The Third World War: The Untold Story

In addition to the submarines and surface forces tasked to destroy; US carriers on station, the Soviet Naval Air Force maintained specially trained and briefed long-range bomber squadrons, armed with stand-off air-to-surface missiles, based at Murmansk, in the Leningrad Military District, and at Sevastopol and Vladivostok. These were mainly Backfires, in support of the Northern and Pacific Fleets, with the shorter-range Blinders in the Baltic and the Black Sea. The range of both types could be extended by in-flight refuelling. The US carriers and their supporting ships, whose exact positions were always known to the Soviet Union by air, submarine, surface ship and satellite reconnaissance in combination, were liable to air attack anywhere in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the northern part of the Indian Ocean, and in the Pacific from the South China Sea to the west coast of the United States.

We come now to the Soviet Navy’s dispositions for the support of the Red Army and its Warsaw Pact allies. From the 1970s onwards it had been evident that the Soviet amphibious capability had been increasing, and much interest had been aroused in the autumn of 1981 when exercise Zapad was carried out in the eastern Baltic. At the time there were some who believed that the exercise was designed specifically to bring pressure to bear on Poland, at that time suffering from something of a breakdown in political control by its own Communist Party, under pressure from the powerful Solidarity free trade union movement supported by the Catholic church. But in fact the exercise had been planned over a year previously and we now know that it was a rehearsal for the seizure of the Dardanelles. This accounted for the unprecedented bringing together of the helicopter-cruiser Leningrad, a Sverdlov-class cruiser, two Krivak-class frigates and several units belonging to the amphibious forces of the Black Sea Fleet and the Northern Fleet, plus the latest large landing ship Ivan Rogov from the Pacific, while the carrier Kiev, accompanied by two frigates, was diverted to the Baltic from her passage back to the Northern Fleet base from the Mediterranean. In July 1985 strong amphibious forces, well supported by antisubmarine and anti-air defence and by shore-based air-striking forces, were poised to fight alongside the Warsaw Pact land forces in north Norway, north Germany, Turkey, and in the Far East, while Soviet submarines and naval aircraft were ready to interdict NATO support for its land forces in these theatres.

When we look at the Soviet plans for the interruption of all movement by sea that directly supported the enemy combat capability, we must at the same time bear in mind the Soviet emphasis, in operational concept, on the achievement of surprise and the coordination of all arms. It must also be remembered that the entire Soviet and Warsaw Pact merchant fleet, as well as the fishing fleet, were under the operational control of the Soviet Government — which meant, once contingency plans were put into effect, the Soviet Main Naval Staff.

It is now clear that the Soviets had worked out very carefully how and where to apply pressure to the world’s sea transportation system so as to create the maximum disruption in the minimum time, priority being given to denying to the United States and her allies the supply of those imported materials which would have the most immediate effect upon their combat capability.