My top 5

[Kapitan]

I have recently been thinking about what makes my top 5 Cold War submarines, well I spent some time contemplating this and so I created my list with some details about each unit I probably could have made it my top 100 but the top 5 can be found here

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/top-5-cold-war-submarines/

My list is based on achievement so it's not type specific let's see if you guys agree or not

[Commander Wallace]

Your reasoning is very sound as to why you included the submarines that you did. I think your list is very good but it is really hard to name only 5. To that list, I would add the revolutionary, deep diving, titanium hulled, Alfa submarine of the former Soviet Union.


I would also add theLe Redoutable class of ballistic missile subs with a 20 year history from France.

There are a number of successful U.S designs as well. I would add the Ohio ballistic missile subs. I would also add the Los Angeles and Skipjack classes of attack subs. The Skipjack introduced the tear drop/ Albacore hull shape. There were 62 Los Angeles class subs built with incremental improvements and were the most successful subs of the cold war.

How about the Trafalger class attack subs of the U.K ?

It's really hard to just name 5 as there were many successful designs and classes.

[Mr Quatro]

You knew you were going to stir us up, uh kapitan?

The George Washington was nice and true she was the first boomer, but she was originally designed as an SSN and had to be cut in the middle to add the missile decks in order to get the first FBM's out on patrol in 1959.

In 1961 the first true FBM class (built from the ground up) was created and built at Newport News shipyard the USS Ethan Allen SSBN 608 and her sister ship the USS Sam Houston SSBN 609 ... I forgot which year I think it was 62 or 63 that both submarines were the first and only missile boats to fire a live Polaris A1 with an actual nuclear warhead on it exploding above a langoon full of old WWII ships somewhere in South Pacific making history and proving that it could actually be done.

So in my choice of the top 7 it would include these two boats for the honor of the best Cold War submarines :up:

I think the USS Triton qualifies too due to her around the world vovage, but she was a of a kind dual nuclear power plant SSN. :yep:

[Jimbuna]

I can understand the exclusion of the Collins class :) but the Oberon :hmmm: