Regulus: The First Nuclear Submarines

in 1953 the submarine USS Tunney surfaced off the California coast to perform a top-secret mission to become the first submarine to launch a nuclear missile the missile was called the Regulus and it gave the submarine the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to a target hundreds of miles away the regular submarines and their nuclear missiles would be deployed off the Pacific coast of the Soviet Union during some of the most volatile years of the Cold War the Cold War was a real war we felt that any minute we might be called upon to do what we were supposed to do the first warheads in the world that were that were going to go off in a mutual nuclear exchange was a Regulus warhead today submarines provide the backbone of the United States nuclear deterrent but before Triton before Polaris the Regulus program now largely forgotten started it all in 1945 the idea of submarines launching missiles seemed impossible but because of the vision of a few Navy officers weapon designers and the submarine errs who served on the first deterrent patrols the Regulus program was a breakthrough that changed the face of the u.s. Navy and stabilized the Cold War [Music]