The British Royal Navy narrowly avoided what could have been the most catastrophic disaster since World War II, thanks to a last-minute rescue.
An old Vanguard class vessel carrying Trident nuclear missiles with 140 crew members on board experienced a massive malfunction that almost had a fatal ending. The ship’s depth gauge failed while it was on a route mission in the Atlantic, reports the Sun, citing its naval sources.
The sub was about to go on patrol when the dials noted its depth became non-operational, thereby indicating that it was heading towards its crush depth, when engineers spotted a second gauge and raised the alarm.
“That hadn’t happened. The sub wasn’t supposed to be there, and it was still diving. And if it had carried on going, it doesn’t really bear thinking about,” a source told the newspaper.
