Warspite’s Echo

Over at the National Interest I wrote a short piece recounting an event that was described in my good friend Iain Ballantyne’s Undersea Warriors:

Seven British warships have carried the name Warspite, the most illustrious being the Queen Elizabeth class battleship that fought gallantly in two world wars. During the Cold War, the Royal Navy’s third nuclear attack submarine took the name. Although her service was not as widely known as that of her immediate predecessor, she helped the Royal Navy wage the Cold War against its Soviet counterpart. On a cold day in October 1968, however, Warspite was nearly lost after colliding with a Soviet submarine on a reconnaissance mission.