HMS Onyx
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HMS Onyx was an Oberon class submarine of the Royal Navy. Originally ordered for the Royal Canadian Navy, Onyx was transferred to the Royal Navy whilst under construction at Cammell Laird shipbuilders in Birkenhead, England. She was launched on August 1966 and commissioned into the Royal Navy in September 1967.
Falklands War
HMS Onyx was the only non-nuclear submarine of the Royal Navy to take part in the Falklands War. The smaller displacement of Onyx compared to the nuclear submarines made her ideal for landing SBS marines ashore on the islands in shallow waters. During one of these missions, Onyx hit an uncharted pinnacle while submerged at 150 feet and suffered minor damage to its bow. 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.
HMS Onyx sank the hulk of the landing ship Sir Galahad after she was damaged beyond repair during an air strike at Fitzroy.
Decommissioning and preservation
Defence cuts in the UK saw the Royal Navy dispense with its diesel-powered submarines to concentrate on nuclear attack submarines. In 1991, the 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 HMS 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, she will be broken up for scrap in May 2014. A small party from HMS Exploit gave her a send off recognizing 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 was berthed at Rosneath amid continued uncertainty as to whether at least part of Onyx might be preserved.
Onyx was scrapped at Rosneath Jetty on the Gare Loch Scotland from September 2014.
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