I think Clarkson has got it spot on.
You do the ragoût, mon capitaine; I’ll do the nuking | Jeremy Clarkson - Times Online
If there were to be another war, and I mean a real one against an army with boots rather than flip-flops, I would volunteer to serve in the submarine fleet. The army, I’m afraid, is right out because there’s too much running about, and while the RAF offers many opportunities to hang about behind the lines, drinking tea, there’s always the danger that at some point I’d be asked to go in a plane. And the problem with a plane is: it’s big and the enemy can see it.
It’s the same story with surface vessels in the navy. We saw in the Falklands that one jet fighter, flown by a mustachioed man called Gonzales, can sink a destroyer. Because it’s visible. And if I were to be on such a thing, in charge perhaps of the guns, then it’d be even more of a sitting duck because I’d be hanging over the railings throughout the attack, vomiting.
Submarines have none of these drawbacks. You can fight while sitting down in air-conditioned comfort, under the seasick zone, and the enemy can’t fight back because it doesn’t know where you are.
When military submarines were first mooted, the Royal Navy top brass dismissed them as “underhand and unfair”. They had grown up with the notion that you charged at your enemy in red coats, with a lot of people playing brass instruments, and they didn’t like the idea of a machine where the whole point was invisibility. But sneakery is my kind of warfare. The first inkling your enemy has that you’re there is when he is treading water in a big puddle of blazing engine oil. Perfect.
There’s more. In the army, from the moment you get up in the morning, which is always o’crikey o’clock, to the moment you go to bed at night, it’s all shouting and bugling. There is never any peace and quiet.
But in a submarine everything is done with a whisper. The reactor is quiet. The prop is quiet and orders are given quietly too. There are no bugles on a sub. And you don’t wade into battle playing the Ride of the Valkyries. Submarines are brilliant.
And I’m not talking about some crappy diesel-electric boat. Nobody wants to go to war in what, essentially, is an aquatic Toyota Prius. No. I’m talking about a nuclear-powered hunter-killer. Or, better still, one of the missile boats. Imagine being on one of those. You sit absolutely still for six months. And then, when the order comes through, your captain pushes a button that kills everyone on earth. Except you. Fantastic.
The trouble is, of course, that for these missile boats to be relevant, one of them has to be at sea constantly, ready to respond at a moment’s notice. And to do that, in shifts, with servicing to be factored in, the navy must have four boats. That means four crews. Four nuclear reactors to be serviced. Four lots of Trident missiles. The cost, including plans for replacements, over the coming years could be as much as £100 billion.
You may say that this is a complete waste of money because we don’t need nuclear submarines to fight an enemy that’s coming at us with a £3 AK-47 assault rifle and a pair of sandals. But you’re wrong. We must always prepare for the next war. Not the one we’re fighting now. And who knows what the next war might involve? It might be the Greeks. I hope so.
There’s another reason it’s important for the navy to maintain its fleet of boomers. Having a nuclear submarine in your arsenal is what makes a country important. Take that away and what is Britain left with? A lot of potholes, a health system that doesn’t work and a bunch of political leaders who have to make after-dinner speeches to make ends meet. We’d have to be twinned with Ethiopia.
So. Problem. We have to have our boats for defence and for self-esteem. And we can’t afford them. And that’s why I was so pleased to hear the other day about an offer from the French, who are in the same boat, so to speak, to join forces.
Gordon Brown said it was important for each country to maintain its own nuclear deterrent. But, as we know, Gordon Brown is wrong about many things. And I think he’s wrong about this too. Because, why not?
Of all the countries that we are likely to fight in the coming century, France must hover pretty close to the bottom of the list. So it makes sense, financially and politically, for each of us to run two nuclear missile subs, and for us to take it in turns to be on patrol.
The only problem I can see is military. Because let’s just say the Argies get uppity again, and that this time we simply don’t have the ability to go down there and give them a bloody nose. And let’s just say, I don’t know, that I am in No 10 at the time. Frankly, I’d want to nuke them.
And here’s the tricky bit. If I rang the captain of a French submarine and asked him to destroy Buenos Aires, would he oblige? Similarly, would one of our chaps be happy to wipe Libya from the map if Nicolas Sarkozy decided his wife had run off with Colonel Gadaffi? This is the crucial question.
And the answer, I think, is probably no. But the important bit of that answer is “probably”. Uncertainty is what makes nuclear weapons work. Not knowing whether the response to your attack will come in the shape of a mushroom.
Britain being protected by Capitaine de la Mer, with his stripy jumper and his onions, makes the prospect of us being able to mount a nuclear response less likely. But it is still a threat. And that’s what matters.
It’s what matters to me as well. Because in a time of war I might well end up on a French submarine, which is probably no bad thing. Yes. The homosexuality might become a bit boring, but I’m sure it’d be very stylish, and I bet they pack in fewer missiles than our boats because the crewmen need the extra space for all their recipe books and ingredients.