The Third World War (28 page)

Turning over in their minds the broader aspects of maritime strategy,
JACWA
recalled a useful division of the maritime task which the British naval and air force staffs had once jointly set down in a War Manual. It contained lessons learned in the UK from the Second World War, not all of which had been applied. Maritime warfare, they had written (the word ‘maritime’ had been introduced in order to include the naval tasks of the
RAF
), comprises two separate but complementary functions:

1 The management of sea use: the organization and movement of shipping; the loading and unloading of cargoes; the control and defence of ports; and the manning, training and maintenance of naval forces.

This is predominantly a naval responsibility.

2 Combat with hostile naval and air forces: offensive and defensive operations of all kinds in support of the maritime aim, including direct support of land forces.

This is predominantly a joint naval and air responsibility.

As to strategy, what were the forces involved? The naval and air general-purpose forces immediately available to
NATO
and the
USSR
, for operations in the North Atlantic and Western Approaches (to which the contribution of non-Soviet forces would be negligible), would normally be of the following order;

Category
NATO
USSR

1 Carrier strike fleet I

2 General purpose support

groups 3 2

3 Escort groups 4 2

4 Fleet (nuclear-powered)

submarines 44 60

5 Patrol (diesel-electric)

submarines 40 40

6 Escort and patrol ships

(other than those included in 1,2, and 3 above) . 52 64

7 Maritime strike aricraft

(two-thirds carrier-home) 300 250

8 Maritime patrol aircraft 50 50

Both sides would have a number of logistic support ships; amphibious ships and craft; mine countermeasure ships and auxiliaries. The Soviet Northern Fleet would also include upwards of twenty-five fast missile craft.

There were, of course, in addition, the large Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and naval air forces in the Baltic, which the naval and air forces of the Federal German Republic and Denmark would have to oppose. In the Mediterranean there were the United States Sixth Fleet and a large part of the French Navy. The Italian, Greek and Turkish naval forces were also earmarked for
NATO
and would, provided their governments remained staunch, fight the Soviet Navy effectively.

The attitudes of the various governments in North Africa, as well as their capability to support Soviet naval operations, would be of critical importance. The relin-quishment by the British, in the 1970s, of a naval presence in the Mediterranean, to be replaced partly by the US Navy, partly by Allied Forces South (
AFSOUTH
), hafl proved to be a weakening step.

Considering strategy, therefore, first of all during the hoped for warning period,
JACWA
foresaw five main tasks:

1 To put the Western Approaches command on a war footing.

2 To step up reconnaissance of Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and naval air activities.

3 To inaugurate measures to control and protect shipping.

4 In conjunction with C1NCNORTH, SACEUR’s major
NATO
commander in Oslo, to protect the oil and natural gas installations in the North Sea.

5 To ensure the safe and timely movement of all sea traffic between the UK and the Continent in support of
SACEUR
.

So far, little in the way of strategic thinking was needed. Once hostilities began, however, the options for decision would open up, as, under the impact of enemy action, the demands upon inadequate forces began to come into critical competition.

In the 1914-lSand 1939-45 wars JACWA’s predecessors (with the warm approval of the British Admiralty) had proceeded at once to sea with their fleets ‘to sweep the enemy from the seas’- Many thousands of miles of largely unproductive steaming had worn out both machinery and men. Valuable ships had been torpedoed, or sunk by air attack, without inflicting even equivalent losses on the enemy. JACWA, as a team, had a most compelling reason for rejecting this precedent. With so few forces at their disposal, and no reserves from which to make good losses, the only offensive operations which could be justified were those which promised to reduce, at once, the level of the threat to NATO’s aims.

