But when the Sonar is mounted on a submarine, the angle of the emitter ray makes a much more open angle and its almost horizontal path exposes it much less to being diffused or reflected by the thermal layers. The effectiveness of nuclear fighter submarines caused a commander of such vessels to reflect that his was as much a part of the deterrent against atomic war as a Polaris submarine, in that its mission was to search for potentially hostile submarines, track submarine missiles and also find enemy ballistic missile submarines.
Although the Soviet Navy is on time presents the only major naval power to make extensive use of underwater tactical missiles, probably mainly for use by American and English aircraft carriers, it was the US Navy which had the first idea of developing what are known today as cruise missiles, tested on submarines in the 1950s.
The first of these missiles was the Regulus I, a development of the wartime V 1 used by the Germans against England in 1944-1945. The Regulus has subsonic speed and a range of 500 miles. Four diesel-electric submarines and the nuclear submarine Halibut have been equipped with them and it was expected that this Halibut and the diesel-electric submarines Grayback and Growler were soon to be armed with the Regulus II, a 1,000-mile transonic of scope. But the production was canceled around 1965, the Halibut resumed its functions as an attack submarine while the Grayback was fitted out as an underwater troop transport and the Growler was decommissioned.
The development of the atomic submarine force was achieved only at great cost. The first units were extremely noisy due to the lack of a muffling device at the pumps of their reactors, so that France and Great Britain, with their much quieter diesel-electric submarines, benefited from privileged position on the export market. Although the last submarine of this type built for the British Navy dates back to 1967, ships of this class were built for Australia and Chile in 1974-1975, and some had been delivered to Australia previously. , Canada and Brazil. France supplied submarines to South Africa. in Pakistan and Portugal, while Spain is building them under French license and plans. Outside the Warsaw Pact countries, Russia has supplied diesel-electric submarines to Egypt, Indonesia, India and Albania but submarines for the latter country have seized when Albania emerged from the Russian orbit to adopt the Chinese line of Communism.