The Third World War: The Untold Story

The rapid growth of the Soviet merchant fleet in the 1970s and early 1980s had not only earned much-needed hard currency, but had also helped to extend Soviet political influence and provide a most valuable auxiliary force to the Soviet Navy. Not the least of its merits was to furnish accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date intelligence of the world’s shipping movements, the cargoes carried, and their destinations. Certain Soviet merchant ships, also, could lay mines, and many were equipped with electronic warfare devices, for both interception and jamming of radio communications. What the Soviets planned to do, therefore, at the outset of hostilities, was to paralyse shipping movement by executing, as nearly as possible simultaneously, a number of operations involving surface raiding forces, submarine attacks, shore-based air attacks, mining by merchant ships, sabotage, radio jamming and disinformation. ‘War zones’, into which non-aligned and neutral shipping would sail at their peril, would be declared in the western approaches to north-west Europe; west of the Straits of Gibraltar; in the Arabian Sea; off the Cape of Good Hope; and in the East China Sea. This concept of the ‘instantaneous threat’ to shipping, rather than the prosecution of a guerre de course — the old-style war of attrition — accorded well with the Soviet politico-military war plan for a rapid seizure of the Federal Republic of Germany, followed by a peace negotiated with the USA, on the basis of a stunning demonstration of Soviet power on land, at sea, and in the air.

The Soviet naval and naval air forces available for paralysing shipping, like those allocated for other missions already referred to, had to be in place, or nearly so, long before war contingency plans were executed. Again, therefore, they were bound to be few in number. Western operational intelligence was naturally most interested, in peacetime, in the movements of the Soviet nuclear-powered heavy cruisers of the Kirov class, two of which were in commission in July 1985 — one, the Kirov herself, with the Northern Fleet, and the other in the Pacific. Their ‘electronic signatures’ were well known to the US Navy — and hence to NATO — as were those of all the other main units of the Soviet fleets. It was not, however, too difficult, when the moment came, for these to be artificially altered, so as to confuse — even if only for a day or two — surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Furthermore, the Kirovs, being nuclear powered and extremely well armed, could operate independently and continuously, at high speed, demanding from the enemy a full-scale concentration of force in order to bring them to book.

Some Kiev-class V/STOL aircraft carriers, of which four were in commission in July 1985, provided the other main element of the Soviet anti-shipping surface force. Two were in the Northern Fleet, including the Kiev herself, and two in the Pacific Fleet. It was normal for either the Kiev or her sister ship the Novorossysk to be operating between the Mediterranean and Murmansk, with occasional cruises to the Cape Verde area, and the west coast of Africa; while the Minsk and her sister ship, based upon Vladivostok, operated between there and Cam Ranh Bay — that bonus to the Soviet union from its support of Vietnam — with periodical sorties into the South China Sea. These carriers were usually accompanied by a pair of the excellent Krivak-class frigates.

It was often assumed, on the Western side, that if war came the Kirov heavy cruisers would join the Kiev carriers, with perhaps additional frigates or destroyers, to form battle groups similar in concept to NATO battle groups. But this view was mistaken. It overlooked the Soviet determination to achieve surprise, accepting the risk of losing perhaps all of their in-place forces during the first few days, or even hours, of hostilities. Besides, why sacrifice the exceptional mobility of the nuclear-powered Kirovs by grouping them with the logistically-limited Kievs and their escorts?

As to submarines in the anti-merchant ship role, only two submarines were kept on station in peacetime with this task in mind. They were both elderly, torpedo-firing nuclear powered boats. One of them patrolled within two days’ easy steaming of the Cape of Good Hope, and the other had a billet within the same distance of Cape de Sao Roque, the focal point off Brazil. It was their job to identify and sink particular ships, designated by Moscow, within hours of the opening of hostilities on the Central Front in Europe.

That, in essence, was the Soviet naval plan. It was a good one, and it very nearly worked.

Admiral Maybury then continued his talk on the basis of the Soviet naval objectives and dispositions already described, with brief accounts of some selected actions, all of which it must be emphasized were taking place at about the same time. He began with the heavy cruiser Kirov.