HMS ALLIANCE (P-417, S17, S67)
Class: A-Class
Length: 281 feet 9 inches
Address:
HMS Alliance was designed for service in the Far East, but the war ended before she could be put into action. The A-Class was larger than its predecessors and Alliance had a range of 10,000 miles at an economical surface speed. When built, she had six bow torpedo tubes, four stern tubes. However, when she was streamlined and modernized during an extensive refit between 1958 and 1960, the external tubes were removed, leaving four tubes forward and two aft with a total of ten reload torpedoes. She also received a snorkel and better batteries. The conning tower was replaced with the 25 foot aluminum fin that enclosed all her masts. This and other streamlining made her quieter and faster underwater. The primary tasks of the post-war Submarine Service were anti-submarine warfare and intelligence against the Soviet threat. She was taken out of service and relegated to harbor training in 1973 by which time the Oberon and Porpoise Class boats formed the bulk of the submarine fleet and nuclear submarines were successively being commissioned. Alliance was transferred on permanent loan to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport, Hampshire in February 1978. She now stands, together with the Museum, as a memorial to the 4,334 British submariners who gave their lives in both world wars and to the 739 officers and men lost in peacetime submarine disasters.
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