Secret Warriors – British Submarines during the Cold War

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During the Cold War, some of the most dangerous encounters between East and West took place far beneath the ocean’s surface.
I speak with historian Dr. Paul Brown, author of Secret Warriors: British Submarines during the Cold War. Brown reveals the extraordinary covert missions carried out by Royal Navy submarines as they monitored Soviet naval bases near Murmansk and the Barents Sea.

British boats gathered vital intelligence by recording the acoustic signatures of Soviet submarines, trailing enemy vessels, and observing major naval exercises. These missions were risky and occasionally resulted in collisions, such as the dramatic incident involving HMS Warspite in 1968.

Along the way, Brown shares remarkable stories of Cold War espionage at sea, including a daring intelligence operation where a British submarine secretly observed the Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev from just a few feet away. This is a rare glimpse into one of the Cold War’s most secretive battlefields: the depths of the ocean.

Naval history expert Dr Paul Brown’s new book, Secret Warriors: British Submarines in the Cold War is a fully illustrated volume, containing stunning black-and-white and colour images, technical drawings and maps.

He has interviewed Cold War-era submarine commanders and engineers, submitted Freedom of Information requests, and trawled the National Archives, the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum and Imperial War Museums, as well as been though personal accounts of the senior officers and many secondary sources, to bring to light new information that is published here for the first time.

Similar episodes:

On Her Majesty’s Nuclear Submarine Service ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/episode162/⁠
From the Merchant Navy to Covert Hunter Killer Nuclear Submarine Missions ⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/episode388/⁠ ⁠

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