make sure the crew were trained up. So I had to instigate a 12 hour training programme every day on top of the six hours on, six hours off watchkeeping to get everyone trained up just in case we had to do it. Because actually, when we sailed, none of us thought we'd go to war. It was hard because a lot of people said, look, we're not going to go to war. You're really, you know, winding everyone up. One of the officers came and said to me, I'm worried about the ship's company because, in his words were,

• 41:45Speaker 03

  you are inciting them to bloodlust with your training regime. And he said, it's 1982, we won't go to war, the Hague initiative will work. And I'm worried about how you're going to unwind the crew when we don't fight. And I said, well, I'll worry about that when we don't fight, but until we do, they will be trained.

• 42:04Dan Snow?

  As you're going down, are you on the surface or are you underwater?

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Underwater, we only came out once every 24 hours to take our signals.

• 42:11Dan Snow?

  So you are getting updates, you're to stick your aerial up and you'll get a very brief flash from London. So you're very well informed about what's going on in the world.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  We are. We were told ahead, west of the Falklands. And on the way to the Falklands, we were diverted to the southwest of the islands to intercept the Belgrano group with the two destroyers.

• 42:29Dan Snow?

  What speed are you making when you're submerged?

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Over 25 knots.

• 42:32Dan Snow?

  Wow, that's rapid. Okay, so then let's talk about that Belgrano moment. Tell me, I mean, you've got a group of surface vessels. What was their job as far as you saw it?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Well, at the time, there was the 200 mile exclusion zone. And our remit was to find them. The two other boats we had down, the S boat, Spartan and Splendor, were sent to the northwest of the islands to find the Argentinian aircraft carrier and its escorts. Because Admiral Woodward was worried there was a pincer movement from the aircraft carrier to the northwest and the Belgrano to the southwest, coming in on our carriers. And if one of our carriers was damaged or some, that would have been the end of our ability to retake the islands. We were lucky, the Belgrano and the two destroyers were being refuelled by a very noisy tanker, which we picked up in excess of 100,000 yards. And we went straight down the sonar bearing and found them.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  So we were tasked to trail the Belgrano and the two destroyers. And they stayed 15 to 20 miles outside the 200 mile exclusion zone, to the southwest and to the south. And we picked them up on the morning of the first of May and reported and then reported their position every six hours.

• 43:44Dan Snow?

  And they didn't have any idea that you were there?

• 43:46Speaker 03

  No, none at all.

• 43:47Dan Snow?

  So that was on the first of May. So you're reporting her position every six hours. Take me through to the second of May.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  The morning of the second of May, we got a change of rules of engagement to say that we were to conduct an attack against the Belgrano and not against the destroyers unless in self defence, irrespective of her being outside the 200 mile exclusion zone.

• 44:08Dan Snow?

  And what you now know, I mean, that decision would have come from the very highest levels. That was the decision that was okayed by the Prime Minister.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:14Dan Snow?

  Were you surprised by that?

• 44:15Speaker 03

  We were at war and they were a threat. And for us, it was a very logical thing because the other two submarines hadn't got the aircraft carrier. Admiral Woodward wanted one half of the pincer movement could be taken out. That was the right thing to do.

• 44:31Dan Snow?

  And what was the Belgrano carrying that was such a threat to the British aircraft carriers?

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Intelligence said, as well as their big guns, which outranged all the guns of our fleet, they also had Exocet missiles, they believed.

• 44:44Dan Snow?

  Lots of teeth capable of taking out British carriers, yeah, a big threat.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Yes, big threat.

• 44:50Dan Snow?

  What changed when you received that order?

• 44:52Speaker 03

  It was very interesting. Everyone was very matter of fact about it. The captain had said, we had two types of torpedoes. We had the Second World War designed Mark Eight torpedo, which had equivalent of 800 pounds of TNT in its nose, diesel engine, 44 knots. But it had to hit the side of the ship to explode. And once you had fired it, you couldn't do anything with it. It was a far and forget. So you had to aim off to intercept like shooting grass. Or we had a modern torpedo with a much smaller warhead, wire guided, so you could change its speed and direction. But it was designed to go underneath a warship, explode 10 metres underneath it, create an air bubble that would rise up and break the back of the ship.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  But the Belgrano was the ex USS Phoenix that survived Pearl Harbor and had 15 centimetres of armor plating down each side. And so the captain said, we'll use a Second World War torpedo to sink a Second World War ship. So he said, inform the ship's company. And I remember making the pipe just before lunch. Do you hear that exo speaking? The submarine will go to action stations at 1400, carry out a Mark Eight attack against the Belgrano. Hands to dinner. And I can remember it was roast pork and all the chormings and apple crumble and custard.

