HMS Alliance Stars In Hollywood Blockbuster

After years of being under the radar, Cold War submarine HMS Alliance has made her Hollywood debut as a location for Transformers V: The Last Knight.
 

The popular sequel to the highly successful franchise was filmed at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Gosport, with A-list stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Mark Wahlberg on set.  

Supercars Bumblebee and Hotrod, “Autobots” which transform into earth-saving robots, made a special appearance as they sped up to the submarine in a race against time.

Further scenes were filmed on board the boat over three days. 

Built at Barrow-in-Furness and launched in 1945, HMS Alliance was one of 14 ‘A’ class submarines commissioned for service in the Far East during the Second World War.

She had a long and distinguished career of over 28 years that took her all over the world and she is theonly surviving British Second World War-era submarine.

In 1947, HMS Alliance stayed immersed for 30 days, which for many years was the world record for longest submarine dive.

Diving off the Canary Islands, the Alliance travelled over 3,000 miles, from the Canaries to Cape Verde, then down to the Equator and then northwards where she surfaced in Freetown, Sierra Leone. 

Although HMS Alliance did not see active service during wartime, she was used to carry out active service patrols, with a crew of up to 69 men (ratings). 

In 1958 Alliance underwent modernisation work, which saw the conning tower and guns replaced by a fin that completely covered her periscopes when dived.

Both these alterations made HMS Alliance more streamlined and better equipped for warfare in the Cold War era where submarines needed to be faster and quieter when under-water.