The planning and design effort which went into the Polaris submarine programme was colossal : 500 000 man-hours of planning, preparation of more than 10 000 carefully detailed drawings all to be translated into the physical business of construction. Additionally, a full-scale wooden 'mock-up' was built. Not only did this allow the exact positioning of any piece of equipment to be planned and the routes for cables, pipes and trunking to be decided, but, when the crew arrived to stand by their ship, they were able to train on the mock-up and become familiar with their new charge before they even set foot aboard her.
In constructing Resolution, the hull was assembled on the berth from sections prefabricated in the Assembly Shop. The fore and aft parts of the ship were built up simultaneously, and into the space between were placed the prefabricated missile sections, complete with missile tubes. It took just thirty months to progress from keel laying to launch - an event performed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 15th September, 1966.