• 46:08Dan Snow?

  And what is your job as you're approaching the point of firing on the enemy?

• 46:13Speaker 03

  My job is in the control room, supporting the captain. And it's called attack coordinator and I'm known as AC. So my job is to go around the sound room who are listening to the revolution camp, because he was an old ship, making sure they got the best speed possible. Looking at the navigator's plot where he's plotting all the captain's bearings and ranges and then calculating the speed and course between those. And that all goes on to a single computer, analog computer called a torpedo course calculator, which tells the torpedoes what course to go on. So I coordinate all that for the captain. The captain meanwhile is keeping the submarine safe at periscope depth because there's obviously the Belgrano and her two destroyers.

• 46:55Dan Snow?

  You've done so much training for this moment. Was there anything different about doing it for real?

• 46:59Speaker 03

  No, everyone did their job better than I've ever known them to do it in training. It was astonishingly absolute concentration and harmony between the team. When the captain said, standby, final target setup, which everyone knew when he put the periscope up and cut the bearing through, meant he would fire. There was sort of tape recording in the control room, which every submarine had at action stations. And the captain says that, and the next voice on the tape recorder is mine going, do not fire. The captain put the periscope down, four steps to the port forward corner of the control room where I was, said, why not? There are lots of adjectives in that sentence, but we don't need to hear any of them.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  And I said, if you fire now, sir, you're going to fire, the three torpedoes we're going to fire will come out and turn to starboard 17 degrees. The target is moving from right to left. If you wait, you can get a zero gyre angle shot. So I've done my job, giving the best firing solution. And the captain said, got it. And we both turned around and there are about 20 people in the control room looking between the captain and myself, absolutely aghast. Because the second in command had just stopped the captain firing the first torpedo since the Second World War. And they were very unsettled. But because the captain was such a good captain, in the four steps back to the periscope, he worked out, A, he had to get his team back behind him.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  B, he worked out how he was going to do it. And the next thing you hear on the tape recording is the captain saying very nonchalantly, do you mind if I fire now, it's... He instantly had everyone behind him. And then my voice going, carry on, sir. And he fired three torpedoes, first missed a stern, second two hit.

• 48:48Dan Snow?

  The Belgrano is very controversial sinking. People objected to it, obviously, as you would when there's loss of life. The captain of the Belgrano subsequently agrees it was the right thing to do militarily.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Yes, war is brutal. 322 Argentinian sailors died that day.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  But it was the right thing to do militarily.

• 49:09Dan Snow?

  For many reasons. One is it removed that threat of the Belgrano to the British fleet, but it encouraged the other side of that pincer to return to harbour and play no further part in the war.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was an unexpected benefit.

• 49:20Dan Snow?

  Your crew and the submarine force played a huge part in the Falklands War.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  Yes, but it's important word of that sentence is part. We were part of the task group. Everyone played their part. Harriers played a fantastic role, the surface ship, the hospital ships, marines and soldiers ashore. I mean, the important thing for us, particularly when we were to the north, we had been at sea for 50 days. We couldn't replenish like the surface ships. We were on the half rations on day 50. And we were going to go on to quarter rations on day 75, if necessary, because our only thought was, how can we help the war effort? That was our focus.

• 50:04Dan Snow?

  Conqueror demonstrated how a single nuclear powered submarine could transform an entire naval campaign. In the 1990s and 2000s, navies invest in quieter propulsion, better sonar technology, more sophisticated torpedoes and cruise missiles that can attack targets on land. Today submarines house some of the most advanced technology we have. Digital imaging masks have replaced that beautiful thing, the optical periscope. Submarines can produce their own oxygen and turn seawater into fresh drinking water. HMS Vanguard just emerged from the depths earlier this summer, having spent a total of 205 days cruising without a break beneath the waves. That's wild. And of course, not unlike our forebears, the great thinkers,

• 50:49Dan Snow?

  Robert Fulton, August Picard, great minds in navies around the world are innovating, testing and working on the submarine technology of the future. I was very pleased to get the chance to interview the current head of the Royal Navy, the First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins.

• 51:05Dan Snow?

  General Gwyn, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

• 51:07Speaker 06

  It's my real pleasure to be here, Dan. Thank you for asking me to come on.

• 51:11Dan Snow?

  We're seeing so much innovation at the moment in all of the military. What about subsea? Is there a future for crude platforms, these big submarines bustling with crew? Or is there a different future that you're envisaging?

