Cold War SubmarinesSubmarines had a vital, if often unheralded, role in the superpower navies during the Cold War. Their crews carried out intelligence collection operations, sought out and stood ready to destroy opposing submarines, and, from the early 1960s, threatened missile attacks on their adversarys homeland, providing in many respects the most survivable nuclear deterrent of the Cold War. For both East and West, the modern submarine originated in German U boat