The paper presents theoretical and experimental investigations on three varying thickness circular cylinders, which were tested to destruction under external hydrostatic pressure. The five buckling theories that were presented were based on inelastic shell instability. Three of these inelastic buckling theories adopted the finite element method and the other two theories were based on a modified version of the much simpler von Mises theory. Comparison between experiment and theory showed that one of the inelastic buckling theories that was based on the von Mises buckling pressure gave very good results while the two finite element solutions, obtained by dividing the theoretical elastic instability pressures by experimentally determined plastic knockdown factors gave poor results. The third finite element solution which was based on material and geometrical non-linearity gave excellent results. Electrical resistance strain gauges were used to monitor the collapse mechanisms and these revealed that collapse occurred in the regions of the highest values of hoop stress, where considerable deformation took place.