• 51:23Speaker 06

  It's right to say that the environment is changing. The pace of technological change is outstripping almost any prediction. But there is definitely still a place for the foreseeable future for the large crude nuclear submarines in which we specialise. When you consider the scale of the world's oceans, the environment that we're dealing with, I think uncrude systems are some way off being able to replicate these phenomenal machines that are our nuclear powered submarines.

• 51:58Dan Snow?

  You and I have chatted about this before, but I'm always stunned by the range of tasks that you're expected to perform across the navy and just frankly, in the submarine service alone. Can you give us a sense of your priorities when it comes to subsea at the moment?

• 52:13Speaker 06

  I always think it is much better to visualise a submarine as a spaceship rather than a submarine. If you think about the technical capability that is involved, you know, nuclear reactors, all those surveillance capabilities, torpedoes, weapon systems, all those specialists that are on board. These are the most technological platforms that we run in the Royal Navy. And I would contend almost anywhere in the world with the possible exception of actual spaceships. You know, nuclear submarines have a number of real advantages for us. They are inherently stealthy. It's not called the silent service by accident.

• 52:56Speaker 06

  Stealth is built into these platforms from day one. Their ability to sustain themselves is unmatched. So not only do they literally have limitless power because of their nuclear reactors, but they can generate their own water. They can generate their own environment. And then with that comes range as well. So they can literally go anywhere around the world. But when they're out there, I want them to do a whole range of tasks. Their primary mission for us is to protect our nuclear deterrent. The SSNs in particular, you know, their job is to be able to counter, in our case, particularly Russian submarines that are very capable platforms in their own right.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  But they're also this really powerful surveillance asset. And it is that, this unseen silent protective umbrella under which we all enjoy the society that we live in, that also protects the rest of NATO. So their ability to be able to conduct surveillance against an opponent and collect data on their submarines or their critical underwater infrastructure, it adds a very rich picture to our intelligence understanding of what the threats are that we face.

• 54:15Dan Snow?

  There is so much technological change going on at the moment. We cannot avoid it whenever we engage with the news from Ukraine, for example. How do you balance maintaining and preserving the excellence that you have versus innovating, seeking out new solutions?

• 54:31Speaker 06

  It is definitely a balancing act, but I think the rise of artificial intelligence, our job is how we blend those capabilities with the crude platforms. I love this kind of analysis that says that a artificial intelligence will beat any human at any strategy game now. However, artificial intelligence teamed with a human team will beat any artificial intelligence at a strategy game. It's the teaming that is the powerful combination in this. And it's how we blend these uncrude and artificial intelligence systems with our incredibly well-trained sailors, in this case,

• 55:14Speaker 06

  to get the blend that gives us the edge in performance that we really need. You know, we have to be dynamic in the way that we do that because the pace of change is so rapid. There are plenty of critics who will say that we're going too fast. I would contend we're not going fast enough. We can't go fast enough. We have to accelerate. We have to have the advantage and the edge in this. And that's why we're pushing on so much with the hybrid navy within the kind of Royal Navy plans at the moment.

• 55:43Dan Snow?

  Well, sadly, our day at the Royal Navy submarine museum is coming to an end. The trusty History Hit team are just walking down the jetty here towards where our power boat is moored up. And we're going to leave, as one should always arrive and leave, by water. We're going to new adventures, new podcasts beckon. Beth, I need to ask, did your experience here at the submarine museum live up to your expectations? I would say it exceeded it. That's so great. We've created another submarine fan. Thanks very much to Alexandra Geary, the whole team here at the Royal Navy submarine museum. You can come visit yourself. Look, I've said this before, I'll say it again. The National Museum of the Royal Navy here in Portsmouth is one of the world's great museums. You've got the submarine museum, you've got HMS Victory, HMS Warrior. I mean, it's unbelievable. Get yourself down here.

• 56:27Dan Snow?

  Thank you also to Vice Admiral Sir Tim Mc Clement and the First Sea Lord, Sir Gwyn Jenkins. If you want to find out more history about the Royal Navy submarine service on this big anniversary, 125, then you can check out the link which we have put in our show notes. We'll point in the right direction. And we'll also obviously point you towards the submarine museum itself. Now we're going to cast off these ropes. We're going to fire up the engines. We're going to head out into the Solent and see what adventure beckons out there. See you next time, folks.

• 57:00Speaker 01

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• 57:03Speaker 05

  Okay, let's see, we got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts? Wait, oh, what did we get Andy and Sandy? And the dogs, oh, can't forget the dogs.

• 57:13Speaker 01

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• 58:02Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week. And there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.