HMS Onyx was an of the Royal Navy.

Design and construction

The Oberon class was a direct follow on of the Porpoise class, with the same dimensions and external design, but updates to equipment and internal fittings, and a higher grade of steel used for fabrication of the pressure hull.

As designed for British service, the Oberon-class submarines were in length between perpendiculars and in length overall, with a beam of , and a draught of . Displacement was 1,610 tons standard, 2,030 tons full load when surfaced, and 2,410 tons full load when submerged.

Onyx was tasked with providing reconnaissance photographs of enemy installations enforcing the exclusion zone around the Falklands. Her smaller displacement compared to the nuclear submarines also made her ideal for landing SBS and SAS special forces, picked up from Ascension Island, ashore on the islands in shallow waters. The charts used for these landings, however, were made 200 years before the war.

During one of these missions, Onyx hit an uncharted pinnacle while submerged at and suffered minor damage to her bow. Another claim is that the damage was inflicted by one of two torpedoes dropped by an Argentine Navy S-2E Tracker aircraft from operating off the Argentine coast. The Tracker S-2 twice detected sub-surface and electronic traces and a magnetic anomaly detector contact on 5–6 May while searching for which was out of contact after being hit by Sea Skua missiles launched by Westland Lynx helicopters.

Contrary to some reports, after the British cancelled Operation Mikado, there was never a plan to use Onyx to land the SAS in order to destroy Argentina's remaining stockpile of Exocet missiles. Prior to the submarine being damaged the SBS had been embarked to attack a mainland airfield but this operation, too, was cancelled. probably due to torpedo battery faults. Sir Galahad had been damaged beyond repair during an Argentine Air Force raid at Fitzroy and Bluff Cove.

Decommissioning and preservation attempts

thumb|Onyx and other ships at Birkenhead in 2005

Defence cuts in the UK saw the Royal Navy dispense with its diesel-powered submarines to concentrate on nuclear attack submarines. In 1991, Onyx was decommissioned from the navy. She was then cared for by the Warship Preservation Trust and was on public display alongside several other ships in Birkenhead, UK.

In May 2006, Onyx was sold to the Barrow-in-Furness businessman Joe Mullen, for a reported £100,000 as a 'gift to the people of Barrow'. She left Birkenhead on 13 June 2006 to form the centrepiece of The Submarine Heritage Centre, a new heritage museum in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, as a celebration to the town's illustrious submarine-building history.

After the submarine museum went into debt she was taken by an unknown liquidation company as a financial asset, to be broken up for scrap. A small party from HMS Exploit gave her a send off recognising her contribution to the Navy and country in the Cold War and Falklands conflict. On 30 April 2014 she was sailed from Barrow in tow for the Clyde and berthed at Rosneath amid continued uncertainty as to whether at least part of Onyx might be preserved. Onyx was alongside Rosneath Jetty on the Gare Loch, Scotland on 18 July 2014. She was scrapped in Rosneath later that year.

See also

  • British Naval Forces in the Falklands War

References

  • The Submarine Heritage Centre