The Third World War: The Untold Story

It is as well to recall the US/NATO force deployment upon which the Soviet Union had to base its plans — and as has been remarked earlier, the Western powers did not always provide themselves with a valid ‘Moscow view’. By 1985 the US Navy was well into the service life extension programme (SLEP) for its carrier force. This would add fifteen years to the normal thirty-year life of these warships. It was designed to enable the US Navy to have at least twelve carriers in commission for the remainder of the present century. By August 1985 the USS Saratoga and Forrestal had been through the SLEP, and were ‘good as new’; and the USS Independence had been taken in hand by the Philadelphia Navy Yard — that may have seemed tough on the Virginians, but at least Newport News was given the Carl Vinson, CVN-70, to build!

In a well-publicized comment, around 1981, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, said that he was ‘… trying to meet a three-ocean requirement with a one-and-a-half-ocean navy’. It has to be accepted that, over a period of years, it takes three carriers in commission to keep one up front. Hence, in mid-1985 there were permanently on station a one-carrier battle group in the Mediterranean, a one- and occasionally two-carrier battle group in the Indian Ocean and a one- and occasionally two-carrier battle group in the Western Pacific.

None was permanently on station in the Atlantic: a Carrier Battle Group Atlantic would be formed from the forces training in home waters prior to deployment for war. Each of the carriers had an air group of about eighty-five aircraft — fighters, strike aircraft, ASW aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, and one or two aircraft specially fitted for ECM and airborne early warning (AEW). To protect this floating airfield the US had two or three guided-missile cruisers and ten or so modern destroyers and frigates. Quite often, too, there was a nuclear ‘attack’ submarine in direct support.

The USSR had assumed that the US carriers could launch nuclear strikes, and for this reason had determined that they should be constantly tracked, and targeted by both torpedo and missile firing submarines; and because it was realized that the carriers might take a lot of sinking — or even neutralizing — cruisers and destroyers armed with surface-to-surface missiles (SSM) were also deployed within a day or two of striking distance and developed a pattern of closing in to firing range from time to time. In this way such a movement would not, it was hoped, alert US carriers that war was imminent.

During this last week in July 1985, therefore, there were two missile-armed and two torpedo-armed Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean, all nuclear powered, and all from the Northern Fleet. Off Newfoundland across the line of advance of the Carrier Battle Group Atlantic were positioned three more missile-armed and four torpedo-armed nuclear-powered submarines, again from the Northern Fleet. This fleet also provided to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar two diesel-electric missile-armed boats, and two diesel-electric ballistic-missile boats were stationed within bombardment range of the NATO air bases as Keflavik, Iceland, and Lossiemouth, Scotland. Other submarines were at sea between their patrol stations and home base in Murmansk.

The Fifth Eskadra, cruising or anchored in the general vicinity of the carrier battle group of the US Sixth Fleet, consisted of three guided-missile cruisers, four guided-missile destroyers, and four gun destroyers, all from the Soviet’s Black Sea Fleet. Both the US and the Soviet groups were accompanied, of course, by logistic support and, in the Soviet case, maintenance ships in considerable numbers.

In the Indian Ocean, the Soviets had stationed one guided-missile and three torpedo-attack nuclear-powered submarines to cover the US carrier battle group, but their surface force in that area, consisting of one guided-missile cruiser and three guided-missile destroyers or frigates, tended to remain well out of range.

Finally, in the western Pacific, where there was a US carrier battle group based usually on Subic in the Philippines, the Soviets were able to muster another group of nuclear-powered submarines, one missile armed and the other torpedo armed while, in addition, there was a diesel-electric guided-missile boat on patrol off Yokosuka in Japan.