HMS Resolution (S22) was the first of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

's Resolution-class

Resolution class submarine

The Resolution-class submarine armed with the Polaris missile was the United Kingdom's primary nuclear deterrent from the late 1960s to 1994, when they were replaced by the Vanguard-class submarine carrying the Trident II.-Background:...

 ballistic missile

Ballistic missile

A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...

 submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s.

Ordered in May 1963, she was built by Vickers Armstrong

Vickers Armstrong

Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927...

 at a cost of £40.2m. The keel was laid down on 26 February 1964 by the Director General Ships, Sir Alfred Sims, and the launch was on 15 September 1966, attended by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...

. The submarine was commissioned on 2 October 1967, and following extensive trials, including the firing of her first Polaris missile on 15 February 1968, commenced her first patrol on 15 June 1968.

Her Polaris system was updated in 1984 with the Chevaline

Chevaline

Chevaline was a system to improve the penetrability of the British Polaris missile warheads. Devised as an answer to the improved Soviet defences around Moscow, the system was intended to increase the probability that at least one warhead would penetrate the city's anti-ballistic missile defences,...

IFE (Improved Front End) that included two new warheads and re-entry bodies and penaids, super-hardened to resist ABM attack, replacing the original three ET.317

ET.317

The ET.317 was a nuclear weapon of the British Armed Forces, developed for the British version of the UGM-27 Polaris missile....

 warheads. Resolution conducted the longest Polaris patrol of 108 days in 1991.

Following the completion of the first Trident

Trident missile

The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles . The Fleet Ballistic Missile is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines . Trident missiles are carried by fourteen...

 submarine in 1992, the Resolution class were gradually removed from service. Resolution was de-commissioned on 22 October 1994, after 69 patrols, and laid up at the Rosyth Dockyard

Rosyth Dockyard

Rosyth Dockyard is a large naval dockyard on the Firth of Forth at Rosyth, Fife, Scotland, owned by Babcock Marine, which primarily undertakes refitting of Royal Navy surface vessels.-History:...

. She remains in the main basin at Rosyth, intact but with her reactor defuelled; the MOD has yet to finalise plans for removal of the radiactive reactor parts and the scrapping of the boat.