The Third World War: August 1985

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 Greenland-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 above), no change was permitted in the pattern of submarine movements during the three weeks prior to D-day, 4 August 1985. 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 all 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 diesel-electric submarines) fuel. What did happen, on 4 August and during the 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 and East 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 outset, 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 specified sea areas, unfortunately, the Alliance could not operate as such.

The rapid growth in the number of independent nation states since 1945, most of them with sea coasts and maritime interests both commercial and naval, had added correspondingly to the complexity of war at sea.