HMS Revenge (S27)

HMS Revenge was the fourth of the Royal Navy's ballistic missile submarines.

Construction

The four Resolution-class submarines were ordered on 8 May 1963, with Revenge, the fourth of the class, laid down at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead shipyard on 19 May 1965. Construction of the two submarines being built at Lairds was much slower than planned, with poor performance by Cammell Laird and in particular its workers to blame. At one stage the Ministry of Defence considered towing the unfinished submarines to Barrow-in-Furness for completion by Vickers-Armstrongs. Revenge was launched on 15 March 1968. She was formally commissioned on 4 December 1969.

Revenge was long overall and between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of. Displacement was surfaced and submerged. A PWR1 pressurised water reactor, designed and built by Rolls-Royce fed steam to geared steam turbines, with the machinery rated at, giving a speed of submerged and surfaced. A diesel engine provided auxiliary power.
Sixteen tubes for Polaris A3 Submarine-launched ballistic missiles were carried, in two rows of eight. The missiles had a range of, and each missile could carry three nuclear warheads. Defensive armament consisted of six torpedo tubes. The ship had a complement of 143, with two separate crews in order to maximise time at sea.

Following commissioning, Revenge underwent extensive sea trials and work-up, before sailing to the United States to carry out a test firing of a Polaris missile at the Eastern Test Range off Florida in June 1970.
She was marked for disposal in 1992. She is currently being stored pending the identification of a disposal solution for all of the UK's decommissioned nuclear submarines, at Rosyth Dockyard, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. She is docked down for maintenance and re-preservation approximately every 12 years.