Royal Navy and US Navy SSBN Names
v.1.0 August 25, 2002

Ravi Rikhye

The Royal Navy has had two classes of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines - SSBNs in US parlance.  The first began entering service in 1968 and was the R class:

HMS Renown
HMS Repulse
HMS Resolution
HMS Revenge

These boats were Polaris missile submarines displacing about 7,500 tons, and were replaced starting in the 1990s by the V class:

HMS Vanguard
HMS Vengeance
HMS Victorious
HMS Vigilance

These are Trident missile submarines displacing about 16,000 tons, and are smaller than their US counterparts, carrying 16 missiles versus the 24 carried by the USS Ohio class.

All SSBNs belong to 10 Submarine Squadron homeported at Faslane, Scotland.

Both the R and V classes carry traditional battleship names: Royal Navy ships in the 1794 list, at the time of the Napoleanic Wars, carried all eight names.  At least two of the R class names and three of the V class names were present in World War I.  Perhaps because the British lacked money to build super-carriers, they were quicker to appreciate that the SSBN had become the capital ship of modern navies and accordingly used battleship names.  The US first gave names of famous Americans to their first 41 SSBNs, which consisted of three classes of Polaris boats.  When the Trident boats arrived in the mid-1980s, the US started using the names of states, which have traditionally been used for battleships in the US Navy.  Of course, any consistency in US ships names has long since disappeared.  In the late 1980s when the four Iowa battleships were in commission, the US was using state names for (1) battleships, (2) Trident missile submarines, (3) nuclear-power missile cruisers, and (4) attack submarines

The British have been less consistent about naming their attack boats. The British have used battleship names, e.g., HMS Dreadnought and HMS Valiant, cruiser names, e.g. HMS Swiftsure, aircraft carrier names, e.g. HMS Triumph, one famous politician, HMS Churchill, and lately reverted to famous submarine names, e.g. HMS Talent.  Ones supposes that HMS Churchill can be forgiven because of the need to honor Britain's leader in her greatest war, and names like HMS Triumph have earlier been borne by battleships. Nonetheless, the Royal Navy has certainly not lived up to the expectation of traditionalists with its attack boats.  These are logically the successors of the old battle or heavy cruisers, and these names should have been exclusively used. 

The US named its World War II submarines after fish, continued the tradition with its attack boats all the way through the SSN 637 Sturgeon class, and then sensibly shifted to cruiser names with the SSN 688 Los Angeles class.  Then the US Navy misstepped, naming the first of the SSN 21 class after a submarine, the second after a state, and the third after a living president and ex-submariner - the USS Seawolf, USS Connecticut, and the USS Jimmy Carter.  Earlier, two SSN 637 submarines had been named for politicians particularly helpful to the cause of the Navy.  Lamentable as are the Royal Navy lapses on attack boat names, the British at least can claim not to have sunk to the pandering depths achieved by their American counterparts.  Completely unashamed of the mess it has made, the US Navy with its new Virginia class attack boats now starting construction has not only used more cruiser names, but has reverted to the old scheme for numbering hulls. The first, USS Virginia, is SSN 774, and the second, USS Texas, is SSN 775, both carrying names of recently decommissioned nuclear-powered cruisers  When the US reached the 990s for destroyer hull numbers, it started over.  Why it used SSN 21, 22, and 23 when it was still in the 770s for submarine hulls is not clear; and why it now refuses to go back and change the SSN 21 class numbers to fall in line with the traditional series is even less clear. One wonders how long before we have major American warships named after sports stars? Actors? New Economy billionaires?

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