Crash Submarines Packed With Nuclear Missiles

A huge disaster was narrowly avoided when British and French nuclear submarines crashed in the Atlantic, a marine engineer said yesterday. The vessels, which are armed with up to 32 ballistic missiles between them, collided 1,000ft underwater in the Bay of Biscay. French sailors, who were returning to base, heard a bang after HMS Vanguard apparently clipped the front of their submarine, Le Triomphant. The Vanguard was forced to return to Faslane, in Scotland, where it arrived at the weekend with 'very visible dents and scrapes', witnesses said.Yesterday First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band confirmed the collision, which happened on February 3. Admiral Sir Jonathon Band confirmed the collision at a Royal Navy press conference

There was no nuclear leak and no injuries to the crew, he said. The Ministry of Defence declined to comment further, citing operational secrecy. However, experts and MPs called for a full explanation. Dr John Large, a nuclear submarine engineer who has advised the Royal Navy, said: 'This could easily have been very serious. There could have been a massive humanitarian disaster. 'If any plutonium from the missiles or reactors had got into the atmosphere there would have been a likelihood of causing both immediate deaths among people who breathed in the particles - and a big increase in cancers over the next three decades.'The £4billion vessels were believed to be in 'stealth mode', moving at just four-and-a-half miles an hour, with most of their systems switched off, when they collided. They avoid using active or 'pinging' sonar to find other objects, as it would give away their own position. The sophisticated passive sonar systems - listening for sounds from another vessel - would be switched on. But as both subs move astonishingly quietly, they were able to blunder into each other without either spotting the other.Navy insiders say the French submarine may have been the only vessel at sea at the time with which Vanguard could have collided in this way.

Chinese and Russian submarines are thought to be noisier and easier to detect. U.S. vessels are just as quiet as Britain's but the countries exchange information on where their submarines are patrolling. There is no information-sharing deal with France, it is understood. Dr Large, who led the operation to raise the Russian Kursk submarine which sank in 2000, added: 'It's like two blindfolded men creeping around a room. Eventually they are going to bump into each other. 'Nuclear power stations are subjected to strict regulations and have to be accountable when accidents happen. The same standards should apply to the MoD.' A worse accident could easily happen, he warned. 'The Atlantic is very big, but most navies use the same nesting grounds, quiet areas, deep areas, roughly the same distance from their home ports. 'These station-grounds have got quite a few submarines, meaning there is always the risk of a crash.' Angus Robertson, Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party, said: 'The MoD needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine, carrying weapons of mass destruction, to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction, in the middle of the world's second-largest ocean.