It was evident that the most potent enemy forces were the sixty nuclear-powered general purpose submarines (
SSN
) of the Soviet Northern Fleet, together with the 250 Backfire maritime strike aircraft also based in the Murmansk area. JACWA’s first two offensive operations, therefore, were as much SACLANTs as JACWA’s. But the system of integrating functional commands ensured clarity of purpose, of command, and of control. The British Flag Officer Submarines was, in the
NATO
structure, both Commander Submarines, Eastern Atlantic, and Commander Submarines, Western Approaches. His
RAF
equivalent, the Air Officer Commanding 18 Group, was Commander Maritime Air, Eastern Atlantic, and Commander Maritime Air, Western Approaches. The deployment of
NATO
submarines on anti-submarine patrol was therefore to be carried out without delay. And the launch of a powerful maritime air strike against aircraft on the ground and air installations in the Murmansk area was planned to take place at the very earliest moment possible after the outbreak of hostilities.

The British naval contribution to
NATO
had been augmented, during the period 1979-85, following a sudden, eleventh-hour awakening of public opinion to Britain’s extreme vulnerability to attack upon her seaborne trade and supplies—a vulnerability now felt almost as much by the the other
NATO
countries in north-western Europe. The most important elements in the emergency naval programme were:

1 Three escort carriers. These were container ship hulls fitted with ‘ski-jump’ flight decks and containerized aircraft control and operations modules. Carrying a mix of V/
STOL
fighter-strike-reconnaissance aircraft, and
ASW
helicopters, these 28-knot ships, built to merchant ship specifications, were good value for money.

2 Four additional Sheffield-c\&?,& fleet frigates--

3 Twelve corvettes of a new type, for fast patrol ship duties.

4 Six additional mine countermeasure ships.

5 Five small patrol (diesel-electric) submarines.

This naval construction programme was feasible, despite Great Britain’s poor economic performance in the 1970s, because her shipbuilding industry, other than in’ designated warship building yards, was very short of orders and the extra jobs were warmly welcomed. It seemed a preferable alternative to building merchant ships, at a loss, for Soviet satellite countries, to be employed in cut-throat competition against the merchant fleets of the United Kingdom. The shape and size of the Royal Navy in the mid-1980s was appropriate, therefore, to the two main functions of the UK maritime task, namely, sea-use management and combat with hostile forces. This pattern had become accepted, also, in the other
NATO
navies, so that the mix of forces achieved overall had gradually moved towards the optimum.

The strategy of
SACLANT
, as it had evolved under a series of most able incumbents of the post, by 1985 comprised three main elements: first, to maintain in readiness the US Navy’s strategic nuclear forces, and ensure that no Soviet operational development could upset the strategic nuclear balance; second, to act, with his conventional forces, as vigorously as possible to reduce the threat from Soviet conventional forces to NATO’s seaborne supplies and reinforcements; third, to give direct assistance, as appropriate and feasible, to both
SACEUR
and
JACWA
in their operations.

SACLANTs assessment of the combat capability of various types of naval and air force had led him to base his concept of operations on the judgement that the supersonic homing, guided or programmed missile, whether launched from land, surface warship, submarine or aircraft, was the main danger to naval forces and shipping at sea. But it was a danger to which some effective counters were already in operational service. The hoary ‘axioms of action’—above all surprise, concentration and economy of force—had to be borne in mind. Owing to the inability of submarines to operate submerged in large groups, in the way, for example, the U-boat “wolf-packs’ were able to operate on the surface in the Second World War, it would today be difficult for a submarine attack to saturate the anti-missile defences of a well-ordered escort or support group. Maritime strike aircraft, on the other hand, could carry out a heavily concentrated attack, which might temporarily overwhelm the defences.

It was with these considerations in mind that SACLANTs operations were planned. It was essential, as a basis for them, to exploit two capabilities, which had been developed in recent years, to provide early warning of impending attacks. The first of these concerned submarines. The knowledge of Soviet submarine dispositions and movements painstakingly built up in peacetime had been augmented by the use of the surface-towed array surveillance system (
STASS
), operated in a number of suitably stationed patrol ships. These monitored the noise made by submarines underway, especially when they exceeded modest speeds. The information so obtained could be fed into the total submarine surveillance system, with corresponding improvement in its reliability and comprehensiveness. The second” important system was the airborne warning and control system (
AWACS
), operated in large patrol aircraft. This could provide long-range warning of low-flying aircraft or missile attack, and hence help to offset, to some extent, the danger of defences being overwhelmed by the weight of a surprise misflle onslaught.

