In early March 1961, the US nuclear submarine tender USS Proteus arrived at the newly built Polaris base at Dunoon in the Holy Loch. It stayed there for a few years and a succession of American tenders came and went until finally in 1992 the US Navy left for warmer waters.

The holiday town was then plunged into a period of economic decline and, not to put too fine a point on it, mourned the departure of the US submarines despite the fact that their very presence put the whole of central Scotland at risk of nuclear annihilation.
The local economy suffered bigtime as a result of the withdrawal and many local businesses went to the wall. Even the local sex trade suffered a big hit.
But at least Dunoon was still on the map. The Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction – MAD for short, had triumphed and aside from the economic downturn, no one had died – well almost. During exercises in November 1970 a fire erupted on the USS Canopus killing several crewmembers and four years later, in 1974, the American nuclear submarine USS Madison collided with a Soviet submarine in the entrance to the Holy Loch. But that’s still subject to a security blanket.
Dunoon, and indeed central Scotland, survived that US invasion but in a strange twist Laurel Clark, a radiation specialist assigned to the Holy Loch base, was one of those astronauts killed in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident. By all accounts she was piped off on her final mission to the tune of Scotland the Brave and piped into her grave at Arlington Cemetery by a military band playing Amazing Grace.
Somewhat cheekily, the Pipes and Drums of the US Naval Academy nowadays sport a Polaris Tartan based on those Cold War glory days. So, alongside an association with a dead astronaut, Scotland can boast a military tartan celebrating a US foreign policy which put our lives on the line for around three decades. You couldn’t make it up!


If you’ve valued this wee snippet of Scottish history, I would encourage you to check out my books: The A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire and The Little History of Aberdeenshire. Both titles are available from Amazon and there is a new book, sponsored by The Doric Board, on the way.
Location: Dunoon, UK

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