The Third World War: The Untold Story

A more detailed narrative of these operations is, of course, to be found in The Third World War: August 1985, published earlier this year, in the spring of 1987. It covers, also, the air/sea battle around the Baltic exits and the English Channel, where the Soviet light forces, with air cover, tried to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies from the UK to the continent of Europe. We have not repeated this story here.

Many mines were laid by the Soviet forces, and sea traffic nearly came to a standstill owing to the shortage of mine counter-measure (MCM) vessels. This was particularly felt in regard to the south of Ireland. It will be remembered that the Kiev and her group visited Cork just before the outbreak of war. During that visit, as is now known, a group of Soviet mine-laying submarines were laying delayed-action mines off Lough Swilly, Bantry Bay, Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Milford Haven. Five ships were to be sunk by these mines. It was only at Milford Haven that MCM were taken and casualties avoided.

Much of the follow-up reinforcement shipping was sent from ports in the Gulf of Mexico. Routed south of the Azores it was then brought in, where possible, to the shallower waters along the European coast. With the extra support available from Spain, as well as that from Portugal and France, this reduced the level of the submarine threat and almost eliminated the threat from the air. Outside the NATO area, where there was no established and practised sea/air operational control of shipping, or proper protection, ocean shipping remained for the most part paralysed, until some degree of confidence had been restored in NATO’s competence to safeguard it. By the end of the second week after war had started NATO’s worldwide operational intelligence system had provided a more realistic assessment of the submarine threat to shipping in the various theatres. Indeed, there is little doubt that the intelligence organization at NATO’s disposal was of critical importance in enabling it to counter a grave threat to the ability of the Alliance to use the sea.

It may be worthwhile to dwell on this aspect for a moment. The advance of information technology had enabled the Western allies to use computers, micro-electronics and telecommunications to produce, store, obtain and send information in a variety of forms extremely rapidly and — until the enemy began to interfere — reliably. Fortunately Soviet interference was rarely effective. Every scrap of data on every Soviet submarine at sea which came within range of any Allied sensors — sonar in ships or helicopters, sonobuoys from fixed-wing aircraft, acoustic devices on the seabed, or radar contact by snort mast (when the submarine was a diesel-electric one) — could be processed almost instantaneously, analysed and compared. The NATO submarine plot would then be updated and the latest submarine report communicated to all concerned. Furthermore, the knowledge that this was being done had in many circumstances the effect upon the Soviet submariners (NATO’s own submariners had a similar respect for the Soviet operational intelligence system) of imposing speed restrictions. The faster a submarine goes the more noise it makes. Even when it is not exactly located every detection of a submarine by the enemy draws the net more tightly round it. SSBN are not embarrassed by such detection possibilities because they do not have to use high speed in order to fulfil their role, and are deployed in remote areas which, at the same time, can be kept clear of ‘intruders’.

It must be added, in order to account for Allied failure, where it occurred, to act promptly and with good effect upon intelligence received, that something was seen to happen which many had warned would happen. This was an inability to decentralize sufficiently to subordinate flag, or in some cases commanding, officers which resulted in what has been described as ‘apoplexy at the centre and paralysis at the extremities’. In a fast-moving situation it is essential to let the man on the spot have the information he needs, and let him get on with the job as he thinks best. By far the most important function of the flag officer and his staff, especially in a shore headquarters, is to avoid the mutual interference of friendly forces — surface ship, submarine and aircraft.