When I kept watch in the control room out on patrol I used to sit quite near the safe where the ‘letters of last resort’ were kept. It always seemed surreal to me in many ways, having these documents so close by. My mind used to wonder just what was written in them. No one – not even the captain, the XO or the WEO – had any idea until they were opened. Luckily, to this day they never have been.
Only one person knew what was in them and that was the prime minister. Ever since the Royal Navy took over nuclear deterrence patrols, each PM* on assuming office had to write an identical letter to the four commanding officers of the deterrent, explaining what to do in the event of a nuclear strike devastating Britain that left the PM and his or her designated second choice, usually a senior cabinet member, incapacitated – or, more precisely, dead. Symbolically, this would be the last official act of HM Government.
During my service, given Britain and France’s relatively small size compared with the other major nuclear states of the Soviet Union and US, in the event of a nuclear strike we were at a major geographical disadvantage; for while it might have taken a considerable number of strikes to obliterate the larger cities of the Soviet Union or the US, together with their armies, factories and buildings of state, a first-strike action from the Soviets could have wiped out all our government departments, Whitehall and the military–industrial complex, together with all our major conurbations.
Ten prime ministers have had to write these letters in the early days or weeks of assuming office. Former PMs are extremely reluctant to talk about such delicate security matters, and there’s no mention of the letters in the memoirs of Thatcher, Major, Blair or Brown. I often speculated over their contents with fellow crewmates, but you had to be careful who you talked to, as some people were uncomfortable with making their feelings known on the matter and preferred to shut it out of their minds. Others who may have been against the use of the nukes also kept schtum, while some quite naturally could become quite tetchy as it would remind them of the unenviable job with which we’d been tasked.
The only people who did voice their opinions were the hardliners (‘hangers and floggers’, as I called them), who would simply say, ‘Nuke the bastards!’ It’s thought, although it cannot be proven, that the options were/are: retaliate with the warheads; do nothing (brilliant); leave it to the captain; put the boat under the control of an ally (in our case the US); or try to save the boat by going to another part of the world, such as Australia or New Zealand. My personal preference would have been for the captain to save the crew and seek a safe haven, preferably in the Maldives or the Seychelles. It made the days pass more quickly idly thinking about the boat laying anchor off Reethi Beach, then swimming ashore to be met by five-star service, food and surf. I could but dream.
What we did worry about, though, was how we would save ourselves if things got so bad that we were marooned in the oceans, unsure what action to take. We would then have been subject to the biggest submarine hunt in history, furtively traversing the deep in an attempt to escape marauding Soviet naval forces, who by this time had developed a nuclear depth bomb. We would have been effectively signing our own death warrant if we’d launched our missiles, as enemy satellite equipment could have clearly picked up the submarine’s position and it would have been just a matter of time before we were hunted down.
My time on board Resolution coincided with Thatcher being in Number 10, so I can imagine her letters might have gone for option one, immediate nuclear retaliation. After all, she’d already won a general election by going to war over the Falkland Islands. I used to hope that retaliation would have been deemed pointless by this stage, as most of the casualties of nuclear confrontation would be civilians and by then, with Britain already obliterated, what would have been the purpose? It seemed like madness, given that the Americans would have already launched God knows what by this point.
Hidden away in the depths of the oceans, how would we have known what was going on and whether events had reached such a terminal impasse if we didn’t communicate? One way would have been to monitor communications from Submarine Command in Northwood, and if these ceased for four hours or more – not exactly a long time – then the letters could be opened. Another option was if the BBC’s Radio 4 or World Service (both of which I was able to pick up in the EW room on the warfare kit) had stopped broadcasting; in which instance I would have been the boat’s harbinger of doom. It would have been highly unlikely for a nuclear strike to come straight out of the blue, and besides, it’s almost certain we would have been on patrol with heightened military tensions at the very least, or more likely, we’d already have been in a state of war with the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact.
* The practice of writing ‘letters of last resort’ began with Ted Heath in the early 1970s. Although the nuclear deterrent began in 1968, the prime minister of the time, Harold Wilson, refused to write the letter.