There are, so someone told me, 323,600,000 cubic kilometres of water in the Atlantic Ocean. That number of zeros blows my mathematical circuits, but its a whole lot of space both up and down and out. A whole lot of water to get lost in.
Which has got to make you wonder how two nuclear-armed submarines, one from France and one from Britain could manage to collide in all that H2O.
Especially as this was no 'Hunt for Red October' moment ... these are, after all, both allies in NATO. But the scary part is surely not that two ultra-modern fighting machines with more detection equipment on-board than you could shake a fishy finger at, manage to bump into each other in all that space ... the scary part is the nuclear warheads.
A Long time go things were more simple. On this day way back in 1864: The Confederate submarine HL Hunley became the first submarine to sink a ship - the USS 'Housatonic'. Things were relatively straight forward then. One submarine against one ship ... there's alot more to play for today. On board HMS Vanguard would hav
e been between 12 and 16 missiles, each of which can deliver a number of 100 kiloton warheads to individual targets - mass destruction that makes Hiroshima seem like an insubstantial incendiary. Of course the MOD and Admiralty say there was no a virtually nil risk of any these warheads going off ... but then would say that wouldn't they ...
e been between 12 and 16 missiles, each of which can deliver a number of 100 kiloton warheads to individual targets - mass destruction that makes Hiroshima seem like an insubstantial incendiary. Of course the MOD and Admiralty say there was no a virtually nil risk of any these warheads going off ... but then would say that wouldn't they ... and its the qualifying word 'virtually' that makes me fearful.
But I guess the warheads must be collision safe otherwise we wouldn't allow them to be driven on public roads from Berkshire to Faslane and Coulport in Scotland.
Would we?
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