Canada's HMCS Corner Brook, a submarine bought from Britain for a symbolic £1, fired a heavyweight Mk 48 torpedo on July 12, 2026, and sank the decommissioned US Navy cruiser USS Mobile Bay during the RIMPAC exercises, according to the website 19FortyFive.
The submarine began life as HMS Ursula, one of four Upholder-class boats Britain decommissioned in 1994, a year after they entered Royal Navy service between 1990 and 1993. In 1998 Canada signed an eight-year, interest-free lease-to-buy agreement for all four submarines worth about 501 million Canadian dollars, roughly 460 million US dollars, with a nominal payment of £1 per submarine once the lease ended. Britain had ordered the first Upholder-class submarine in 1983 and the other three in 1986. Canada needed to replace its aging Oberon-class fleet, and new conventional submarines were estimated to cost between 3 billion and 5 billion Canadian dollars.
The four boats were renamed HMCS Victoria, HMCS Windsor, HMCS Corner Brook and HMCS Chicoutimi. Each is 70.3 metres long, displaces about 2,515 tonnes submerged, carries six 533mm torpedo tubes, has a crew of 49 and can reach 20 knots underwater.
Years of problems
Canada's Department of National Defence found that officials had underestimated the risks of reactivating submarines that had sat idle since 1994 and refitting them to Canadian standards. Deliveries were delayed, training schedules were disrupted and the work took longer than expected.
The worst incident came in 2004, when seawater flooded HMCS Chicoutimi during an Atlantic crossing and sparked an electrical fire, killing Lieutenant Chris Saunders. HMCS Corner Brook ran aground during a submerged exercise in 2011 and spent several years being repaired and modernized.
Operational successes
HMCS Victoria sank the former US hospital ship Concord with a live Mk 48 torpedo during the RIMPAC 2012 exercises. HMCS Chicoutimi later completed a 197-day deployment to the Indo-Pacific region alongside US, Japanese, Australian and French forces, becoming the first Canadian submarine to visit Japan since 1968.
