The Third World War: The Untold Story

Asia, then, saw much tension but no global East-West war. What fighting there was largely took place out in the Pacific and something of this has already been described in Chapter 13. The Soviet Pacific Fleet had put to sea, under the guise of one of its regular exercises, before fighting in Europe erupted. It was shadowed by American and Japanese warships and aircraft, and the submarines of both sides stalked each other. Soviet aircraft maintained their usual surveillance over south China and Soviet ships were active in and around Vietnamese waters. But that was before the war in Europe started. When it did start they all left. Vietnam would have to look after itself for a while. There were naval actions between Soviet and US naval units but not many. Perhaps the war went too fast for that; both navies had intense preoccupations in other theatres. Japanese ships were involved in one minor action, when a Japanese escort group north of the Tsushima Islands was fired on by an unidentified fast-patrol boat, later known to have been part of a small North Korean force returning from a lightning raid on Pusan in South Korea. The missile — a Styx — was intercepted and the Japanese destroyer, commanded by one Captain Noda, a lively and aggressive officer, fired back with one of the new Japanese-built missiles. Like many another piece of Japanese equipment, it worked splendidly. The radar showed a hit and the target disappeared. This was the first shot fired in action by the maritime self-defence force and, as it turned out, the only one of the war.

In the Korean peninsula nothing much happened, despite the heavy concentration of troops there. The North Korean decision to pay more attention to Peking than to Moscow proved a canny one, and its minor forays produced little more than defensive actions by South Korean forces, who were discouraged by the United States from any wish they might have had to upgrade the fighting. While Seoul and Washington had both heard of the warning given by China to the North (through confidential information gleaned at the time by the US Ambassador in Peking) they were aware that the Chinese attitude might well be different if major war were launched by the South.

So the clash between East and West did not spread to Asia as the countries of the region had feared. But that did not mean that nothing.happened there. Far from it: a lot of what might be called tidying up went on. The breakdown of authority in the Soviet Union provided a heaven-sent (so to speak) opportunity for putting right a few wrongs and settling old scores.

The first of these was in Indochina. The drawn-out struggle there had been going badly for Hanoi, as has already been described. Soviet supplies had been thinning out and when the war in Europe started they stopped altogether. The Soviet advisers, who had already concentrated in Haiphong for their annual indoctrination and conference found themselves conveniently placed to leave for a safer place on 3 August. It is thought that they did this on the Ivan Rogov, the large amphibious ship usually stationed there. The Ivan Rogov was sunk a few days later, along with one of its escorts, by a US attack submarine. The submarine's elated skipper, Commander David Redfern, had long been waiting for such an opportunity and had worked hard for it, helped, it must be said, by a patient patrol aircraft working with him, which unfortunately did not survive the action.

In Peking the Politburo and the Military Affairs Committee had been in almost continuous session since early August. Daily they had argued, often heatedly, over the merits of a variety of actions that might extract some profit from the war between the superpowers. They had discussed what could be done to encourage the Kazakh unrest in the Soviet Union, of which they were getting news, not least from the Kazakhs on their own side of the border. They decided eventually to order large-scale military exercises on the border, but that was not until Kazakhstan had seceded from the Soviet Union after the destruction of Minsk by nuclear attack on 20 August. Manoeuvres were ordered at the same time, on the border with Uzbekistan, in both cases to dissuade the Soviet Union from launching punitive action. Exercises on a smaller scale were also set in train in Manchuria, but with caution. The Chinese were conscious of their military weakness, in Manchuria above all. They decided on a course of prudence, to wait and see what events brought. In relation to Mongolia, however, they thought it worthwhile to send some very tough messages, making it distinctly clear that the time had come, in their view, for the Mongolian leaders to invite the Soviet divisions there to go home. If they did not, it was gently hinted, life might later prove very uncomfortable indeed for those leaders when the Sinic peoples inevitably drew together again.