The Soviet Naval Staff, in planning the naval operations which would support ‘defensive action’ by the Warsaw Pact, if that should prove necessary, were quite clear in their minds about what had to be done. The Soviet Navy had to show that its contribution to the achievement of the Soviet Union’s political goals could be more than just supportive of the ground forces’ campaign. By concentrating upon the isolation of the north-west European battlefield, it could not only help the Red Army directly but also do much to weaken the commitment of the United States to Western Europe. The main tasks of the Soviet Navy, therefore, during the first ten days of hostilities, would be to:

1 Maintain the Soviet Navy’s strategic nuclear forces intact and at readiness, whilst limiting as much as possible the damage which could result if
NATO
were to unleash strategic nuclear warfare or tactical nuclear warfare at sea.

2 Help the ground and air forces to seize and keep open the Baltic Exits, and the Kiel Canal.

3 Support the ground and air forces in the invasion of Norway from the north.

4 Destroy as many
NATO
warships, submarines and naval aircraft as possible, in the Arctic Ocean, Norwegian Sea, North Atlantic, North Sea, English Channel and Baltic. Outside these areas, in the Atlantic south of the Tropic of Cancer and elsewhere,
NATO
forces, or the forces of
NATO
member states, would only be engaged when hostile action seemed to be inevitable, or had already begun.

5 Interdict all sea traffic between the United Kingdom and the Continent.

6 Neutralize or destroy the North Sea oil and gas installations.

7 Maintain freedom of movement for Soviet submarines in the Greeniand-Iceland-UK gap, whilst denying this to
NATO
submarines.

8 Prevent shipping, and especially military transports, from reaching NATO’s European ports.

9 Get all Soviet and other Warsaw Pact ships, including fishing and research vessels, into friendly or neutral ports before their capture or destruction.

NATO’s warning of imminent attack by the Warsaw Pact had been brief. Much reliance had been placed upon detection of the increased deployment of submarines from the Soviet Northern Fleet, based on Murmansk in the Kola Inlet, into the Atlantic. The Soviet naval command was aware of this. Although, under reasonable excuse, there was a movement of surface shipping from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and the Straits (see p. 177), no change was permitted in the pattern of submarine movements during the three weeks prior to D-day, 4 August !985. There was, in fact, no need for it. Of the sixty nuclear-powered general purpose and forty diesel-electric patrol submarines in the Northern Fleet immediately available for operations, about one third were always at sea on a variety of tasks. They were primarily concerned with surveillance—of the US and UK strategic nuclear submarine forces, and of major US naval force movements and exercises. The submarines invariably went on patrol ready in ail respects for war. They could remain on task, once hostilities broke out, until they had used up all their weapons, or were running short of food and (in the case of the dieset-electric submarines) fuel. What did happen, on 4 August and during Ihe next few weeks, showed that, although the efficiency of the Soviet submarine force had improved a great deal since the Second World War, the anti-submarine measures of the Atlantic Alliance had done so too.

The situation at sea was uncannily reminiscent of the early months of the Second World War. Something like a ‘Blitzkrieg’ in Central Europe, accompanied by supporting naval operations; submarine attacks on shipping in the Western Approaches; sporadic attacks, submarine, surface and air, on Allied shipping worldwide; the bottling up, capture or destruction of the merchant shipping of the continental power, the Warsaw Pact, by Allied naval forces.

There were differences between then and now. These were, first of all, politico-military. Unlike Germany in 1939-40, the Soviet Union in 1985 was firmly established in the Middle East, and in both West anrfEast Africa. On the other hand, the United States in 1985 had not stood aside, as in 1939-41, when Great Britain and the Commonwealth stood almost alone against Nazi Germany. The United States was now, from the very onset, at the head of a great alliance of countries formed for the purpose of supporting each other if attacked on land or—but here was the rub—if any of their ships or aircraft were attacked in the Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer (the southern limit of the
NATO
area) or in the Mediterranean. Outside these specific sea areas, unfortunately, the Alliance could not operate as such.