TURBULENT Times Are Over – The Fleet Submarine TURBULENT has formally decommissioned after 29 years’ service.      The TURBULENT famously hammered Saddam Hussein’s defences in 2003 with the vessel’s TOMAHAWK cruise missile armament.   The TURBULENT has completed 29 years service with the fleet and was designed and built at the height of the Cold War the vessel was a hunter-killer, to hunt – and destroy enemy submarines before they could launch a nuclear missile strike.

The TURBULENT since commissioning in 1984 has been deployed on patrols as far apart as the North Atlantic and Far East, and saw service in the Adriatic during the Balkans conflict, and most recently, the “boat” completed a marathon East of Suez deployment of some 268 days in the Indian Ocean, the vessel also participated in operations off Libya – although was not called upon to fire any TOMAHAWK missiles.  On this deployment the TURBULENT visited Souda Bay (Crete), Fujairah (UAE), Bahrain, Goa and Aqaba (Jordan) and a sizeable portion of that deployment was captured on film for a Channel 5 documentary Royal Navy Submarine Mission.     The TURBULENT will eventually go into 3 Basin at Devonport to await dismantling – a process which is the subject of a public consultation process by the MoD.